The Fiesta is also one of Ford’s top selling cars worldwide.  This year, for the first time in North America since 1978-80, the Ford Fiesta (6th generation) will be speeding through our roads to the delight of geeks like us.

Now I mentioned “us” because it involves me directly. As it turns out, yours truly (@bigredtim) was chosen to be an agent for Chapter 2 of the Fiesta Movement along with one of the city’s most animated blog contributers – Michaelangelo Ilagan (@mikeyil).  Together, we’re “Team Geekadelphia” and we’ll be blogging, ustreaming, tweeting, foursquaring, and youtubing our adventures for the next 4 months!

Here’s a rundown of the Fiesta Movement, if you’re not already familiar with it.  Basically Ford is giving us a car for 4 months.  While I do hope that they give us a red one like we asked, we’re just really excited to jump in and drive.  We get to lifestream the experience, enjoy all the sweet onboard gadgets, and enjoy 4 months of Ford paying for our gas expenses (who wouldn’t love that?!)

Now, along with the car, we’re also required to complete missions every month.  These mission could be anything from “depleting a full tank of gas in one long drive” to re-enacting the legendary Leroy Jenkins meme from WoW with 4 of your closest friends.

Mikey and I have a lot of ideas for how we want to spend our 4 months with the car, and a lot of it basically involves us taking advantage of the awesome people we know… turning them into our youtube studio props our cohorts in our quest for Adventure Capitalism.  Here on Geekadelphia you’ll be able to see a full list of our exploits in the form of a weekly rundown, and additionally when something completely amazing occurs.

We asked for a Red one.

Stay tuned on www.fiestamovement.com and right here on geekadelphia.com as we begin filming our first weekend with the Fiesta starting tomorrow as we fly out to Detroit.

One last thing before I forget – we’re definitely having a fiesta to celebrate the arrival of the Fiesta somewhere in Northern Liberties in the coming weeks.  We’ll keep you posted on that too!

Related Links:

Mikey on Twitter

Tim on Twitter

The Official Fiesta Movement Site

I love my fighters, and when I heard Street Fighter IV was coming to the iPhone I was cautiously optimistic to say the least.  But recently over at Gamepro.com a video of the actual gameplay put all my worries to rest.  The game looks phenomenal for an iPhone game, and could finally give the platform a solid fighter; which is something it is severely lacking.

The game will only have a roster of 8 fighters when it drops in March with: Ryu, Ken, Guile, Blanka, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, M. Bison and Abel present and accounted for.  But to make up for the lack in fighters the game is going to carry a $9.99 price point, which is very competitive for the higher end iPhone game market.

My only worry is the controls (which there was some hot debate over how they would accomplish this), I really get weird when they put the buttons on the screen.  I guess I am always a little scared I am going to break the screen, because I can be a bit hard on my controllers. Does anyone else have this same problem? So look for it in March, I am curious to see how this will look on the iPad.

Via Gamepro.com

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of interviewing Felicia Day at the Farpoint 2010 sci-fi convention in Timonium, Maryland.  I am a huge fan of Felicia’ s work and I am pretty sure most of you Geekadelphia readers are as well. I tried to ask a lot of questions that you don’t traditionally hear in interviews with her. We all know she was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, starred in Doctor Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog and eventually solidified a name for herself as a creator/writer/star of her webseries The Guild.

Read on, as we talk about everything from comics, to video games, to what she thinks of female role models in new media. I’d apologize for this being such a long post, but I think it’s worth the read. Enjoy.

So, you attended college at age of 16 and graduated as valedictorian with a double major in mathematics and music performance. What inspired you to suddenly move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting?

The thing that inspired me to movie to LA to pursue acting was kind of a blind enthusiasm [laughs] in a sense. I had always been doing theater everywhere I went. Actually, the two running themes throughout my childhood were doing Community Theater and online gaming. Because I was moving around so much I never had a consistent friendship with anybody because I always just left.

