So in the spirit of the amazing Dragon Quest infused weekend we have ahead of us, Sarah and I are going to be giving away 2 copies of Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS, one including the BradyGames strategy guide!

To enter, all you need to do is leave a comment below. Please note that if you’ve never left a comment on our site before it will need to be approved before it shows up. We’ll be announcing the two winners on Sunday, September 5th, so be sure to check back!

This is a song I wrote for my awesome sister in law and her boyfriend a little while back.

Whenever they play any multiplayer Mario games, they always rock the “Green Team”… so I thought I’d come up with a little song that not only expresses their love for one another, but Luigi and Yoshi’s love for eachother as well.

Performed by Thomas Electronics

Enjoy!

Hey there peoples. PAX is a mere 10 days away, and while the convention itself will be taking up most of everyone’s time, there’s bound to be a bit of downtime. Sarah and I head up to Seattle just about once a month, and while we’re not necessarily experts on the city, there are a few places we usually try to stop by — whether it be for food, shopping, or entertainment.

GameWorks

GameWorks is a SEGA owned arcade/sports bar kitty-corner from the Washington State Convention Center where PAX is held. It has 2 floors full of arcade games, and is sure to be very lively over the course of the weekend. In the past it’s played host to the 1UP.com Community Meetups and is overall a decent place to grab a beer and chill with friends. We’re definitely going to be getting our Dragon Quest on at this location.

Kinokuniya Bookstores

Located in the International District and connected to the incredible asian grocery store, Uwajimaya, Kinokuniya is home to a plethora of Japanese CD’s, magazines, books, manga, and figures. If you’re looking for video game soundtracks, and are willing to pay the price (a four disc Final Fantasy soundtrack will usually run around 40 bucks), this is definitely a place worth checking out.

Pink Gorilla Games

Now with two locations (one of which is also located in the International District) Pink Gorilla is the one stop shop for import and retro video games in Seattle. In addition, their newer second store, located by the University of Washington, has a terrific arcade setup. PGG should have a relatively heavy presence at the convention itself, so be on the look out for their very pink booth — and if the crowds get to be too much for you, go swing by one of their amazing stores!

Taphouse Grill

Located around the corner from GameWorks, Taphouse — while slightly upscaleish, compared to GameWorks anyways >.> — is a great place to unwind after a busy day of convention center hijinks. With over 160 beers on tap and a solid variety of foodstuffs, Sarah and I try to stop by here at least once whenever we go to Seattle.

International Model Toys

One more treat, courtesy of the International District! International Model Toys is a great little shop just down the block from Pink Gorilla Games that specializes in Gundam/mecha models, as well as various other figures. Some of the perfect grade Gundam models they have in stock are pretty nuts, and well worth checking out if your into that sort of thing.

So there you have it. I’m not going to go through and list the addresses for all of these, because I give my readers the benefit of doubt that they know how to operate ze Google. If you have questions about any of the locations above though, please feel free to ask in the comments below!

Something that’s always fascinated me throughout my years of multiplayer gaming, is the selection of game handles. For some people it’s a very nonchalant decision, as simple as typing in the first word that comes to mind, but for others it’s a painstaking process that bears some pretty hefty consideration. Nowadays I fall into the latter of the two camps, having only had 4 handles since 1995; but when it all started the decisions came pretty easily.

My first handle came about in late ‘95, early ‘96. My dad had always been ahead of the curve when it came to computers, and in 1993 when he purchased multiple computers for the family, it kind of left us all scratching our heads. I didn’t even know you could play with other people at the time!

Initially, games like Doom and Heretic didn’t offer the ability to input a handle before a match — you were just Player 1, 2, 3, or 4. But in 1996, with our love of LAN gaming in full swing, a little game called Duke Nukem 3D came out, and when I loaded up the setup program to start a network game, for the very first time I was asked to input a “Player Name” using 10 characters or less.

