Chrono Trigger Retranslation Patch Released

After a long month of grueling work by ZeaLitY and others, a patch for KWhazit’s Chrono Compendium Chrono Trigger Retranslation is out. In addition to inserting the entire script, the hack uses a fix to mimic Ayla’s nickname for Crono, adds in Sky / Dark elemental icons to replace Lightning / Shadow, and restores the Japanese ending art for the Marle searching for Crono with the Epoch ending. The only external changes are a pre-title screen and changes in the ASCII credits; there are no easter eggs. The linked page also connects to a “making-of / how-to” feature and a pack of three patches allowing users to implement the changes described above on personal projects. So, surprise! And have fun.

Retranslation Patch (7zip)
Retranslation Patch (zip)

New Powerglove song availible for stream on MySpace for 48 hours only!

Powerglove has put a new song on their MySpace music player from their upcoming album “Metal Kombat for the Mortal Man”, but only for 48 hours.

GO LISTEN TO IT, IT’S <3 From MySpace:

By order of the Metatron (Alan Rickman), the first
track from Metal Kombat for the Mortal Man, entitled “So Sexy
Robotnik,” has been posted.

Sonic 2 is the game of choice.

But there is only enough power to sustain speed metal and saxophone soloing for 48 hours, so now is the time for ACTION!!!!
Do not live a life of regrets! What will you tell your
grandchildren? That you let opportunity slip through your bony fingers,
or that you went to our myspace page and listened??? No one can choose
for you.

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

Thus, logically, you must listen to our new song.

QED

-Chris and Powerglove

Free Shit: Skipped a Week, but More Good Stuff

The week before last was pretty dry, but [fortunately?] ThaSauce was down, so I had an excuse not to write my column! This past week saw a lot of neat stuff though.
Alexey V – Dreamology
Sweet ambient from Alexey V. Dark and stylish, with a nice deep sound to it. He has 3 other releases on kahvi, and I recommend those as well, particularly Serbia

Bird Lantern – DuD
Loopy, kooky, fun hip hop. Thanks for all that karate, karate kid.

051 – Freeman – Angyalok
EU Mirror (thanks to GaMeBoX)
US Mirror (thanks to SGX)
SERIOUS BUSINESS dance track, reminiscient of Carthage [my Reunion release] but a little different. Everyone’s gotta put ethnic instruments to beats eventually though.

052 – zircon – Warhead (Extended Mix)
EU Mirror (thanks to GaMeBoX)
US Mirror (thanks to SGX)
Two from Reunion Studio in this column, they’re good at keeping with their 1 track a week schedule 🙂 Zircon’s track is considerably lighter than Freeman’s, a bit more playful and fun, and as usual, the kind of mainstream-ish crowdpleasing style you’re used to from Zircon. This song is a remix of one of his tracks off of his album Antigravity, which he is always telling me to buy. If you’d like to support zircon and give him a little pocket change, consider buying this album.

Dan Reynolds – Lifestream
No voices here [pun]. This is Free Shit’s first taiko drum song though.
“I got to do a user demo for a new sample library called Tsaiko Drums
and I wanted to do something that had the feel of a good ol’ fashioned
taiko drum concert as an homage to my favorite taikoist, Joji Hirota
(so it’s definitely ala his style):” – Dan
A short and fun drumming tune you should check out 🙂 I think the sample library sounds pretty damn good, myself.

Transient – Universal Love
“i’m trying to do a project something along the indie-rockish lines yah know w/ guitars and vocals and all that.” -transient
This is different from usual Transient. Not so different though. It just has more guitars and more singing 😀

ogge – kelvin
You will play this with subwoofers.

Joshua Morse – Waveform
It’s what Joshua Morse usually makes, but this time… with FM synths! You should really really really get this if you enjoy music. Me being a Genesis fan anyway makes me fall in love with anything that sounds like this regardless of composition, but Joshua Morse has really got a knack for making a sexy groove. Save this to your computer.

Anime Remix Halloween Competition 2007!

Please see the original thread for more details

ANIME REMIX HALLOWEEN COMPETITION 2K7!
Villains always have the coolest themes. This competition revolves around “scary” anime, “evil” anime music, and villain theme songs. We also accept normal remixes that are simply scary (like a spooky chobits mix or something). This is the biggest Anime Remix yearly competition.

Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream released.


So OverClocked ReMix has FINALLY got around to releasing Final Fantasy VII: Voice of the Lifestream (albeit too late to join the 50 Cent / Kanye West album war of Sept 11th). Reviews have already started popping up all over the place, but they’re pretty generalized and “ZOMG AMAZING.” I’m obligated to do my own review…because I have a website…and a soapbox, and you don’t.
Having listened to the whole album 3 or 4 times since zircon gave me the torrent last night to seed, I think I have a pretty good feel for the whole thing by now. Ever since this album was announced I’ve been weary of the outcome. It was a bold endeavor taking on one of the most well-known soundtracks among video game fans AND vowing to arrange MOST of it. Not to mention the hype that had been mounting up over time (especially right before it’s release…and even after it’s release). I wanted to hear it for myself. Screw the hype.

That being said, I can say that the album falls WELL above my expectations, but still falls short of “knocking me off my feet”, as some would suggest. Some of the songs I absolutely LOVE, like bLiNd and Spekko (as Steffan Andrews)’s JENOVA themes, respectively, along with Star’s Highwind mix (The Highwind Takes to the Skies), Terethian’s ReMix of the Gold Saucer / Cid’s theme (Alien Exploration), bladiator’s “The Golden Ivories of Gaia,” & Darangen’s “Collision (Northern Crater)”.

Some of the other songs on the album, while technically good, leave me wanting more. Zircon & Sixto’s ReMix of Red XIII’s theme could best be describe as “Balls awesome technoz in a similar chord progression to the original song, 2(?) bars of the original tune repeated twice, and then more balls awesome technoz. While it SOUNDS cool and all, it…hardly feels like an arrangement of the original Red XIII theme aside from those 2 bars. Same can be said for Danny B’s Turk’s theme. I went around class playing a few of the songs for some of my friends, almost all of which love FF7 as much as your average fanboy, and NONE of them could identify a lot of songs. Cid’s theme by Jovette Rivera suffers a similar problem but…well let’s just say that song isn’t really my favorite.

Some other things of note (& minor knit-picks) include:

• If you see Sixto Sounds credited in any song, it basically means they needed a crazy guitar solo. It almost feels as if they said “Well this song is good…but it needs more…CRAZY GUITAR SOLO” and bam, Sixto is off. Not that this is a BAD thing, since Sixto is REALLY GOOD at what he does, just…look out for it =P. I assure you, even if you’re doubting they could possibly fit a guitar solo into this song, it’ll be there.
• One-Winged Angel remix end kind of…suddenly. Like F4T4L said “a One-Winged Angel remix that’s less than 6 minutes is blasphemy.” It’s not at all a BAD SONG, but…geez. Give me AT LEAST another minute and a half.
• Suzu’s song sounds…well a lot like Suzu at first, and then Sixto totally tears it to shit.
Tefnek is amazing.
• Haroon r teh back <3333 All this being said, the best way I could some this up as a whole is this: If you’re familiar with the artists on this album, you’re pretty familiar with what you’re getting here on a song basis. This isn’t really BEYOND anything we’ve heard from OC ReMix before, but almost all the songs on this album are better than MOST OverClocked ReMixes. It’s HANDS DOWN the best OCR album but…it can’t really hold a torch to stuff like the Black Mages (though better than PMM), but I mean…it is free, which is what tips the scales on this one.

BIGGEST ANNOYANCE EVER:
Apparetly OCReMix still sucks @ ID3 -__-


National Video Games Day

From kotaku:

“Happy National Video Games Day! I know you’ve all been eagerly awaiting
this day, reserving a day off of work or school to spend a lazy
afternoon participating in our favorite hobby outside of searching for the best real money game apps on the phone weekly. I am sure you’ve got
some massive parties planned, so be sure to send us photos of how you
celebrate the holiday with your friends and loved ones! Yeah, we had no
idea either, but Holiday Insights and American Greetings indicate that September 12th is NVGD. You’d think someone would have mentioned it to us.”

Celebrate National Video Games Day by playing video games.
If you are off from school (or if you are a big kid off from work),
make this a marathon day for video games. Better still, invite a few
friends and hold a competition. Just make certain that you have enough
controllers.

