Japan here I come!

If all goes well, I’ll be in Japan sometime in August this year.

Not really on holiday, but working as an Assistant English Language Teacher there. Wonder if I will get to be posted to Hokkaido. I chose Hokkaido as my first preferred place to be posted to.

Lots of things I look forward to do when I’m there.

1) Set up cordial relations between my present school and my future school in Japan. (Hopefully a high school)

2) Set up several video conferencing sessions between students in Singapore and Japan

3) Create MORE games for Japanese Mobile Phones!!!

4) Learn more Japanese

5) Get more game ideas from Japan

6) Breathe in the fresh air of the countryside

It’s going to be a LONG VACATION. 5 Years hopefully.

Hai!

My interview by Playyoo is up on their blog!

Yup, that’s right folks.
Feature: Izam aka Afzainizam Zahari by Thomas N. Burg from Playyoo has been posted on their blog. Check it out! 

The origins of anime in Japan

I just found this news over at mainichi Daily News. Very interesting!
 http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080329p2a00m0na029000c.html 
A footage of a 91 years old anime was found in Osaka!

Think Fast awarded 4th prize in the 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest

Another piece of good news!
My game Think Fast has been awarded 4th prize for the 2007 Flash Lite Game contest.
Check it out!

Game idea when I was 12: Journey Man

While having dinner with a friend a few days ago, I told my childhood experience to her and suddenly I remembered about a computer game that two of my friends and I wanted to create.

My friends and I we obsessed with ATARI. A friend of ours had the console and he always invites us to his place to play. We played really simple games with the likes of PONG, golf, racing games and others. These games although not in the fashion of 3D games that we are used to expect from consoles now, are very addictive!

The games are basically made of really raw pixels! But us kids back then in the late 80s had so much fun and I think we had to use a lot of our imagination when playing the video games.

I can’t remember who suggested it, but most of us had the same desire. WE WANT TO MAKE A GAME!

I remembered reading a book in the library back in 1987 where they explained how to program a game. The game character looked a lot like the space invaders. However the game programming was done not on the regular PC it was on the Commodore. My dad bought an AT/XT PC and I think it was the best thing ever. I became a computer nerd.

Well I didn’t have a Commodore so the next best thing was to learn BASIC programming. Downloaded a few games done in Basic, opened it, looked at the code, messed it up and learnt a thing or two. (Yes back then in the 1980s I did download stuff—not from the internet but from BBS. Ah those were the days :D)

Basic wasn’t like the object oriented programming that most of us are familiar with now. It was a linear kind of programming as far as I can remember. Well it was fun back then.

Anyway, the three of us kids thought up the name of the game: JOURNEY MAN.
We thought it would be cool to create a game of a man who travel around the world, avoiding obstacles, save princesses etc etc.

We never really got down to discuss more about it though hahaha.

I thought it will be good if I were to create a game called JOURNEY MAN and to finally close that chapter of my life which I left hanging for years!

Watch out for it soon!

First post on ipod touch

just a test

Playyoo.com competition results are out!

The competition results are out!My Flash Lite mobile game Think Fast has been ranked no. 7! The prize awarded is US$500.

My thanks goes out to the organizers of the Playyoo competition for the generous awards given out to the winners. I believe the people behind the Playyoo platform will continue to drive forward the development of flash lite ecosystem in this part of the world outside of japan.

There is much potential for Flash Lite development and there are a lot of creative people out there who is practically dying to get their creative works out to be showcased to the world. 

I hope this contest will generate a LOT of interest and also move forward the system for people to be able to derive income from people playing mobile games. There is much potential to be discovered and tapped from here on. 

Playyoo Flash Lite Competition is heating up!

It is very heartening to see that Think Fast is currently in the top 10 position in the run up to the competition deadline this 28th of February 2008.
Thank you to everyone who has visited the Think Fast game page and showed your support to add the game as your favorite and download it.

If you have not done so or is still wondering what Think Fast is all about, why don’t you visit the game page and preview the game.

If you are an educator yourself or belong to a school and interested about the educational value this game brings, drop me an email and we can discuss further with regards to the game! 

I look forward to your comments and ideas :D 

Positive Thinking…An experiment

I’ve always been intrigued by what the mind can do. A bit of history here:
I was in my sixth year in Primary School and I was having fun playing the board game Risk. I was having fun because I was able to win very quickly!
The board game risk involves using 2 dice or more and players have to roll them to eventually conquer continents and countries. Well that’s about all that I remember about the game If you’d like to know more, there’s always wikipedia. Anyway, the thing that blew my mind was that more than 50% of the time that I threw the dice, I got the numbers that I wanted! I was hooked.

I got home and brought the dice with me. I asked my sister to join in. She calculated for me the probability of getting a number with one six sided dice. Its 1 out of 6. I rolled 10 times and more. I got the numbers that I wanted 50% of the time!I didn’t know what was going on. All I knew then was that before I threw the dice, I told myself that I really wanted the number. I believed strongly that I WILL get the number that I want. Is that postivity or positive thinking?Had my brain activity affected or influence the outcome of the dice roll?

Interesting question here and opens to a lot of debate.

Recently, I played another board game with my friends called the aeroplane chess. It also involves the roll of the dice.
I applied the same methods I employed back when I was 12 years of age. Most of the time I got the numbers that I wanted. Again!

Interestingly, I could also cause other players not to have the numbers that they wanted! But this is also open to much debate hahaha.

I realized that my mind can actually influence physical matter like the dice. I am the one throwing the dice. Thus the thought of wanting the number, passes on to my hands which holds the dice and throws it, and the dice rolls. 50% of the time the number appears.

I wonder if I could actually influence non physical stuffs? 
I am now creating a mobile application just for this. Watch for it soon.

Brain Stimulation

Just came across the news at Channelnewsasia:

Stay mentally and physically active as one ages, advises MM Lee 

 It’s true. Also, I feel that access to technology like mobile devices can help in this area.
Games for mobile devices should be promoted strongly and be given a positive limelight to help everyone stay mentaly Alert.
EVERYONE should Play more games!! 

Games like the Nintendo DS’ Brain Age and Sega Toy’s Brain Checker are good and I believe help in stimulating that gray matter of ours.