I was 12 years old at the time, and pretty heavily invested in comic books - so the first thing that came to mind was my favorite X-Man, Bishop.

Bishop (January 1996 - June 1996)

Bishop didn’t last long though, in part because I was a fickle young man, but also because of iD Software’s Quake. With this new game came the ability to enter in a longer handle, and since one of my favorite movies at the time was Sylvester Stallone’s Demolition Man, DemolitionMan seemed to fit the bill.

DemolitionMan (June 1996 - December 1998)

DemolitionMan was my go to handle for first person shooters for quite some time. Occasionally, when I’d play a game that couldn’t fit the 13 character name, I’d revert back to Bishop (as was the case with the original Diablo), but it wasn’t until Half-Life came out that I thought it was time for another change. This time, another X-Man, but one with far cooler letters in his name, WeaponX!

WeaponX (December 1998 - February 2003)

I used WeaponX not only as my gaming handle, but as the internet evolved, my user name for websites and my alias for Half-Life mod development. The name treated me well, but after I graduated high school and moved out, I didn’t really have money for comic books, so my interest dwindled. I was searching for a new handle to use, thinking back to all of the late night gaming sessions I used to have with friends at my parent’s house, and one particular game kept popping up — Myth, a real-time tactics game by Bungie that came out in the late 90’s.

One of my favorite units in Myth was called the Journeyman, a healer unit that would often times find himself the sole survivor of the game’s wonderfully bloody battles. As I ran my Journeyman into the surrounding wilderness, my opponents hot on his trail, one of my friend’s called out, “Come back here Cherneymin!” combining my last name with the unit he so desperately sought to destroy. I liked it, and stuck with it until this very post.

theCherneymin (February 2003 - August 2010)

And with that, after 7+ years of use, I’m set to retire my longest lasting gamer tag. Times have changed, and so have my gaming habits and interests. Plus I’m tired of having part of my real name associated with my gaming. So without trying to make this sound like an “announcement” that’s relevant to anybody other than myself, I went ahead and decided on a new gaming handle; one which will hopefully treat me as well as my others have throughout all these years: MoosiferX. Combining my love of Dragon Quest monster names/puns, with a little nod to a past handle, here’s to hoping for 7 more amazing years!

MoosiferX (August 2010 - ?)

How did you come up with your gamer tag? Is it something that just stuck with you? Do you change it every month? Have you changed it ever? We here at Sunken Treasures Games would love to hear about it in the comments below!

This year’s Seattle Penny-Arcade Expo is set to be a pretty special one for those of us who’ve been pouring hour after hour into Square Enix’s incredible Dragon Quest IX. Since it’s initial launch onto the Nintendo DS last month, meetups have been organized around the globe (both by Nintendo and your average Joe) to dive into DQIX’s fantastic multiplayer components — and where better than a massive video game convention in the heart of the big city to continue the trend?

So yeah, if you’re interested keep an eye on that aforementioned forum link, and for a list of some of the participants, check the official Twitter list here.

“Dearest Aaron and Sarah,

Operator Sawa
Surviving Member of the PJ Resource Acquirement Team”

Well, it only took about a year’s worth of being distracted from it, but Sarah and I finally got around to finishing Q-Games‘ wonderful PixelJunk Shooter, and aside from periodically having to relearn the controls over such a long period of time, we had a pretty damned fun time!

PixelJunk Shooter is as the title suggests, a shooting game, that puts the player(s) in the role of an ace pilot on a mission to rescue any and all survivors of a resource expedition gone awry. The game takes place entirely underground, and the player is tasked with utilizing and fighting the elements (magma, ice, water, rock, gas, and eventually a magnetic oil) to achieve victory.

Stylistically this game is up there with some of my favorites. The defined color palette not only looks super, but makes it easy to see what’s going on at all times, even when things get a bit chaotic. Monsters look great, and the bosses (which a typically pretty large) are very well animated. Special mention should be made of the game’s soundtrack performed by UK hip-hop/electronica artists High Frequency Bandwidth. The music almost always seems to kick into high gear at the right moment, and when things calm down, adds quite a bit to the overall atmosphere.

