Tag Archives: Sandwich

Video Game Music w/ the James Episode 9 : Simple NES Music

This article came out a little over a week ago (probably two by the time of publication), and I both loved and hated it so much, I knew I wanted to use it as the inspiration for some of my musical discussion.

The author tells a familiar tale of how video game music just isn’t what it used to be and takes a stab at explaining one reason why : limitation. The underlying principle, one that I somewhat agree with is that some of the greatest game music came out of composers doing the best that they could do with the sound resources they had available; in the early days of gaming, this amount was very little.

While I agree with the principle, it’s no excuse for the direction game music is taking. Gregory admits that there are exceptions to the rule especially in the realm of Japanese gaming, but why is that? The soundtrack for Super Mario Galaxy 2 uses an orchestra as big as many other modern games for instance, and yet its music falls far from the “disposable” category.

I started thinking a lot about the state of game music, what happened to change the nature of such music, and what we can do as composers and/or listeners to keep video game music relevant even today.

And thus I decided to go on a journey exploring different generations of game music. Who knows, maybe there’s something to learn from all of this.

Part 1 : Simple NES/Gameboy Music

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A Week With Katawa Shoujo (NSFW?)

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A few months ago, one of the news sites I visit regularly posted an article up about a dating sim starring disabled girls. It sounded cool for the novelty, so I loaded up the trailer.

It was looking alright until the part where they show the girl with half her body burnt give off that smile. If that’s not a tug at the heart, I dunno what is, so I put the game on my radar. Soon enough it was finally released with the asking price of zero dollars — I couldn’t go wrong! I gave it a hasty download.

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Late to the Party Reviews : Super Mario 3D Land

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I was going to join this party a little later on down the road, but something interesting happened while filming our upcoming podcast for The Wired Fish. While discussing our biggest disappointments of 2011 (spoiler), Hachi called out Super Mario 3D land as his disappointment. Not that it was a bad game, but rather that it felt like it was missing something. From what I experienced playing the demo at Comic Con, I loved it, and in the back of my mind was hoping that his claims were full of shit, and that maybe he doesn’t know how to handle the 3DS nub properly, so I could laughingly say “You’re playing the game wrong”. That same night, I decided to debunk his claim one level at a time…

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Recent Release Review : Sonic CD (PS3/XBLA)

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I was debating whether to call this a current game review or a “Late to the Party” Review, where I plan to discuss older games that fall beyond a certain cutoff point, but enough changes were made to this version to call it an entirely new release.

When I was a kid, I remember getting a Sega CD when it launched — the piece of shit hardly worked when mounted to my Genesis, and even though I wanted to get into Sonic CD, faulty hardware and my lack of mechanical expertise (I was like 5 when it came out) meant that there was only one or two occasions where the system actually worked for me. I tried a second time when that Sonic collection for the Gamecube came out, but I couldn’t get into it. Now that all of my good games this holiday season are behind wrapping paper, I needed something short and sweet to play before Christmas flooded me with games, and look at what came out — a Re-Release of Sonic CD with some new bells and whistles.

Finally, I beat the game, muliple times : once for the normal gameplay experience, once with Tails who is a new addition to the game, then I went through every stage and boss through Time Attack mode, and finally a proper run through the game for the good ending, I chose to do it by altering the past instead of gathering those damn time stones. Continue reading →

Protect IP Act/SOPA Must Not Pass, Will Cripple The Internet

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Fellow Fishes, we’ve come today to discuss a serious topic. A bill titled “Protect IP Act,” or PIPA, is being evaluated by Congress right now. They started hearings for the bill on Wednesday, November 16 (yesterday at the time of this article). There is another bill in congress, called “Stop Online Piracy Act,” or SOPA, that is meant to be combined with the PIPA bill. What these bill call for is basically for sites like BitTorrent or other sites like this that provide illegal content to be shut down. Thing is, these bills are too broad in defining what a “rogue” site is. Anyone can be defined as a “rogue.” The Entertainment Industry is the one that wants these bills to pass, for they feel DMCA is not enough for them. In trying to “Protect IP” and take down sites with copyrighted material on it, they will instead hurt the internet and what makes the internet awesome. Currently, under the DMCA, anyone who has copyrighted material on their site is given time to take down the offending material. The worse that could happen is you’d be fined. With PIPA and SOPA, it will be a felony to have a video of you singing karaoke, and be put in jail for 5 years. That’s right, you will be no better than that crackhead down the block, or that rapist on the loose. To make matters worse, these bills are set to fly through congress. This KYM article (and the video in it) can explain things in better detail.

While we at The Wired Fish don’t support piracy, this is not the way to combat it. Sites like 4chan, Know Your Meme, DeviantART, Wikipedia, Mozilla, Facebook, 9gag, Halolz, the Channel Awesome network, ScrewAttack, etc. would be affected, and even shut down. Youtube will be a largely different place to be in. NicoNico will be gone as quickly as they started. Let’s Players like Chuggaconroy and ProtonJon will be gone. Smaller sites like us would have to leave, and our videos taken away. These bills cannot pass!

