This page is for the question blocks that my friend did at the end of
May. He thought that his town of Windsor, Ontario would look a lot
cooler if there were question blocks, circa Super Mario Brother 1,
around town. I’m putting this up so you can make your own question
blocks and put them up around your town too!

http://www.qwantz.com/posterchild/

Acclaimed filmmakers announce they are simultaneously producing a
next-gen console game and film. First screens and trailer inside.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/08/news_6123865.html

(Horror gaming news is important to me)

Acclaimed action director John Woo has long expressed his interest in
video games–and he’s shown it by scooping up the film rights to
Metroid and helming the film adaptation of Spy Hunter, starring Dwayne
“The Rock” Johnson.

Now, Woo’s game company, Tiger Hill Entertainment, is further blurring
the line between film and games. Today, Majesco announced it will
publish Demonik, a new horror-action game co-published by Tiger Hill
and written by writer/director/author Clive Barker. The game marks the
latest project for Hellraiser director Barker, who also oversaw development of Undying, the acclaimed 2001 action game from Electronic Arts.

Developed by Terminal Reality, the studio behind the BloodRayne
games–which are themselves being made into films–Demonik is scheduled
to ship in 2006 for unspecified “next-generation consoles.”It will also
be simultaneously developed as a film property. “Barker is set to
oversee the story, character designs, cinematics and voice talent for
the game,” according to Majesco. “Barker also has the option to write
and direct the film.”

“Demonik will be an intense gaming experience,” said Barker in
a statement. “I’m having a lot of fun enriching the game’s mythology
and polishing the characters till they shine. And, of course, adding a
little bit of Barker darkness. Demonik promises to be a game that you
will play with clammy palms.”

Besides hand-sweat predictions, Majesco was rather mum on
details about Demonik, saying only that it is a ” third-person action
game that allows players to control the ultimate bad guy–wreaking
havoc with a variety of innovative and spectacular powers and
abilities.”

GameSpot will have more on Demonik as further details are made available.

Well, as I stated before I’d really like to be able to include updates on what’s going on on other sites such as VGMix.
Seeing as no one had submitted anything just yet, I decided to go over
there and check out some of the newer stuff and see if anything was
worth mentioning. I will be the first to admit that I very rarely
download anything from a game I haven’t played unless I’ve heard
something about it specifically. That being said I tend to have a small
bit of biased on which songs I actually took the time to download and
listen to.
The first song I downloaded was actually the one that made me decide to go over there in the first place. I saw ‘Flik – Rufus’ Welcoming Ceremony’
and decided this would be a perfect oppurtunity to hear some new VGMix
stuff. I’m particularly in love with Final Fantasy VII (RoFL
fanboi!!1~) and even more so with the soundtrack, so this obviously
caught my eye.

In his write up about the song Flik says “So,
I was sitting in my friend Stephen’s dorm – who plays the lead guitar
on this track, and he just started plunking out Rufus’ Welcoming
Ceremony on his acoustic. Within a few minutes, I had some background
for it…and the rest you can listen for yourselves.. The majority
of the song consists of the said live acoustic guitar, (what I think is
a rather mediocre) violin sample, and some pretty fitting drums. In his
write up about the initial WIP, Kevin Stephens wrote, “Well.
Uhhh… when I started listening to this, I was thinking, ‘There’s no
way in hell this could work.’ Turns out I was wrong, because what you
have is one of the most sickeningly happy songs I’ve heard in a long
time. It’s almost goofy sounding. And I love it.” In addition, in a
conversation Sleazy C and I had over the song he mentioned that the
guitar recording was incredibly clean, in which I would have to agree.
In the end this song is still pretty close to the original, but it
builds on it very well. I would absolutely recommend it for anyone
who’s a fan of the game.

The next song I decided to listen to was Bladiator’s newest song, which is actually about 2 days old, and currently resides in the Must-Have tier (though it only has 1 review), ‘Moon over Rinoa’, which is an arrangement of ‘Waltz of the Moon’ from Final Fantasy VIII. I was already a fan of his arrangement of Green Greens from Kirby’s Dream Land, and his involvement with VG Frequency as well as a fan of the source tune, so I figured I’d give it a try.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with Bladiator, you should be!
No, just kidding (but not really). Anyway, for those of you aren’t
familiar with Bladiater, all (or at the very least, most) of his
arrangements to date have been piano arrangements, and this song is no
different. In his review of the song, SIr NutS wrote, “Blade as always knows how to deliver, and this is not an exception.” He went on to say, “The
dynamics are very good and Blad manages to keep the song moving in a
variable but cohesive pace, and when it comes to the actual
performance, you can’t expect less from him.” As a fan of the game and
the music, as previously mentioned, I was about to enjoy this song a
whole lot, but as NutS mentioned, it’s worth a listen for anyone who, especially if you’re a fan of the genre.

Lastly, I like to mention, though not directly related to any actual
songs, that this sort of reviewing, mentioning, and announcing of songs
from various artists, be it from VGMix, KWED, OCR, or original tunes
put out by people in the community, is both welcome and encouraged. As
long as you have a good reason to bring it up and can give us a pretty
good idea why you think it’s worth sharing.

From the www.PSOBB.com website:

“The Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst Open Beta is coming soon! In the meantime, head over to the PSO History section and learn about the extensive story involved in the Phantasy Star Online series. Be sure to stop by the Play Guide section and find out what awaits you when you start the adventure or go to the Community Forums
and chat with other PSO players. Once the Beta goes live, check out
this page for information about new quests and special event updates!

The Open Beta starts 5/10/05.”