In the end though, it’s the various elemental physics that really make the game. Unleashing a wave of lava only to see it solidify as it hits water is pretty impressive stuff, and the way they managed to animate the flow of the different types of liquids is amazing. Sarah and I had a blast figuring out each element as we were introduced to them, and died/killed many a survivor in the process. Towards the last third of the game, when you encounter the final element, a magnetic oil, if your mind isn’t slightly blown there’s probably something wrong with you.

While the story mode in the game could probably be completed in one evening, there’s plenty of little trinkets to go back and find, and the ability to play the game Co-Op definitely adds to the game’s replayability. Like other PixelJunk games, there’s also the option to record and upload gameplay videos to YouTube, which I only mention because I think every developer should incorporate this excellent feature into their games. ^_^

Q-Games’ PixelJunk line has always been one of the highlights of owning a Playstation 3 and Shooter is another fantastic release from a developer that continues to impress. Now then, onto the sequel!

The biannual Penny-Arcade Expo is just under a month away, and your friends at Sunken Treasures Games are going to be there covering whatever games we can get our hands on, and maybe even doing some podcasting with our friends over at Crush! Frag! Destroy!!!

With the trip to Seattle, we’ll no doubt be hitting up good ol’ Pink Gorilla as well as a few other awesome locales in the International District — and this time around we’re going to give you a little insight into our favorite destinations!

The convention itself runs from Friday, September 3rd to Sunday September 5th, so be sure to stay tuned over the next few weeks, as we intend to roll out a few PAX features to bide our time!

It’s been a long time coming- in fact, it’s way past due. When you enter the store today, a plethora of sweet new game music will reach your ears. I am very happy with this set of games we’ve selected to demo; the variety of retro, cool, family friendly, and obscure is great!

Jet Grind Radio - DreamCast

SSX Tricky - GameCube

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - PlayStation

Shadowrun - SNES

Golgo 13 - NES

Dragon Ball Z - Ultimate Battle 22 - PSone

Vectorman 2 - Sega Genesis

Castle Crashers - Xbox 360

Stop by and check these as well as many many other awesome games!

Maybe it’s because it’s summer and most people are out and about enjoying the beautiful weather, but July-August is a slower time of year for the store. And by slower, I mean there aren’t as many huge rushes of customers that come in all at once. For some reason there’s more of a steady flow at which people shop by during the summer months. I find it relaxing, especially because I have more time to dedicate to listening to podcasts. Currently there are five podcasts that we’ve been listening to on a fairly regular basis and I thought I’d share them with you today!

Team DeathChat - by Crush! Frag! Destroy!
Team DeathChat is a fairly new podcast by the guys over at Crush! Frag! Destroy! This show covers everything from gaming and industry news, games they’re playing, and anything and everything in between. The guys are so passionate and are a blast to listen to! I often find myself giggling during their conversations.

Episode 8, which was released a few weeks ago is by far my favorite episode of theirs, and in my opinion their best work so far. Some of the games they talk about, Dragon Quest IX and Limbo specifically, are games that Aaron and I have been playing, and I thoroughly enjoyed what they all had to say about them.

Press Pause Radio - Not Your Everyday Podcast
This is a recently discovered podcast that I found through the Crush! Frag! Destroy! website. Press Pause Radio talks about a wide range of topics regarding video games new and old, what games they have in their consoles, and why it’s important and why we should care about it. I love the dynamic these guys have together.

In the lasted podcast, they discussed the independent game industry: what does “indie” mean, what are the pros/cons of being and indie developer, and why should we care about indie games/developers. Personally, I never gave the indie game industry much thought, so I found this show really insightful and fun. I learned a lot about different games and people that I wouldn’t have ever heard of otherwise. Also in this podcast, they did the nicest shout-out to Aaron and I here at Sunken Treasures Games. (Thanks again guys!)

