Out with 2006 and in with 2007

Phillip’s Blog Archive

Phillip Levin is the editor-in-chief of AMN GameCube and AMN Wii and oversees coverage of both consoles on the network, including news, reviews, previews, editorials, specials and more.

Below you’ll find his latest blog entry.

Out with 2006 and in with 2007

Happy New Year, boys and girls.

2006 is over, and to be honest, I’m not all that sad to see it go. The year was filled with ups and downs for me. The last half of the year was pretty rough, as my family and I moved, and nothing went smoothly. It was hellish, in a word. What’s more, my brother got very sick and required hospitalization and so did my mom.

Putting aside some of the bad parts of 2006 for me, there were some good things that happened. Excuse the lack of organization to this post, as I am going to just randomly list off some of the good stuff that happened in 2006.

I got an iPod Video 30GB in black in January of 06. The thing is sexy, and I use it all the time. It wasn’t my first iPod, but the fact that it came it black, had another 10GB of space over my at-the-time-current iPod and played videos made the upgrade tempting.

I mended the relationship with my best friend. For a while, we had a fallout and stopped talking, but now all is good (despite the fact that he had to move up to the San Francisco area, which was pretty lame on his part).

E3 2006 was awesome and was probably the last of its kind. The Nintendo press conference had some really high production values and sitting front row in the famous Kodak Theater in Hollywood, CA was pretty amazing. I also met up with some very cool folks in the industry, including but not limited to the guys from Retro Studios, Denis Dyack of Silicon Knights and Takashi Tezuka of Nintendo. I also bumped into some good friends in the game journalism industry that I don’t get to see much at all, which is always fun. Of course, hanging with the AMN crew during E3 is always a blast and never fails to entertain (or surprise, for that matter).

Got a Toshiba 15” Widescreen Notebook for my birthday in September, which I am using to type this up. I love the baby, and I use it all the time. Not too much else to say other than that. It r-a-w-k-s.

Wii arrives a week early. I’ve been intrigued and looking forward to Nintendo’s new-generation home console since it was announced, so getting a package from Nintendo of America – complete with a Wii console, controllers and copies of several un-released Nintendo Wii games – a whole week before its public launch was kind of like a dream come true for me. The downside was that I had to review a 50-hour game (as well as a handful of other Wii titles ) in less than a week, so I locked myself in my game room and played Twilight Princess and others for a week straight. My job often requires such sacrifices, but I can’t say that I complain. Playing Twilight and answering reader IMs about the game before it was out was pretty darn fun. The game turned out being one of my favorite games of all time, too, so I’m happy about that as well.

Bought a large-screen HDTV – something I’ve been saving to do and thinking about doing for ages now. I decided on the 1080p Samsung 50” DLP (HL-S5087W), after a lot of researching and window shopping. Simply put, it’s a gorgeous TV and playing games like Gears of War in 1080i on it makes playing any other way boring by comparison.

Decorating and Christmas time in general. I love the period between Halloween and New Years. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas the most, specifically, and I really get into the holiday spirit by decorating anything I can. I always get depressed on January 1 because it means my favorite time of year is over, and I have to wait another year for it to come again.

Pet bunny survives bladder surgery for stones he developed. I’ve had him for several years, so I love him a lot. I’m glad he’s still around and running the house as usual.

I quit playing World of Warcraft (again). The only reason this is included in my list is because last night I got into a discussion with my brother about how time-consuming and unsatisfying the MMO is. Of course, I’ll eat my own words in a few weeks when I buy Burning Crusade and probably become addicted to it. Bah.

I just stopped to read over what I’ve written so far, and I’ve noticed that I’ve written much more than I thought I would. I’m little over a page in Microsoft Word, and I’m still typing. Almost 800 words. I better stop.

Anywho, I might be forgetting something, so if you think I am, comment and maybe I’ll update this baby.

Happy New Years, and may 2007 rock your world.

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