Do your part and send a letter to congress (trust me it doesn’t take that long). These bills will change the internet as we know it, and it won’t be pretty. Do you want the internet to be like China’s? (no offense). Do you want the internet to be run by a bunch of little Shinra Corps.? Then stand up and knock this bill out. We got one bill knocked out. We can do it again!

The Wired Fish Podcast Episode 7

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Ahoy fellow fishes. Another episode has arrived! Despite battery issues, we have a full episode for you today. First up, the 3DS: What happened and what will its future be. Next, Gamescom and the games we’re looking out for. And finally, we talk about the games we’re playing now.

P.S.: in the intro, I wanted to say Tuesday but had Thursday on the mind. There is no day called Tursday. I meant to say Tuesday.

Intro…………………………………………………………….Obvious

Title Sequence……………………………………………………..0:36

The Fallout and Future of 3DS………………………………….0:57

Gamescom: Skyward Sword…………………………………18:51

Gamescom: Redesigned Wii………………………………….20:30

Gamescom: Non-Wi-Fi PSP…………………………………..22:05

Gamescom: The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower……….23:06

Gamescom: BlazBlue CSII update………………………….26:16

Gamescom: Ultimate MvC3………………………………….30:40

Gamescom: Street Fighter X Tekken……………………….43:20

Gamescom: Kombatant Freddy Krueger………………….44:45

Games that we’re playing now…………………………….53:06

Outro…………………………………………………………1:02:23

Credits……………………………………………………….1:03:22

Quick Tribute to Sisqo……………………………………………………1:04:10

The Wired Fish Podcast Episode 5

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Do we have a treat for you today. In light of the recent events involving Capcom,
We’ve dedicated half the show time to talk about them. Regarding Capcom, we talk about the revelation of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the cancellation of Megaman Legends 3, and general issues with Capcom lately.

Afterwards, we talk indie games with this year’s Humble Indie Bundle. And finally, Nintendo’s in trouble 3DS doesn’t meet expectations, the Wii’s continues to experience a huge drought, and reports massive financial losses.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3………………………..1:12

Megaman Legends 3……………………………………24:00

Humble Indie Bundle……………………………………35:50

Nintendo Woes…………………………………………..51:05

Outro………………………………………………………1:07:34

Credit………………………………………………………1:08:30

Review in Progress #14 : Darksiders (PS3 [played]/Xbox360)

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Status : Game cleared (Apocalyptic)

A few weeks ago, I remember mentioning how upon getting The Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time 3D I’ve been playing quite a few adventure games of a similar style. Beyond Good & Evil, was incredibly fun despite me not reviewing it (I’m lazy sometimes). I talked on one of our video-podcasts about how Ocarina overshadowed adventure games for years to come including Beyond Good & Evil‘s initial release and Star Fox Adventures, both games that I would not come to appreciate until the past year or so.

Thankfully, it is much easier setting the 3DS aside because I already played the hell out of that game. To be honest there has not been much interesting on the new releases side. Darksiders had been still in plastic since Christmas and the second I heard that Liam O’Brien was voicing the main character, it was just a matter of finding a window to play in. The guy has a habit of voicing a lot of my favorite characters, so a game where I can hear him grunt and yell for hours upon hours had me pumped up from the very beginning.

One of those few times I can really say : That's some pretty sweet box art. From the splattered paint highlights to the almost copper tone of War riding atop Ruin, there is an overall intensity that I don't see too often.

Now, with a little over 23 hours logged on my last save final, I can say that I finished Darksiders on Apocalyptic (hard) mode and boy was it…. easy.

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The Wired Fish Podcast: Episode 4

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Welcome ladies and germs to this fourth episode of The Wired Fish Podcast. We covered a good amount of topics. First is Disaster: Day of Crisis and its lack of a US release. Next up, When Fanboys Freak Out! Afterwards is Patching in Fighting Games: Are they helping or hurting? And finally, we talk about EA Origin and the growing number of Online Distribution Platforms.

Because it was forgotten in the credits:

Music Used

Intro Music
Ken Theme
©1991, 1992 Capcom

Outro Music
Weak Execuntioner
©2008, 2009 Aksys/Arc System Works

Intro…………………………………………..duh
Title Sequence………………………………..00:47
Disaster: Day of Crisis………………………01:15
Fanboys Freak Out………………………….15:50
Patches………………………………………..32:00
EA Origin and Distribution Services………49:20
Wrap-up………………………………………1:03:50
Credits………………………………………..1:04:34
Teaser For Next Episode…………………..1:05:02

Video Game Music w/ the James Episode 8 : Super Mario Land

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Yeah, I haven’t done one of these in a while… spending a good portion of my day trying to write even a couple of bars of decent music and studying techniques/history via textbooks and audiobooks doesn’t exactly have me wanting to tackle even more music at the end of the day. I’ll be honest, I haven’t had much motivation.

I’ve also had my hands full with Darksiders which should be finished for review in a couple of days, actually, the only reason I’m not playing right now is because the game froze on me in the middle of a dungeon that I’m not particularly fond of. Being too lazy to hook up my SNES, Super Gameboy and digging through a bunch of shit for the cartridge, I just settled for my modified wii, classic controller and a digital copy of the game.