So either I kept in touch with them on the computer through like Prodigy [laughs], like total old-school internet stuff, like total old-school; or I met new people through community theater. So it had always been like a family to me, and for some reason I just always had this idea I would really love to go be an actor in LA. So a little bit of not-good planning led me to LA shortly after I graduated college.

I heard that the genesis of The Guild was a WOW intervention where the result was you going cold turkey and quitting the game; can you tell us a bit about that dark time in your life and were the characters you eventually wrote in The Guild pilot based off of anyone you knew personally? They all seem very believable.

Yeah, so I wrote The Guild after I had been gaming like 30-hour weeks, I was definitely a hard-core raider at the time. I really enjoyed it (gaming) and I don’t think it was necessarily a bad thing. I am a little bit obsessive, so I tend to take things personally and seriously. So I definitely let it take over my life in a way, because I didn’t have anything else going on, to kind of combat it.  So I definitely don’t want my experience to be like a poster child for dysfunctional gamers. I just think that anything that I would have filled my time with would have probably taken over my life – just because I didn’t have a lot of fulfilling things going on at the time.

It’s hard to get a job [ in acting ] and it’s hard to face rejection everyday. That’s just kind of your job, and you have to face it. If you get an acting job it’s more like a reward, but it’s not the thing you are there to do. You’re there to audition, so it’s hard to get your mind around that as an actor cause you’re always emotionally available.

So I wrote The Guild because I wanted to write something to show a character, you know that optimal side of me, and that is how Codex came up. I love playing this sort of neurotic introverted character, which is something you don’t see on TV as a lead especially. So building those characters around Codex was the key to making it engaging and successful. To this day it’s still hard to write Codex because she is kind of a passive character and plays the role of a healer-in-life behind-the-scenes, so making her a little more outgoing is always a challenge.

The other characters were not based per se on people I knew. I had drawn some ideas, like people with screaming babies in the background, or like people who were being way too serious about the game. I wouldn’t say people directly inspired them, but they are sort of an amalgam of my experiences. The characters of Zaboo and Vork were based on those actors I tailor-made for them… because we do improv together. So in those cases it was tailored to the actors and the rest were impressions of people I played with online.

Much More After the Jump

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Zoe Lukas, our favorite (and only) local creator of geek themed baked goods, has done it again. This time around, she’s created Master Chief cookies.

You can view the cookies in all their high resolution glory via her Flickr page. Well done, Whipped Bakeshop! Well done.

Whipped Bakeshop
www.whippedbakeshop.com

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Boost Mobile. All opinions are 100% mine.

Boost Mobile recently announced the launch of their new QWERTY flip phone, SANYO Incognito SCP6760. It’s a slim, hip looking smart phone, with all kinds of neat perks. You can scope out a full Flickr gallery, featuring photos of the phone, right here. I was particularly impressed by the phone’s sleek face while closed, revealing a light up, digital keypad.

Interested folks can pick up the phone for about $130 ($129.99) with

free shipping when purchased through this link. Score!

An unlimited plan for the phone costs a meager $50 a month, and the device offers up a lot of fun gadgets. A 2PM camera, VGA camcorder, music and video player, web browsing, etc. The phone is also GPS enabled, and supports stereo Bluetooth. With the $50 a month plan, you’ll have unlimited talk, text, and web… all with the freedom of no contract. Awesome.

I’ve embedded a Flickr slideshow of additional photos after the jump. Click through, have a look. You’re sure to be impressed.

All proceeds from this sponsored post were donated to the American Red Cross. To learn about how you can make a difference, visit www.redcross.org.

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Local artist Josh Chadwick entered Cadence Watch Company’s Design Philadelphia contest, and well, he won. And with good cause. Check out the description, via Cadance’s website.

“The watch is a classical blend of a digital and an analog watch. The face of the watch has a modern digital display while still functioning like a traditional analog watch. The informational display in the center of the watch provides additional information (date, day of the week, AM/PM) with the option to switch the AM/PM to a second counter. The theme of this watch creates a dialog between characteristics of classical and nontraditional watches to create an elegant, sophisticated, sharp and youthful design.”

The watch ships out in September, and if you reserve one on Cadence’s website, you can get the watch for the introductory price of $119. Nice!

