Feb 10, 2010

Help Overclocked Remix do the Sonic 4 soundtrack.

Overclocked remix's Darkesword:

So, it's started out as a harmless little comment on Twitter.

Then it got picked up by a gaming blog.

Now it's a full blown movement.


OverClocked ReMix wants to do the music for Sonic the Hedgehog 4.I've mentioned before that some artists from Overclocked Remix got in contact with Capcom and did the soundtrack for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Now we're starting a movement to get some publicity out and reach to SEGA, for the soundtrack of the upcoming Sonic the hedgehog 4.I'm pretty excited about this because I have done several sonic remixes over the years. 3 of them got published at Overclocked Remix, and several others at the now defunct VGMix. Plus some others that I've done for fun or for competitions. One of the most well known: Lightspeed, a remix of the Twinkle Park theme, has been very popular and I've seen lots of videos on youtube using it, and even a feature video at screwattack, so you may understand my excitement about all this because I could end up (with some luck) doing a song for this.

Of course there are still bif IFs, because this could come to fruition IF Sega is interested in doing the same that capcom did and ask OCR to make the soundtrack. And then IF I get picked to do a song among all the other really talented artists at OCR. Still, it's a possibility and I would love to be a part of it.

So I'll keep my fingers crossed, in the mean time I'll keep spreading the word about this, and hope that we get yet another OCR-made sountrack for a mainstream game, regardless of my participation on it!.

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Feb 8, 2010

Retro Gaming... and everything.

I'm a retro gamer. I'm a rare breed of geek that shuns the so-called new generation of games and prefers to sit down and play the same old ass games he used to play almost 2 decades ago. And I gotta say, it's a fucking great time to be one!


Not that I don't like new games. I play them, often beat them and enjoy them, but I can't remember the last modern game I played that I had beaten more than once and still want to play now. I mean, I remember beating F.E.A.R. several times and loving it. And I was playing super mario galaxy again the other day trying to beat it for the second time. Hmm and crysis, I think I beat that one 2 or 3 times.

So what's the difference? just nostalgia? well I don't really know. Those last 3 games I mentioned don't have much in common. I think they're just fun as hell and while challenging, are based on simple concepts. I think that's what I like about old games, specially from the NES era. Sure there were a lot of shitty games but the good ones, the classics, are simple, fun, and hard as fuck.

There's also something that I miss from old games, specially PC games. It was the ambition and scope of the big classics. Take star control 2 for example, it's a game where you can explore the galaxy, visit different solar systems, actually drop down to the planets which are different from each other, meet alien races, build a fleet, and all of this in a galaxy filled with hundreds of solar systems. The last game that tried to do something similar was Spore, and it fell short, really short.

Then there's this other game I blogged about some time ago, Covert Action. I could talk for pages and pages about how complex, yet simple and addictive this old PC game is. Then you add other games like alpha centauri... and well, it's sad that all we get today is brown and drag, blood-filled, testosterone-packed action games, and that they're the most celebrated.

Ugh, I got way too sidetracked...

Back to topic, it's a good time to love retro games. The videogame companies are following the trend implanted by hollywood lately: "Let's take and old show or movie, reboot/sequel it, and milk it to hell and back". But unlike the shit that hollywood comes up with, videogame companies are doing it right for the most part. Let's take a few recent examples:

Megaman 9: AWESOME game, worthy of being a classic megaman, and probably right up there with megaman 2 and 3. Also: Megaman 10 is coming to kick some 8-bit ass again.

Bionic Commando Rearmed: Unlike it's 3d counterpart, this game reboots the original while making it awesome and fun and again, hard as fuck. It feels a bit different from the original but it feels right.

New Super Mario Bros(DS/Wii): Some people say this game could have been more, and I agree they got lazy with some stuff (2 toads for player 3 and 4..) but still its a great, classic but modern mario game. I loved it and got all the coins and all the shit you could get.

Contra Rebirth: Digital awesomeness. It screams "silly action movie parody from the 80's" which is what contra was in a sense. Great, classic contra gameplay.