These two podcasts have filled the void that 1UP Yours and GFW Radio left when they stopped recording. Both of these shows are a must listen to anyone who enjoys video games and the entertaining banter that comes along with it.

A Life Well Wasted - An Internet Radio Show About Video Games and the People Who Love Them
A Life Well Wasted is hosted by Robert Ashley, who you might know from his days on the GFW Radio podcast from 1UP.com. The format for this podcast is reminiscent of “This American Life” on NPR, which is more radio journalism and less your typical video game podcast. Ashley covers topics like collectors/archivists, why exactly people play video games, the guy who owns the rights to Tetris and his plans on saving the world, as well as many other very interesting and fun topics that are off the beaten path. The podcast is narrated by Ashley himself and the music is provided by his band I Come to Shanghai.

This is a brilliant internet radio show that is full of interesting and funny people, places, and ideas. There are only six episodes that have been released since January 2009 and each one was well worth the wait and deserves a listen.

Active Time Babble - The podcast companion for 1Up’s RPG blog The Grind
Jeremy Parish, Kat Bailey, and various guests discuss role playing games in all shapes and sizes. Console, PC, and even table top RPGs are talked about. The newest episode is all about Dragon Quest IX which is a big deal to Aaron and I since this is the game that has been taking up most, if not all, of our spare time. Other topics they have covered are: the state of JRPG’s, rougelike games, various MMO’s, and a lot of Etrian Odyssey. This group is extremely knowledgeable about the RPG genre and go into great detail about a lot of things. This show is released about every two weeks and is generally 1 - 1 1/2 hours long.

Retronauts - A Journey Into Gaming’s Storied Past
Regardless of what era of gaming they are talking about Ray Barnholt, Jeremy Parish, and Sharkey have a lot to say about games. And by a lot, I mean, I have no idea how they can store that much information in their brains about games, developers, distributors, musicians, artists, and everything else involved in the gaming world. My mind is blown in every episode by just how much they know about the creation and history of games. It is quite inspiring actually.

Retronauts is also released about every two weeks and is also typically 1 - 1 1/2 hours long.

The Sound Test - An Exploration of the Finest Game Music New and Old
Ray Barnholt uses his best NPR voice to introduce each selection in this all music show. The selections range from piano pieces from Echochrome, jazz from Sam and Max, and other genres of music that can be found in a plethora of different games. This show makes me happy because I don’t know of another place to listen to video music outside of Aaron’s insanely amazing iTunes library.

The only bummer about The Sound Test is that it’s usually only about 30 minutes long. I understand that it would probably be pretty difficult for Ray to release a two hour long version of the show, but still that’d be wonderful!

So all this being said, these are the five podcasts Aaron and I have been listening to and wanted to recommend to our readers. All are worth a listen or two, or more! Enjoy!

This progress report probably contains minor spoilers in regards to places and items in DQIX. Just a heads up!

33 hours in and I’ve yet to see a Liquid Metal Slime!? Good lord! I Just obtained my 6th Fygg from the Swinedimples (HAR HAR!) Academy for young wizards and witches, and rather than progressing the plot right now, I’m off to catch up on some side quests and unlock a couple more character classes. Here’s my little dude so far:

In other DQ news, Sarah and I received a copy of the Dragon Quest IX Symphonic Suite in the mail the other day. Having loved the suites for DQVIII and DQV I was pretty positive we’d enjoy this one as well. Even though several of composer Kouichi Sugiyama’s Dragon Quest scores tend to run together, it never really ends up bothering me. His work is consistently pleasant to listen to, and I always dig the medleys they put together for these orchestrated releases.

Tonight, we’re having something of a DQIX fest with a friend. We’re going to go out for drinks and play as much multiplayer as humanly possible! I’m really hoping to beat my first Treasure Map boss, Equinox, as last time I encountered him, he wiped the floor with me. Anyways, wish us luck!