Note : The Wired Fish does not support piracy. Own your games before emulating them.

I am going to have to come out clean and say I fucking suck at Super Mario Land. Mario’s momentum seems to break too easily and the controls always feel just a little stiff. I remember never being able to make it past world 3 as a kid and when I tried it out last week, I met the same fate. Tonight I am proud to say that not only have I finished world 3, but I also managed to beat Super Mario Land, and on one credit! Admittedly it was a little too close for comfort when I dropped from 18 to 2 lives at one point, but a few lucky bonus games was all I needed. But we’re not here to celebrate my victory, we’re here to enjoy some music.

While a lot of the later tracks invoke a more exotic feel, this leaves me with no such sentiment. It’s clear that it wasn’t even the intention which would explain why it plays in the very first level : while it lacks that feel of a faraway land, it’s damn catchy, and the song is one that you’ll be hard pressed to forget once you sing along with a couple of loops. Continue reading →

The Wired Fish Podcast Episode 3

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Welcome one and all to the third episode of The Wired Fish Podcast. For this third episode we finally have Kung-Fu expert David and fighting game funnyman Bryan on board to discuss the issues at hand in this wonderful geekoverse we live in. In this episode, we discuss Sonic Generations and the trials and tribulations of the series leading up to this point. Next is Sony’s PSN Pass and their attempt to combat used game sales. Afterwards we discuss the current state of the JRPG market and its migration too handhelds. And finally we talk about comic-con and the anticipation of many new fighters on the horizon.

The new intro animation and title card was inspired by Gaijin Game’s BIT.TRIP series if you notice the similarity.

Lost Odyssey trailer obtained from IGN.

Intro – ………………………………………:30

Sonic Generations – ……………………2:18

The Sonic Supporting Cast – …………16:40

PSN Pass – ……………………………..26:00

The current state of the JRPG Market – 45:23

Comic-Con -…………………………… 1:13:10

Credits – ………………………………..1:17:16

Soulja-Boy Attack -…………………. 1:17:48

Review in Progress #13 : Shadows of the Damned

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Status : Game cleared (hard)

For those of you who checked out my Infamous 2 review, at the end I promised to cover Duke Nukem Forever, but as it turns out, the game was so awful yet so fascinating that I decided to attempt a defense for the game instead. A full length review would be redundant, and as it just so happens, I was saved by the bell (my Shadows of the Damned package).

The love child of a trio well known to the gaming community : Akira Yamaoka, former composer of the Silent Hill series, Shinji Mikami who is responsible for a certain Resident Evil series (notably RE4 which he directed as well as Godhand) and Suda51 who brought such games as No More Heroes and Killer 7 (the latter of which had Mikami as the executive producer).

It makes sense, the game has a heavy Killer 7 vibe going on. Not with the politically complex themes, oh no, the foreshadowing is way too apparent, and the game revels more in being over the top and obscene than trying to make the player piece the story together bit by bit. The combat feels very reminiscent of fending off various Heaven’s Smile types for those of you familiar with them.

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The Wired Fish Podcast: Episode 2

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Ahoy Fellow Fishes! We have returned with an All-New episode of The Wired Fish Podcast. We have video this time (woohoo!), and there will now be a rundown with every podcast we make. But do mind the lame title sequence. We haven’t made a new one yet. And we need more mics. But regardless, we have a variety of topics covered today. So grab your drinks, your snacks, and your ears, and enjoy the show.

On a sidenote: We do record every Thursday. As for release times, well that depends on how much editing needs to be done. But rest assured, these get released within the week.

Also, I forgot to mention. The Beyond Good and Evil HD trailer was obtained from Machinima.com.

And do support Operation Rainfall’s effort to persuade Nintendo of America to release Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower.

Intro -00:01

Supreme Court Decision – 2:09

Operation Rainfall – 10:27

Review Fallout of Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D – 17:50

Capcom Nickel & Diming and DRM – 23:23

Beyond Good & Evil HD and Ocarina of Time 3D – 29:20

Games like The Legend of Zelda – 37:28

Release methods between SEGA and Nintendo – 49:31

Wrap Up – 58:06

Credits – 59:03

Oh sweet, a gaming festival in my neck of the woods (sort of)!

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Here’s something I don’t hear every day!

“Game Play”, a performing arts festival, centered around video games is set to hit the NYC area for the majority of July (7th – 31st). Typically when I hear about cool events like these, they’re usually over toward the west coast.

Luckily, most of us at The Wired Fish are Bronx dwellers — one cramped subway ride from The Brick, a theater in Brooklyn where the festivities take place.

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Defending the Duke : A Journey Into Bad Taste

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It was about a year ago. As a person who hates going to the movies, the simultaneous showing of three films that had my interest was enough to get myself out the house and into the theater with a group of friends. Those three films were Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and The Expendables, in that order.

While Inception was unanimously considered the best of the bunch, the bulk of the debating went toward the other two films. Most of the people in the group that I talked to found Scott Pilgrim the better film, a concept that still puzzles me. While I’ve yet to read the comic, the film had few and weak video game references (something that I was looking forward to from the testimony of friends who read the comic before the movie).

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