That’s the blurb from Holiday Insights, which
goes on to state that they have no record of the origin of the holiday
or that indeed it even exists. Whatever. American Greetings needs gamer
money too you know.

National Video Games Day [Holiday Insights]

Sauce Digest: Changing Leaves Edition

That time of year again.A noisy video, hard-to-see content, and a few bugs round up the reasons for this month’s list of planned changes. You’ll also finally get a chance to put your points to use. Plus, a new way to access ThaSauce is on its way!
Another layout change will top off this month once the new featured content module goes into place. This’ll include new sections for featured links, artists, and projects, which’ll be automatically featured based on age, popularity, and content type. Part of the plan is to move this farther up the page, somehow interspersing it with the news content.

Also part of this is an all-new video module, which will include a YouTube player and more options for viewing and saving videos.

A re-style of the forums is in order, we’re going to be bringing it in-line with the rest of the site, as well as wiki upgrades that should let us re-open public registration. We’d like to also update the wiki’s style, but there may not be enough time in the schedule for that.

Here comes a chance to spend some of those points you’ve been accumulating over the years. By the end of the month I’ll have the raffle module in place, where you can put up your points for a chance to win a ThaSauce T-Shirt in your choice of white or black. Shirts are also available for $10 + Shipping, email or PM Xerol for information or orders.

Finally, we’ve had a PSP version of ThaSauce up for a while (which also is due for an upgrade), but now we’ll be adding a Mobile version of the site! It’ll be accessible from any web-capable phone or PDA, and have mobile-friendly features for keeping up on the latest articles.

Free Shit: Transient, Subatomic Vision, Me, DistantJ, TiS Artist of the Month

http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/8953/ohhhhhhhsg8.jpg
Transient – Melts Away…
Yet another self-released record by Transient, who already has something like 5 billion releases everywhere on the internet. If you already know how transient sounds, and you should, then this is more of the same crazy half-ambient half-glitch and usually pretty chill music. I enjoyed the whole thing, but if you don’t wanna dive right in I recommend “Pocket Universe,” “Stars,” and “Melts Away…,” the pretty ambient/pseudoorchestral track that ends the album much like “rpg” ended Hexual Ceiling I love archive’s streaming flash stuff that they have now. Makes searching for stuff so much more convenient 🙂

Subatomic Vision – Hang on to Your Tele-Vizzion
Reunion’s 50th release, and a cool psytrancey one at that. I’ve run out of new things to say about Reunion tracks so I’ll just say that this is your weekly dosage of UNTS. This is SV’s second release on Reunion.

OverCoat – Evaporative Air Coolers
Ssspoon! I finished this track at around 4 AM one night because I couldn’t sleep, much like how The Sky is Never Dark Anymore EP was made. This will probably be the basis for my ALS4 release, so expect similar things come New Year’s Day. Awesome. In other news, I have uploaded my albums to last.fm for streaming, and uploaded 2 older albums of mine to my site, Supercats and Ubo’s Restaurant.

DistantJ – Slayers NEXT – A Reason
DistantJ is pretty much the only guy who makes anime remixes anymore. I tried recently and failed horribly. This one is pretty good. BIG UPS. Check it out if you’ve seen Slayers or like DistantJ or unts.

TiLT – TraxInSpace Artist of the Month
The AotM feature on TraxInSpace is BACK! This time it’s TiLT, someone I chill with in #renoise on EsperNet every now and then. The interview by roncli [who also chills in #renoise] explains everything, so check it out! Contains links to his music and everything else! He’s already got lots of free tracks [15 or so] available on his TiS page, including a Monkey Island remix that you OCR fgts would probably enjoy.

That’s it for this week, unless I forgot something. This is the part where I ask you to mail me free shit. See you next week!