Castlevania Rebirth: Loved it. The Metroidvania games for the handhelds are good, but I love some classic castlevania. Give me a whip and some undead and vampires and I'm set.

A boy and his blob: Haven't played this one yet but I hear good things about it.

And very soon, I will be able to play a new Blaster Master remake, along with Sonic 4, which is the classic 2D sonic-only we have been waiting for.

So far I've got my favorite classic NES games remade in its classic format: Clastlevania, bionic commando, contra, and now blaster master. If I get a new classic ninja gaiden game, It would be the icing on the cake.

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Feb 1, 2010

Tanking Woes

Incoming World of Warcraft rant. If you have never played WoW reading this post will be like reading Egyptian hieroglyphs

So I've been levelling up a Blood Elf Paladin (tank spec) lately. I've always been an alliance player but things have been slow on alliance side that with my best friends not playing much and I being on a guild that well... it's a long story but I'm not really excited for being there.

Anyways since Blizzard included the nifty Dungeon Finder Tool I decided I should give it a try and use this new character as an experiment: levelling a toon using exclusively the dungeon finder. No quests, no mob killing outside the instance, no exploration. Although I've accepted and completed some dungeon quests that other players have shared, and turned them in, I'm trying to limit myself to not get anything explored.

For the most part it has been helluva fun, and pretty good xp too. Also I'm relearning all the classic dungeons that I haven't run in quite some years. As a tank, i get instant queues, because there are practically no tanks in my battlegroup.

But with all this fun comes some other things that aren't quite as fun or nice. Being a tank means that you are the leader, and you have the hardest work of the group. Healers in classic dungeons aren't as stressed out as tanks because there's not much damage going around. With that said, my dungeon experience would be much more fun if other players:

  • Did not pull for me. Some of them see the tank's a paladin, and think: "Consecrate, yay, lets pull all the mobs in the instance to him, because you know, he can't!". Consecrate is a powerful aoe tank tool but it's not snap aggro, so most of the time when they pull mobs to me they just pass through the consecrate right to another dps, or worse, the healer, and then blame the tank because "he can't get aggro".
  • Did not tank for me. So most dps warriors I've been grouped with tend to charge the mobs ahead of me, not caring about pats roaming around, or healer OOM, or me tanking OTHER things. To top it off they are bottom of the damage recount all the fucking time! god i hate dps warriors so much right now, it hurts.
  • Did not tell me how to tank. At this point, I have a warrior tank, a DK tank, and a paladin tank. The DK tank I have used for most of WoTLK and I used the warrior during BC. I think I know how to do this, and most of my runs are pretty quick, with chain pulls and taking the right path through the somewhat confusing old classic dungeons. Still some players feel the need to tell me to "go fast" or "do this and that" before we even start the run. And guess what comes after that? yup, they pull for me.
  • Attacked the mobs the right way. I mean, ok you are new to the melee dps and don't know you should get behind the mobs. I can kinda let that pass for warriors and enh shamans, but rogues? you are a rogue and are right besides me, trying to stab the mob in the face, and getting him to parry like crazy and go all out on me? geez. I have encountered only 1 warrior dps that got behind the mob to deal dps in the hundreds of runs I must have done by now, and I even congratulated him for it.
  • Did not /afk + /follow. It's a pain in the ass when you find that you have been running the dungeon for 5 or 10 minutes with a dps who is afk and following someone and just riding off the xp. To say the truth by now I've ignored most of the assholes that do this, and blizzard was smart enough to make the people on your ignored list be also ignored from your random dungeon groups, but still you find another one every once in a while.
  • Did not constantly ask for Recount reports. Because doing 500 dps in a level 50 dungeon is serious business.
What puzzles me is how all of this disappears for the most part when you do Heroic level 80 dungeons. which makes me think that players do this things not because they're new to the game or trying to learn, but because they're just being assholes.

In the end the good things overcome the bad when it comes to the dungeon finder, but I just wished I didn't get one of these players every 2 runs.

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