Michael

@Subdued01 excellent, glad to hear it.

BTW, castle monster. Also, I'm pretty sure you're not doing it, but make sure the fights do actually show the other characters on the board, it would be easy to just make them animations but that sort of takes you out of it. I'm just mentioning it because it looks like no one is behind the rook.

I'm hoping they make it as funny as they can. I'd be completely in love with just a HD port of the original I could play on my iPad ... played a ton of this on my 286 when I was a kid and these screens look a little too stodgy and realistic. I can remember a lot of the fights, and I'm disappointed the rook isn't a transforming castle monster that can stomp the pawns into a football. Guys, if you are reading this, show some nostalgia and we will worship you. That bishop looks way too serious to me and the king doesn't look like he's going to have the humor either.

I also should say that BattleChess 4000 was also hilarious. The attempts at realistic BC -- the one that came on the interplay box set -- wasn't very good. The pawns were hilarious, and they had some really good animations in BC4000 -- like the Rook and the little pawn aliens that made the slurpy noises.

Those slurpy noises were awesome.

I had a GR Digital 1 ... and now have an LX 3.

The LX3, despite being a minor tad bit slower glass, has Leica branded front glass, and takes a lot better pictures.

I'm not sure if they improved the GRD3 that much, but the raw write speed was abysmal (we're talking several seconds between shots) and it was subject to some pretty bad noise. I am generally a fan of prime lenses, but this one was not super-fantastic.

What it definitely DID have going for it though were some really nice controls, better than most cameras I have used. It would be nice if they fixed the raw speed and low light performance, though I think they would be hard pressed to deal with the LX3 (slightly larger sensor) and who knows how the EP-1 is going to hold up.

Seriously though, the LX3 is quite good.

In Ultimate Frisbee? Sportist.

An Apogee Duet... oh, and get a Mac :)

I really loved Ikargua. It was Zen awesomeness.

Hopefully it will be in that same vein of gameplay and fun.

And yes, that is also vertical. I never cared for Gradius, R-Type, or similar side scrollers.

(Actually, even though I already bought it once, I'd pay for a PS3 port of Ikaruga instantly ... maybe even a nice HD remake?)

I hear Radiant Silvergun was also quite impressive. Bring that out too.

No idea, but I have an LX3 ... and it's pretty amazing. They chose to not compromise there as well, so it doesn't have a huge zoom range and they capped the megapixel range -- plus it allegedly has a slightly larger sensor.

Good stuff.

While I like primes when shooting with my DSLR, I've done that for trips (Ricoh GRD) before and I strongly dislike not having a zoom in those situations (where I can't switch lenses).

My solution to the solving the world economy involves Engadget drumming up interest in my new robotic squirrel startup, so I can raise LOTS of venture capital, and corner the world acorn market. C'mon, the plan is flawless.

Also: in! Thanks!

I think Amazon made the right call here.

The alternative was likely raising the price of each book. The TTS feature is gimmick, as most of us I imagine reading books, and if we do like audiobooks would want them professionally read by humans.

The result of this is that book costs stay low and there is greater availability for each book.

Also, they avoid the chance of a costly lawsuit that could hurt book prices.

I think this is a huge win and a great way to deal with the stupid litigation by the Authors Guild... completely deny them what they were arguing about.

Win win.

Very awesome. I think the 6 megapixel thing could be a nice way to reduce noise and keep the camera having some great output, and it's cool seeing that it's a rangefinger. Could be a lot of fun to use and a lot easier to lug around than a SLR.

Will have to wait for reviews...