Needless to say, I am stoked about this news, as I have played PSO on
the gamecube, though have lost interest due to increasing time on the
pc, and the fact that I do not have a hunter’s liscence or GC Modem
adapter. While the beta is only slated to run through the middle of
June, I am sure that it will garner enough attention and play that once
the free play ends, many people will register and pay the dues deserved
to Sonic Team.

Rayza, Aurora and Fusion2004 discuss the world of OverClocked ReMix,
a community dedicated to the appreciation and restoration of video game
music. This week we bring you more projects, a different co-host, ReMix
Reviews with comments from the remixers, and more… Doug? Technical
issues are abound in this unlucky, yet no lesser, third episode.

Get the show at http://www.vgdj.net

The Lowdown:
Anime Remix ( www.animeremix.org ) be havin’ a remixin’ project, and
the anime is Full Metal Alchemist. FMA has a kinda big soundtrack
(upwards of 60 tracks), although a sizeable number of them are mere
re-arrangements of others. (ex: Commandment vs. Deep Forst vs. Dante)
Additinally, AR has a smaller population than, say, OC ReMix, so we’ve
decided to remix 15 choice tracks from the project, chosen primarily
for their recognition factor, and organized (very) roughly in order of
appearance.
For up-to-date news about the project, to participate, or to learn more, go to the thread on the AR forums:
http://www.animeremix.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=589

Mixers can do as many songs as they want, if there are free tracks, and
ideally mixers will work with the other mixers whose songs come
immediately before or after them, mixing in elements of each others’
songs, or otherwise making the transition between tracks smooth.
Collaborations are perfectly fine, but there will be no song medleys in
the remix project.

Pick the genre you want to mix, though as of this writing the project
is leaning fairly heavily towards trance. The title of your mix should
contain some sort of “metal” word — it doesn’t have to be a
“scientific” metal, just something that an average person would think
of as metal. Here’s a list of a few metals, for your convenience:

Aluminum, Bronze, Chrome, Cobalt, Copper, Gold, *Iron, Lead, Nickel, Pewter, Platinum, Silver, Steel, Tin, *Titanium, Zinc.

* denotes a metal that has been taken. There are 15 tracks, so the last
few names might be stretching things a bit. If we have to, we can
re-use metal words, though it’d be cooler if we didn’t.

The Tracklist:

These have been chosen for the “recognition factor” — that is, anyone
who’s seen the anime should be able to recognize most, if not all of
them. They are now in official order! (Note: All remixes here are works in progress only at this point.)

1. MELISSA (1st OP) – Unclaimed – N/A

2. Equivalent
Exchange – Unclaimed – N/A

3. Title
– Unclaimed – N/A

4. Solitude – Unclaimed – N/A

5. Fate
– Unclaimed – N/A

6. Philosopher’s
Stone – mDuo13 – Titanium
Stone

7. Fortify
– OverCoat – Iron
Curtain

8. Recollection – Unclaimed – N/A

9. Greed – Unclaimed – N/A

10. Beaming
Sunlight – Ghetto Lee Lewis – Untitled (temporary link)

11. Homunculus
– DJ Carbunk1e – Untitled

12. Dante
– Unclaimed – N/A

13. Scar – Unclaimed – N/A

14. Parting – Unclaimed – N/A

15. To the Other Side of the Door (2nd ED theme) – Unclaimed (Possibly a multi-collab?) – N/A

—-

So, what next? Well, here’s the plan, as I have it now:

1. Remixers who have not yet made a WIP, or have not yet claimed a song, pick one — you can still participate.

2. Remixers who have already made a WIP — you have two choices. One:
you can finish a draft version of your WIP (approximately the length of
your final project, but it need not be perfect, mastered, the right
samples, humanized, what-have-you — this is like the rough draft of a
paper; get down all the ideas you want so you can clean it up later. We
can go over these and decide what needs work and what’s fine as soon as
you’ve got something down. Option Two: Pick another song and make a WIP
of it also. Pick more if you feel really industrious. If we get more
than one WIP for a chosen song, we can take a vote on which one is
better, once drafts are done. Or the remixers can work together in a
collab. We can decide about that if/when it happens.

3. We could use some album art, eventually. This is a little early,
since we haven’t even decided on a final title for the project, but if
any you graphic designers around here is feeling industrious but bored,
you can see what you can cook up for a Full Metal AlcheMIX or whatever
we decide on. Transmutation circles, Ed & Al, headphones —
whatever you decide to throw in there is fine; just make something
that’ll look cool in a CD case for the project. No deadline on this yet.

—

Deadlines

Okay, we need people to take this project seriously. So here’s what we’ve got in terms of deadlines:

1. I want 1-minute WIPs of every song in the project by June
30th. I don’t care how this has to happen — if one remixer does
ten tracks, so be it. But we need to get something down.

2. I want drafts of at least one song from eachparticipating remixer by August
31st. This way during September and October we can really get into
the finalizing/polishing stage, with the project ending maybe before
Thanksgiving of next year.

These dates are subject to change depending on my personal schedule and
Mythril’s — I’ll be moving into my dorm on August 21st, so we’ll see
how that ends up.

Remember, this project is organized from the anime remix forums, so go there if you’re interested:
http://www.animeremix.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=589

This official MP3 from Blizzard is titled “Orc”, and is a
selection from the soundtrack to World of Warcraft.
Released Today.

Also there are many other official mp3’s to download at

http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/WoW/Mp3s/

Aurora & I have started an OCR podcast that will include site news,
music reviews and more. You can check us out and subscribe to the feed
at http://www.vgdj.net

Also we want to get ThaSauce involved so Rama come talk to me!

Detailed info:
http://www.ocremix.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1618640#1618640