| OverClocked ReMix Go Commercial |
 Wahey, OCR!
This news is so special to me that I felt it deserved a proper serious update. One with images and full sentences and everything.
Many videogame geeks, of which I am one, have a love of videogame music. It's something that people "outside" of the "industry" don't seem to understand, choosing to still only hear beeps and boops. Well fuck them, they can go back to watching Big Brother and discussing the Champion's League or whatever. For the rest of us, videogame music is something to be cherished. It can evoke emotion, trigger memories and just plain completely set the mood. There are many videogame music composers out there who just plain deserve praise and to list a handful of them here now would just be insulting to those I didn't list.
Then there are fans who have their own musical talents. There's only one possible outcome here, and that's "remixing". Oftentimes the term isn't entirely accurate as some people choose to simply update a song to modern audio standards while others choose to butcher it completely, but for the sake of arguement "remixing" is the term we use.
And to be honest, when it comes to remixing videogame music, there isn't a site with a bigger presence than OverClocked ReMix.
Boasting over 1700 songs at the time of writing, there's pretty much something here for everyone. And with a harsh panel of judges, you can usually be sure that what you download is at least half decent. It's quite possible a remixer may completely change the style of your favourite song and you might love it or hate, but usually they're at least technically accomplished.
Not too long after the site launched, they began getting industry recognition and a few big name videogame composers even submitted their own remixes, one of which I am actually listening to as I type this. Wonderful.
Eventually though, some bright sparks had the idea of remixing entire albums. They've covered Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country, Sonic 2, Street Fighter II and more.
But it was the Street Fighter II one, Blood on the Asphalt, that caught attention.
Capcom, having listened to it and knowing that they were involved in a new version of Street Fighter II for XBLA and PSN in HD, had a brainwave. They contacted David Lloyd, the big cheese at OCR, and asked if they could use it.
How could you refuse that request?
In case you've had your head under the sand for the last few months, you should know by now that Street Fighter II HD is a remake of Super Street Fighter II Turbo with all new shiny HD graphics. A wonderful little team of people are drawing over every sprite to create new ones, like the fantastic Ken you can see below. The underlying game is essentially the same, it just looks a hell of a lot nicer. So it needs new music too, right?
Larry Oji, part of the OCR team, had this to say when he asked what to expect:
They can expect some really cool takes on these classic themes! All of the stage themes are instant classics, so the ReMixers didn’t want to mess with success, but you’re going to hear some excellent interpretations that sound completely at home in the Street Fighter universe. And we hope that when all is said and done, people get curious about the new music and head over to www.ocremix.org to learn more about the people who made it.
I for one am really looking forward to this now. I mean, a HD version of Street Fighter II is already pretty cool but being an OCR-related thing this is quite a big deal.
Here are some more shots of the game to keep you a little bit excited! Sorry they don't play music, which would be more relevent to this post, but you can always head over to the Blood on the Asphalt page to get a taster of what to expect.
Character select screen. Space for hidden folk there like the not-so-secret Akuma.
Ken vs Ryu.
Ken vs Ryu again. They sure do fight a lot.
Well bugger me. |
Well I was going to do a 'Best of E3' feature but then I realised there wasn't really anything that qualified for the illustrious title of 'Best'. None of the keynotes had anything surprising or new or even exciting. Sony rehashed last year's show with added stuttering, Nintendo went even more casual and Microsoft got all confused and don't know who the hell their console is for anymore.
What a letdown! Even Animal Crossing, the game I was most looking forward to, is just a carbon copy of the DS version.
E3 used to be full of surprises, now it had exactly zero. Roll on CES! |
| YOU WILL PREDICT. PRE-DICT. |
So nobody saw Banjo-Kazooie coming to XBLA, and everyone saw FFXIII coming to Xbox 360. And the Too Human demo is wonderful.
The new dash is odd.
But what of Nintendo and Sony keynotes later in the day? Here then are my own predictions.
--Nintendo--- Animal Crossing Wii, with extensive WiiConnect24 usage.
- Now it's died down, they'll reveal a new Kid Icarus by Capcom.
