Grabbed my Banjo-Kazooie download code today... oh man, what a nostalgia rush playing that game is. It's aged pretty well (mysterious framerate issues on the XBLA version aside), and it just reminds me what the heyday of platformers was like. I spent a lot of time playing B-K the first time around, and so far I'm having a blast replaying it again. High resolution has done a lot for the game, and most importantly the game play, sense of humor, and music are just as great as they were back in the day.

The way they dynamically re-score the music as you are venturing into different areas... still one of the most effective tricks in the game that I've basically not seen anyone else use.

It is definitely a collect-a-thon, but to me that's a plus and not a minus. Actually it's a bit easier in the XBLA version it looks like since the notes are permanently collected, rather than having to get all 100 in one perfect run. Now DK64, that game was the king of all collect-a-thons. Probably not much chance of it coming to XBLA however...

Here's some cool footage taken as they detonated the building next to our offices:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyrCEUDLRyE

Courtesy of our head IT guy, Roy.

Metaphor for the destruction of Ensemble, perhaps?

Still deep in Halo Wars crunch. Actually I had a lot of fun today abusing our dev tools while placing down screenfuls of units to fight each other while monitoring for memory leaks.

Fallout 3 has completely taken over my gaming time. I enjoyed Oblivion, but I am really loving Fallout 3. Game of the Year, even over GTA IV? A definite possibility...