Apparently, the Nintendo Wii has a new SKU, just in time for the holiday shopping season. The new Wii SKU is 045496880088, and it lists for 289.99 CAD. (Isn't this $10CAD higher than last year's price?)

If you recall, this was the first step in a hypothetical situation in which Nintendo raised the price on the Wii.

However, this is probably not the price hike that I predicted, as the new Wii SKU most likely includes the new Wii Remote Jacket, which current Wii owners can receive from Nintendo (for free).

I started playing Zelda: Phantom Hourglass this this evening. In as much as Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii took advantage of the unique controller configuration of the Wii, Phantom Hourglass does the same with the stylus and touchscreen on the Nintendo DS. Instead of using the standard crosspad and buttons, the stylus becomes the way that Link moves and attacks on the screen. In addition, the use of the stylus allows one to jot down notes on the map,

The attack methods for the game seem very similar to that of Okami, in which a slashing motion of the stylus results in a slash, and a circular motion triggers a spin attack. Rolling, so far seems to be the most difficult maneuver in this game, requiring a little circle at the edge of the screen.

Wil Wheaton's awesome PAX 2007 speech

This feed came directly off the sound system at PAX2007, so the sound quality is awesome.

Wil talks about his experiences with video games. Except for the afterschool auditions, my own experience as a 80s kid in the suburbs of Los Angeles is eerily similar.

Today I watched some animations from SIGGRAPH. SIGGRAPH is one of those computer industry events where those of us in the entertainment industry go to find our new best artists, so on the whole, the quality of things that one views has already been filtered by industry professionals and selected as being particularly noteworthy.

Tonight's event was hosted by Shrunkenheadman is SJSU's Animation/Illustration club, so we had the luxury of having them pre-screened even further from the 3-DVD "Best of" compilation (which definitely reduced my time sitting in agony viewing bad animations). While there were definitely demo reels from students, there were also rather interesting animations being submitted by researchers. One of the more interesting ones was this one about Flight Patterns. Of course, as long as we are talking about planes, we might as well talk about Snakes, a computer animated version of M.C. Escher's last woodcut.

The classic "Foster's Big Ad" was shown:

Guiness' "noitulove" ad also:

And to round out the beer ad triumverate, we have Johnnie Walker's "Painting":

The biggest difference I find these days between professional portfolios and those from students/amateurs trying to get into doing computer animation is this: pros realize that a reel isn't just a showcase of what you are capable of doing -- the most effective works are also going to be the ones that entertain.