- The remaining "hardcore" Nintendo games will be shown: F-Zero, Starfox and 1080 Snowboarding.
- Another peripheral! Other than the 3D space thing that's been shown, I mean.
--Sony--- Home.
- LittleBigPlanet.
- Afrika.
- Tears of defeat.
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Is there anything exciting happening at E3 this year?
No. There is not.
Well, maybe Animal Crossing on the Wii.
And Megaman 9. That should be quite good.
Banjo will probably be "okay". |
No time again for a proper update, so here's some cool stuff.
Megaman 9 is coming to XBLA, WiiWare and PSN. It will look and play exactly like a NES sequel. This is fantastic news!
Blood Bowl is being made into a videogame. I know one person who will be happy.
The internet is already moaning that Soul Calibur on XBLA doesn't look very good. Duh?
The Blizzard teaser has cracked wide open, revealing an evil face. Evil faces tend to be on the cover of everything Blizzard make though, so this is still no real clue.
I Am Murloc is up as DLC for Guitar Hero 3. Great song, shame it's in Guitar Hero 3 not Rock Band. The GH3 bunch are pretty awful at making fun guitar patterns.
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| News: A Game May Have Been Released |
We're told that a video game has been released today and unlike every other blog/news site we're not having launch coverage or anything silly like that because we were having too much fun last night drinking cocoa and then having a sleep.
Rest assured, though, that if we find out that there was anything interesting in this game we'll be linking you to Kotaku so you can find out all about it. |
I know, I know, I've been bad with updates. I've been busy, I have other things to do you know! I'm not part of some big organisation that pays its staff to post all the random crap they find, after all.
Still busy, so here is a summary of certain things:
Rock Band is awesome.
Penny Arcade's game is crap.
Green DS is gorgeous.
L is Real 2004. |
Thieves steal shitloads of PS3s in Northampton, UK.
Normally I wouldn't care about things like this, but this is where I live. Which actually now explains the offer of £50 PS3s going round town.
And don't worry, just like Sony the thieves were unable to sell these too, even at such a low price. |
| How To: Write a Console Update |
With the recent update going around for the Xbox 360, I figured I would offer some insight if you wanted to create your own! It's really quite simple.
Firstly, be sure to include recent rumours. Don't make them the standout "top of the list" feature though or people will get suspicious.
Secondly, look at what other consoles already have and think about how the manufacturer of the console you are writing for would implement it.
Thirdly, be sure to add something in there that nobody expects and that nobody will really care about. Pad it out with features which boil down to "stability".
With that in mind, here's how an update for the Nintendo Wii would look:
1) Photo Channel updated to 1.2. Support for MP3s has been enabled once more.
2) Added support for external USB storage devices. Now the Channel Selection screens will populate themselves based on content found on your storage device.
3) Settings for Voice Chat can now be found in the Wii Preferences. Note: This will not function outside of specific games until the "Star Road" voice service goes live in the Fall.
4) Numbers of Miis that can be stored on the Wii has been doubled.
5) Fixed a bug where pressing the power button whilst a message was sending would cause the recipient to recieve the message twice.
See? It's simple. |
| Forgotten Videogame Heroes Part 3 |
Today's videogame hero is someone none of you have probably heard of. Not by name, anyway. It's...
RD008!
Back in the day, Nintendo were a bunch of girls and decided that humans could not be a soldier in game on their systems. So when Konami came to port Contra to the NES for Europe, they had to change Bill and Lance to a couple of robots instead. The game also got changed to the name Probotector.
This actually stuck for several interations. Super Probotector on the SNES and Probotector and Probotector 2 on the Gameboy all featured the robot dudes.
But sadly, when the Playstation came out and made gaming hip and cool, poor old RD008 and RC011 were gone and the game was back to being called Contra starring Bill and Lance.
Quite a shame really, as I personally felt the robots were cooler. They just looked better. Ah well. Let's have a quiet moment for RD008, who we will never ever see again.
NOTE: I always played as RC011 in Super Probotector because the SNES was not mine and my cousin would always be Player 1. |
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