Ryan Davis Associate Managing Editor	Now Playing: Spy Hunter, ZOE: The Fist of Mars, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, and Eve of Extinction Current Ring Tone: Freezepop--"Science Genius Girl" Current Gaming Industry Heartthrob: Westwood Studios' Louis Castle

Sweating the Small Stuff

For as long as I can remember, I've been a sucker for really tiny things. As a youngster, I had formidable collections of M.U.S.C.L.E. Things and Micro Machines. When I was 11, I engaged in several weeks of intense bargaining with a friend for his incredibly small Sony Walkman that he got from Japan. When I discovered you could buy 4.5-ounce cans of Sapporo at select Asian markets, I flipped out. I went through great lengths to obtain a Japanese NeoGeo Pocket Color, simply because it was slightly smaller than the US one. A year and a half ago, I paid an exorbitant amount of money and agreed to another two years of cell phone service just to replace my King Size Baby Ruth-sized Nokia 5190 cell phone with a Kit Kat-sized Nokia 8290. With that contract soon coming to an end, I've got my eye on the new Snack Size Snickers-sized flip phones from Samsung and Motorola. Most recently, there have been two size-related advents in gaming technology that have got me all excited.

They're called candy bar phones for a reason.

When Executive Editor Jeff Gerstmann returned from covering the AOU trade show and Japanese Xbox launch in Tokyo, he brought back a limited edition Japanese Xbox with him. The limited edition translucent black Japanese Xbox was pretty sweet, and much like it did to Ricardo, it made me lament the US gaming market's lack of special limited collector's edition anything. Even as cool as the shiny new Xbox was, I was even happier to get a hold of the Japanese Xbox controller. I won't be bashful about this: I hate the American Xbox controller. I've grown accustomed to it through necessity, but I'd admittedly still rather be playing Xbox games with a Dual Shock 2, a controller that I consider to be the most well-designed console controller, period. But the Japanese Xbox controller addresses virtually every problem that I have with its US counterpart, and it's simply a pleasure to use. First off, the whole thing's much smaller, and its dimensions feel a lot more in line with other modern console controllers. The D-pad has a more well-defined cross on it, which feels a lot more comfortable to these old gaming hands. The four main face buttons are circular and flat-topped, instead of oblong and raised like the buttons found on the US controller, and are positioned in the familiar diamond pattern. I'd still rather be playing with a Dual Shock 2, but the Japanese Xbox controller is a fine alternative. When I'm playing a game with the Japanese controller, I'm not thinking about the controller; I'm thinking about the game. Judging by Microsoft's recent decision to bring what is essentially the Japanese controller to the US market, it would appear that I'm not the only one who digs this smaller design. (You'll remember that Sega did the same thing after EGM's editors wrote about how they preferred the smaller Japanese Saturn controller, although Sega replaced the US controller with the Japanese one completely.)

Is there nothing we can't learn when we look to the East?

			Is the Japanese Xbox controller great or what? Yes No I don't know Ooh, mayonnaise!

On to item number two. Last year's release of Max Payne for the PC sparked a conversation in the GameSpot offices--which resurfaces from time to time--about PC game packaging. Max Payne came in a standard-sized PC game box, which housed a nifty Max Payne mousepad and a DVD-style keepsake case with the game disc and the manual inside. I'm a big proponent of the DVD keepsake case, and few things would make me happier than if all of my disc-based media came in them. But the sheer emptiness of that big-ass PC game box made perfectly clear what we already knew: PC game boxes are too big. Driven by an illogical desire for more retail shelf space and the legacy of bulky PC manuals, publishers continued using these oversized packages, simply because everyone else was doing it. The thought was that no one publisher would risk reducing the size of its packaging, for fear that its games would be overshadowed by the rest of the big-ass game boxes. It would take the cooperation of the majority of PC game publishers to agree to a new industry-wide standard to make any sort of major shift feasible. There was much discussion among publishers after that, resulting in the IDSA proposing a new packaging standard. And then Electronic Arts, the biggest game publisher in the world, dropped the hammer. It was proclaimed that all future PC games from EA would come in boxes that were similar in size to the lovely DVD keepsake case. With EA publishing a bulk of the PC games being released these days, other publishers could either jump on board or eat EA's dust. And from a quick perusal of the local Electronics Boutique, it would appear that everyone is quickly jumping on the tiny-box bandwagon. I can actually afford shelf space for PC games now, instead of having CD jewel cases and random manuals floating around, and I'm thrilled about it. Since EA's bold move, I've made the conscious decision to buy more PC games, and I've made the resolution to never buy a PC game in a big-ass box again. These may seem like petty complaints about some rather inconsequential facets in the bigger picture of gaming, but for me, it's sometimes all about the small stuff.