link love 08-22-08

Alongside the very kick ass Bionic Commando Rearmed OST, Sumthing has also released the original NES soundtrack. It’s three bucks, go get it.

Retro Space, the newest entry into the pre-built MAME cabinet scene. These things are supposed to sell for around 5000-6000 Euros (I think that’s like $40,000 or something these days). Kinda nice, but not that nice.

Speaking of paying lots of money for your games, here is Rotheblog’s writeup on the 15 most valuable classic arcade games.

And finally, Multiple:Option has released the newest version of Game Trivia Catechism DS (the iPhone version we’re working on is an expanded branch of this). It’s one of two apps he’s entering into the NeoFlash Summer Coding Compo, so wish him luck!

Music to Dry Your Eyes To: A Reply

I had no intention of writing this. Having finished Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII last night, I was preparing my writeup and browsing Simon Parkin’s site, digging for his Eurogamer review that touched on a couple points I wanted to respond to.

Instead, I found his Music to Dry Yours Eyes To (and part 2) and listened to his selections. I began to think about the especially affecting songs I’ve come across, and, after basking in their associated melancholy and nostalgia for a bit, wrote this list.

While building this list, I realized that most of these are not necessary sad so much as they are hopeful songs. Some are empowered by personal events and history; others, the ones I find most interesting professionally, draw their strength in their coordination with film, by their place in a well-tuned recipe of story, cinematography, and sound. All of them would be suitable for driving alone in the dark, after a good rain.

Listed mostly in the order that I remembered them, which may mean something.

1. Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) - I Will Wait For You

I’ll start by saying that most of these songs are less make me cry and more of the lump in the throat variety. Except for this one. Hearing it for the first time while watching The Umbrellas of Cherbourg late at night after an argument with my wife… oh man. It’s a beautiful and sad song within a perfect film. Connie Francis’ English version was particularly effective in Futurama, too.

2. The Sundays - Here’s Where the Story Ends

An almost embarrassing entry… for me personally, it’s the trash and tribulations of high school rolled up tightly into song form. The entirety of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic is, really, but especially this song.

3. Mercedes Sosa - Unicornio

Seen here in the form I discovered it, as the backbone of Won Kar Wai’s short film The Follow for BMW. Silvio Rodríguez’ original tale of love and revolution is just as moving. The lyrics follow:

4. Berlin - The Metro

I don’t know what it is about “The Metro,” but it just hits me when I hear it. I can’t help but empathize with the subjects. Is this a sad song for anyone else, or just another poppy tune from the 80s?

5. EBTG - My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains

If there’s one thing that Everything but the Girl especially excels at, it’s writing thoughtful and depressing songs. I love them, and this is one of my favorites. It seems most of the depressing moments in my life are linked to an EBTG song in one way or another.

6. Gary Jules - Mad World

Thanks for the marketing machine behind Gears of War, if you missed the 1980s and passed on Donnie Darko, you’ve still most likely heard “Mad World.” Like Peter Shilling and “Major Tom,” this is one of those songs that stands out from a repertoire that otherwise doesn’t really grab me. The Tears for Fears original is a nice tune, but Jules nailed it with this version.

7. New Order - Elegia

I’m unable to separate this one from More, Mark Osborne’s 1998 short film. More tells the story of a factory worker and inventor who longs for the happiness of his youth, and the somber and brooding “Elegia” fits it perfectly.

8. DCFC - I Will Follow You Into The Dark

“If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks, then I’ll follow you into the dark.”

Gulp. No life moments or memories attached to this one… it’s just a plain good thoughtful song, one of Ben Gibbard’s best.

9. Faye Wong - Eyes On Me

I’ve yet to play Final Fantasy VIII, for which Nobuo Uematsu originally wrote the song, so I’m interested in seeing if and how my perception of “Eyes On Me” changes once I do. I’ve been a fan of Faye Wong since I saw her in Chungking Express, and this is one of the few English language songs she sings.

10. Les Balayeurs Du Desert - Decollage

I discovered this song in the clip above, accompanying video of the wonderful Sultan’s Elephant public art installation by Royal de Luxe several years ago. It’s a sweet, thoughtful, and curious song, and for me, quite moving.

11. Zbigniew Preisner - Song for the Unification of Europe

A beautiful song from a beautiful movie, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Bleu. With verses inspired by 1 Corinthians 13, the song is central to the plot of the film, with the scene above (the finale, so uh, spoilers) a key moment of realization.

And, as Simon ended his, these are my choices. How about you?

link love 07-08-08

Thoughtful edition.

This one made the rounds last week, but just in case you missed it, here’s Leigh Alexander’s Industry Apologetics: It’s Not Just A Game.

Former Pandemic designer Matt Harding’s Dancing 2008.

What’s wrong with the game industry (this hour). Brian Green rants a bit about the ridiculous level of secrecy pervasive in the game industry. I agree with him.

And to end it on a lighter note, Cory does thirty days of zombie movies.

Requiem for a Day Off

Absolutely brilliant. [via Zen of Design]

Video Games Live Las Vegas.

The show opened with the video of “Yuri the only one for me” by the Leetstreet Boys. This, friend reader, is one hell of a nerdy song.

The Las Vegas stop was held at the Henderson Pavilion, a somewhat intimate outdoor amphitheater with seating for 2500. The Las Vegas Philharmonic accompanied Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, giving an extraordinary performance all evening (and playing through some not-quite-extraordinary sound mixing), and pianist Martin Leung was amazing as usual. Vocal artist Dee Baker was also onstage for a segment, performing his staggering Berserker routine.