For more info on Cadence, check out their site. And be sure to scope out Josh’s portfolio! He’s done some good stuff.

Welcome to Geekadelphia’s weekly discussion column, Cofffee Talk, where we talk about the finer topics concerning video games, technology and all the other things you can’t talk about with your slightly-less-geeky friends. Have questions or suggestions? Send an email to geekadelphia@gmail.com or tweet with us. Follow me on Twitter if you’d like to keep this week’s discussion alive.

In a recent post on IGN’s 360 channel, it was mentioned that Square-Enix director Motomu Toriyama posted a news blip on Final Fantasy XIII‘s official site defending the game’s apparently linear design. Toriyama explained that while on a recent media blitz tour, he was repeatedly addressed with this issue (most likely by western or European outlets). He explained that, “In order to allow the player to become absorbed in the drama of the storytelling and the new and exciting world of Cocoon and be drawn to the characters without getting distracted or lost we have deliberately used a linear game design for the introduction sections so they can be enjoyed in the same manner as watching a film.”

Sound familiar? Well, it should as this has been one of the major criticisms of Japanese game design since Western game development hit its stride a little more than ten years ago. More into why this design choice is has garnered so much negative energy after the break. (more…)

Words can not describe this video, and once it is seen it can not be unseen.

Celebrities do wacky things when they go to Japan, and sometimes it’s better we don’t find out. I remember reading about this over the summer, and seeing the pictures of Dunst walking around Tokyo’s Akihabara district dressed like a Sailor Moon reject and thinking, WTF? I thought this could be a high-end art project by the enigmatic Takashi Murakami, but it turned out to be Dunst singing Turning Japanese (a song about Masturbation) dolled up like Sailor Tramp, while every campy Japanese stereo-type is personified on screen.

As much as I love Japanese culture thanks to McG, this throws down an inappropriate stereotype of Japanese culture, implying men are a bunch of perverts who like “cartoon porn”. Oh look! Wacky American girl has blue hair! Oh look! Wacky American girl has a really short skirt! Oh look! You are taking the Japanese people back 3 steps as a people. This clip is exploitative, plain and simple, and couldn’t they have auto-tuned Dunst’s voice?

The worst part about this is since it is Kirsten Dunst millions will see it and think,  “Man, those Japanese are a freaky bunch.” Out the window goes the hard work of pioneers such as Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Oshii legitimizing Japanese anime and culture as an artform, and more than simply naughty cartoons.  I think both her and McG owe the people of Japan an apology because this is going to take a while to live down for both the country and Dunst.

Video is after the jump contains some topless cartoon ladies and the end of Kirsten Dunst’s career, so be warned. (more…)

On Saturday, Indy Hall hosted the first of what will be many gaming competitions. Geekadelphia was on the scene as a sponsor, dishing out prizes and promoting the event earlier this week. Red Bull also showed up, with several cases of the delicious energy fuel and dozens of energy shots.

All in all, it was awesome. 20 or so people came out, the perfect number for the tournament. The first place winner walked away with a wireless Xbox 360 controller, with second and third place receiving 1600 MS points from Geekadelphia.

Special thanks to Mikey Il for taking a whole mess of photos, and posting them to his Flickr page. You can also scope out Adam from Hive 76′s write up about the event on his blog, Obscure Reality.

Next up, possibly a Halo 3 tournament. We’ll see. Congrats to Parker Whitney on his first big Indy Hall event. You did good, broseph.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Mikey Il’s Flickr Gallery
www.flickr.com/photos/mikeyil/sets/72157623353646667

Green Zone, the new film Starring Matt Damon comes out March 12; and Geekadelphia in cooperation with Universal pictures have your passes to an advance screening March 9^th! Green Zone re-teams Matt Damon with director Paul Greengrass or the Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum fame. The plot of the film goes something like this:

During the U.S.-led occupation of Baghdad in 2003, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) and his team of Army inspectors were dispatched to find weapons of mass destruction believed to be stockpiled in the Iraqi desert.  Rocketing from one booby-trapped and treacherous site to the next, the men search for deadly chemical agents but stumble instead upon an elaborate cover-up that inverts the purpose of their mission.