Free Shit: Planet Boelex, Muxu, Benefit of the Boomerang, Bioshock, Free C&C1

Great great stuff this week, especially for fans of the XTREEM TECHNOES! Also, free commercial shit! Whoa! The quantity is not so great as it usually is, but the quality is way above normal 😀
Planet Boelex – Suunta
As promised, Kahvi Collective returns from its summer vacation with
some exclusive material from the one and only Planet Boelex. Previous
releases have enjoyed great success; each track having great style,
flair and production and most important, each track a mini epic in
itself. This time around we have a ‘mini-lp’ – 44 minutes of blissful
works entitled Suunta (Direction) full of beautiful vibes, deep,
atmospheric sounds, resounding basses with an analogue twist and those
fabulous bleeps that Boelex is reknowned for. Throughout the release
the highly polished results of many sleepless nights (right up to the
day before release!) are apparent – this is a release to treasure, take
a small taster and then dive right in.

Credits for this release: Production, arrangement and concept by Planet Boelex.Cover art by Travis Nobles (widescreen version on download album art link) “Forever and always” featuring Krister Linder on vocals ( http://www.kristerlinder.com ). Watch out for the legendary Mosaik making a surprise appearance in ‘Sisumies’

Planet Boelex has made available FLAC versions of all the tracks for a small donation. Head over to the Suunta Micro-Site to donate, download and enjoy the highest quality grooves around!

Muxu – Show Us Your Weak Side
This new release is most definitely Monotonik’s first from Malaysia,
thanks to duo Euseng and Liang, also known as Muxu, who’ve followed up
their self-released debut album ‘Above Us, A Clear Summer Sky’ with
this wonderful 6-track EP, ‘Show Us Your Weak Side’, here as the 190th
release on Mono.

The duo first met for a joint band project – with Liang
playing guitar for delightfully named band Citizens of Ice-Cream, but
set up Muxu in early 2006. They’ve also contributed a track to the
Mu-nest label compilation ‘We Are All Cotton-Hearted’, alongside other
artists such as Lullatone, Piana, Park Avenue Music and Aus.

In any case, Muxu starts out with the delightfully meandering
‘Hishiko’, all sliding ambience and strong melodies – reminding of
previous Monotonik artists Sleepy Town Manufacture through a distinct
guitar-infused Asian blend, perhaps? It only gets lusher from there,
with ‘Let’s Walk On The Frozen Sea’ weaving almost Harold Budd-esque
piano into the mix, and ‘Meeting Snow During Summer’ continuing the
carefully multi-layered shimmer.

Other highlights include the careful groove of ‘Moving At 30’
and the end track, ‘People Running Away’, which has us running towards,
not from Muxu’s lush sound from an unusual place. Thanks, guys.

Platonist – Alien & Human
EU Mirror (thanks to GaMeBoX)
US Mirror (thanks to SGX)

This week’s release from Reunion Studio is from the label’s regular, Platonist, one of the few guys left that still use old apps like Impulse Tracker to make their music [me, I’ve moved on to Renoise :P]. Still, the production is good enough that you can’t really tell at all, and this is a fun dance track, if a little overdone [yeah, more sampling of old movies about aliens from Mars :D]. GG.

Benefit of the Boomerang – Virgil’s Impending Techno Swing
Okay, for those not in the know, Benefit is a crazy dude. Well, his music is crazy, but crazy enough to be enjoyed by only the coolest dudes. If you don’t like glitch breaks or drill’n’bass, you might want to stay away. Otherwise, this is an awesome release. I know you fgts out there in VGMland will love this too: the first track is a glitched up version of One Winged Angel. Not the best track though, I actually like the other tracks a bit better, but the entire release is a treat and a surprising release from Ronin Collective, mainly because I thought they were dead.

Bisohock releases 12 orchestral tracks for free.
Okay, I’m sure you bleeding edge of technology PC gamers [or Xbox 360 owners] will enjoy this one. Unfortunately I cannot run Bioshock because my videocard won’t support shaders or something like that, so the game turns into a black screen with blocks of fire here and there. UNPLAYABLE (for now!). Anyway, if you liked the music, here’s some free tracks for you. It’s a rare treat but I love when otherwise commercial stuff gets released for free on the internet.

Command & Conquer 1 for free!
Thanks to GeckoYamori for linking this to me! Yeah, it’s not music, but the game does have music inside it, and it’s free. Yes, I also love free games 😀 [Home of the Underdogs for the win].

This week was a great week for Free Shit! The next week might be even better! Or it could have nothing at all. Send me links, fellas! See you next week.