For me, the highlight of the evening was Frank Klepacki’s performance of his C&C classic “Hell March.” Great tune, and timely with the upcoming releases. The crowd seemed to really enjoy it as well, and I hope they bring him back to do more next year. I’d love to see “Divine Intervention” live.

Aside from the VGL touring regulars, special guests for the meet & greet were the local folks, Westwood alumni and Petroglyph staff, and they stuck around for another hour or so after the concert to sign autographs and say hello to the fans.

link love 06-11-08

On photographing your anime and game figures. [via tomopop]
And somewhat related, taking better photos for etsy and ebay.

Also somewhat related, I’m sold on the NECA release of action figures based on the original Mirage Studios version of the turtles. My dilemma is deciding whether I want the current release or if I should wait for the black & white series 2 coming later this year.

Not counting the brief performance at the Spike VGAs, Video Games Live finally makes its way to Las Vegas this weekend. VGL is a great show, and someone we know well may be making a surprise guest appearance. Need tickets? Here’s a set on ebay going for cheap.
Update: They’ve posted the news, get ready to see Hell March live!

And finally, that didn’t take long.

Music appreciation day.

Burma Emergency, a short film by creative agency Shilo. Thank you, Tri-Crescendo, for really introducing me to Chopin.

Also, if you happen to catch this post on Sunday, violinist Paul Dateh is hosting a live performance with Ken Belcher tonight. Show starts at 5pm PST / 8pm EST.

Again & Again.

Dennis Liu macs up “Again & Again,” by The Bird and the Bee.
Good stuff! [via local boy Josh Ellis over at TUAW]

Update: Here’s a followup interview with Dennis after the video kinda went nuts on the mac-centric parts of the internet.

Interview: LiquidRain of rainwave.cc

Rainwave.cc is a video game soundtrack streaming site where the listeners get to steer. While the current song is playing, three future potentials are presented in a voting table. Then, based on votes from all current listeners, the next song is slotted for play. Additionally, songs can be rated, and these ratings then affect how frequently the song is subsequently queued.

Once a song has been played, it goes Off Air for a variable amount of time — determined by its overall rating — preventing repetition and giving more of the playlist an opportunity for exposure.

I spoke with LiquidRain, owner and developer of Rainwave, about the site, stats, and songs.

Who’s behind rainwave.cc? How did the site come to be?

I’m the sole programmer and designer behind Rainwave and did the majority (as of today) of the playlist. Going forward, Vyzov, a member of the community, is managing the playlist. The site came to be when I was looking at long-standing radio site GamingFM and saw their request feature. I was wondering why their requesting was so mysterious and didn’t spell out exactly how their system worked, and that’s when I got the idea of creating a radio site that had instant feedback. From there the ideas evolved. I kept it between friends, working on it until it evolved to Rainwave, when I considered it good enough for people to use.

The voting and statistics gathering are the calling cards of Rainwave. How did they evolve, and how does the system work?

Rainwave first started out as just the voting mechanism - the immediate feedback GamingFM lacked. The same three song selection system was in place from the very beginning. It was sloppy though, and forced you to make your vote 30 seconds before the song ended due to being generally dumb, and did a complete page re-load instead of the nice self-updating you get today. Slowly but surely I kept adding features: ratings, then ratings affecting song frequency, making the page update nicely, and using a tabbed interface for the playlist and song history. I kept evolving the site itself to function better; it became smarter and used the windowing system you see now, instead of tabs, and became a more cohesive and simplified UI while still retaining all the features. The last major feature was requests, after that I just kept adding layers of statistics to the site and made the site snappier and easier to use and read as time went on.

The whole system is dependant on a C++ backend custom-written from scratch by myself, a PHP-driven website, and a MySQL database (though I wish I went with PostgreSQL). The backend’s work is triggered each time a song changes, and the site is synchronized with that. The rest is all in the programming.

Why Ogg Vorbis for the stream?

Simple: More bang for your buck. An 80kbps Vorbis stream sounds better than a 128kbps MP3 stream.

Now that you’ve been tracking song ratings and stats over time, have any surprises or interesting trends appeared?

Yep. Ratings generally keep going down as more people come to the site. The average rating of all songs and albums has been falling as time has gone on. A few ratings for some albums surprised me: I thought for sure that Parappa would have been a hit with the audience, but I was wrong. It was averaging a 2.2 rating when I pulled it. Other experiments with music genres had expected results: both Quake games bombed in ratings, and so did Wipeout.

There are some interesting anomalies in people’s stats too: Very active users who’ve never cast a rating but vote frequently, people who vote a lot and never request, people who listen a ton and never vote or rate, everyone seems to use it differently.

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The music of Cave Story.

One of the highlights of Cave Story is the soundtrack. Written by Pixel using his own OrgMaker, the music is reminiscent of the best of the retro era while exuding its own originality and charm. As is usually the case, the soundtrack grows better once you’ve played the game and can associate tracks with specific events and scenes, but still, at least for me, this is one of those rare game OSTs that pulls you in on first listen.

Download the original Japanese mp3s. As an alternative, I’ve uploaded a translated version with the title screen as album art; grab it here.

Next, we have the Cave Story Remix Project.

The Cave Story Remix Project was a 2006 fan compilation, something along the lines of what you’d see from the OCReMix scene… think original 8-bit tunes with a nice helping of synth and guitar love. While there are highlights in the bunch, it’s a solid album altogether, and all 22 tracks deserve their place in the compilation.

The download links for the full album on the official site are dead, so I’ve gone ahead and mirrored it here. Who knows how long these files will stick around, we’ll see if my server stays happy with both versions of the soundtrack available for download.
Continue reading »