Spun by operatives with intersecting agendas, Miller must hunt through covert and faulty intelligence hidden on foreign soil for answers that will either clear a rogue regime or escalate a war in an unstable region.  And at this blistering time and in this combustible place, he will find the most elusive weapon of all is the truth.

I actually got to see the trailer for this at the beginning of The Wolfman, and it looked like a very interesting thriller to say the least. I had read the director had some reservations about a fourth Bourne film, but I think this film with tide fans over until everything is worked out and we get another entry into the Bourne franchise. The screening will take place on Tuesday, March 9^th at 7:30 PM at the Ritz Five, and the first 30 people to comment with their favorite Matt Damon film will win a pass for two. So comment below and check out the trailer.

Writers of Geekadelphia and their families are not eligible for prizes.Limit one entry per person. No cameras, camera phones, or other recording devices permitted in screening. Seating is on a first come, first serve basis. Theatre capacity is limited and passes won do not guarantee seating.(So show up early!) Theater is not responsible for overbooking. Ticket holder and guest must enter theater together.

Contest time! And this one’s a good one. Geekadelphia presents… Little Big Philadelphia.

We’ve seen Philadelphia highlighted in a wealth of movies (Rocky, The Sixth Sense, um… Philadelphia) and television (All My Children, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). So why not video games? And no, mentioning the Philadelphia Experiment in the first Assassin’s Creed does not count.

Lucky for us, Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet, a platformer game for Sony’s PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable, centers itself around user-generated content, allowing gamers to create their own unique (and often times gorgeous) levels. From the epic, nostalgia-laced Little Big Contra to the ingenious Little Big Calculator, no limit exists for dedicated LBP level-creators – and that includes Philadelphia-based ones as well.

Here’s the deal. We’re officially throwing down the gauntlet and asking you to recreate Philadelphia in LittleBigPlanet. The level can be Philly inspired (Little Big Liberty Bell?) or a literal representation of the city. Show your love for Love Park! Recreate Philadelphia’s skyline, complete with the Comcast building’s giant Ethernet plug shape! Make an Old City horse and carriage ride! Build whatever you want. Just make it creative. Just make it Philadelphia.

The grand prize winner will receive a PSPgo and a $50 PSN gift card, with two runners-up receiving a copy of LittleBigPlanet: Game of the Year Edition and a $25 PSN gift card, courtesy of Sony/SCEA.

The contest will culminate with a party at Studio 34 in West Philadelphia on March 13th, 2010. We’ve joined forces with 8static, Philadelphia’s one and only 8-bit party, for a night of chiptunes and dancing.

At the party, we’ll play the levels created over the course of the contest on a massive screen, and dish out prizes to the winners. All the levels will be available to play, and we encourage entrants to come and meet their fellow developers.

So go. Create your levels and send us your video’s name so we can check it out online. Make a video, and send it over to geekadelphia@gmail.com so we can post it! We’ll be accepting entries until midnight, EST, March 10th.

We look forward to posting your videos, showing off your skills, and rewarding your love for Philadelphia. Specials thanks to Roger Estes for the cute logo, and Sony for the prizes!

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Welcome back to yet another exciting installment of the Microsoft Student Insider Feature Series, where I get to probe the minds of some of the Expression Studio team’s most influential members. This week we have the illustrious and adventurous (more on that later) Vivian Chan, Design Audience Lead on the Expression Studio Developer Marketing team. We also have a ton more of these free 60-day Expression Studio trial discs, so starting this week we’ll be giving away two within each post! Find more details on how to win at the end of today’s feature.

When she’s not rock climbing in Chang Mai, Thailand (i.e. rocking it Lara Croft style), Vivian focuses on one goal that drives pretty much everything she does from atop the Microsoft offices in Bellevue, Washington: make Expression Studio relevant to designers.  More on exactly how she accomplishes this and a look into some of the nifty Silverlight applications Vivian introduced me to after the jump. (more…)