Chrono Trigger Retranslated (scripts only for now)

Chrono Trigger has been completely retranslated by KWhazit. After a bunch of work, we’ve got two spreadsheets, HTML for people without Microsoft Office, a big name guide, and an even bigger article highlighting the important differences lost in the original translation for those who don’t want to read the entire thing.

Differences ArticleAll the rest of the crap

We’re debating whether to try and rush out a playable patch with Temporal Flux right now.

Anime Remix Switches to PunBB Forums.

Xaleph [formerly Carbunk1e] was finally able to get the PunBB migration tool working today, so now we have brand-spanking-new forums which will hopefully be more spam-free than phpBB was. At the very least it’s a much more lightweight forum, and it’s open source! Also, more site-integration should follow suit, so it’s not just a vanilla forum page. There is already a site skin called “nevblack” which looks more like the AR front page. Post away!

Also, we’re still looking for more actual content, so if you’re a composer/arranger and you’re reading this, please consider submitting a tune to our site. Xaleph has a few tunes on the way, but we’d love to see some fresh new faces!

Virt and Christian Pacaud Work on TMNT DS

The new TMNT DS game, aptly titled, “TMNT,” has been released this week. What makes this game so special, other than it being a Ninja Turtles game? Jake Kaufman and Christian Pacaud were involved! Yet another high profile game to add to Jake and Christian’s resumés.
IGN sums up the videogame:

“This Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is
based on the CG animated movie produced by Imagi Animation Studios and based on Mirage Studios’ Foot Clan-kicking Turtle heroes. The game takes place in a New York City plagued by secretive villains and
strange, otherworldly creatures. Faced with these perils, the Turtles will experience their most trying time as heroes and as a family, as Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo lose their focus and struggle to
maintain their unity and ninja discipline.”

Let me tell you now though, those people expecting classic TMNT rock will be disappointed. Virt writes:

“If you’re looking for nostalgic rocking out, you’ll be incredibly disappointed – this is a much darker game than the old ones, so I wasn’t allowed to unleash the Konami rock fury, it’s mostly orchestral/electronic underscore and beats, with guitar in only a few tracks (as a motif for a specific character) Decision from up high, nothing we could do.”

He goes on to say more in this VGMix thread, which also has links to videos on IGN, showcasing the game and its music.

Arise, yon OneUp Studios!

That’s right folks. OUS is back with a shiny (and muy cool) new site design. Hook up the smell-o-vision, and enjoy the new but not quite new but totally refurbished and pretty much kinda awesome internet site smell. WITH A VENGEANCE. They have some EPs (with some rad cover art by 8bitmaximo) ready to download for free, though true to OUS fashion, you are strongly encouraged to donate. Be sure to check it out. 😉

2007 State of the ReMix Address

d-to-the-p-rizzle had this to say this year over @ OCR:

This post/announcement was supposed to happen back in January, when
2006 was relatively fresh on our minds and significant portions of the
new year had not yet expired, as has occurred with some degree of
regularity in the past. Better late than never; that I’m making it in
the middle of March probably reinforces a couple of the themes I
planned to cover anyways, so in a way it’s appropriate.

First, old business…

2006 was a landmark year for this site. The single biggest change was
something that wasn’t particularly visible to the average user, but
which has made a huge difference in the direction the site has taken:
it was the year that OverClocked ReMix was migrated off shared hosting
and onto a dedicated server that I alone administer. Prior to this
development, OC ReMix was hosted for free by ZTNET, L.L.C. in Michigan,
who also host many emulation and gaming sites for free. These guys are
great – if a book is ever written about the history of console
emulation, they’d show up as the philanthropic web hosts of tons of
emulators and news sites. Granted, all revenue generated from
advertising and shirt sales also went to them, to help cover OCR’s
considerable bandwidth overhead, but this site wouldn’t have existed
without someone willing to front the cost, as it would have been
prohibitive for me during the early years.

I’m happy to report that that’s no longer the case – the combination of Google ads, affiliate revenue from eStarland, Zzounds, etc. and shirt/hoodie
sales combined cover the complete operating costs of the site, with a
little leftover to print more shirts and coordinate events. If you shop
using Amazon, you can also use the OC ReMix Amazon Outlet, and a portion of each sale goes to the site. Every little bit helps, believe me.

As an interesting side note, a couple unsung heroes of 2006 were two donators that collectively donated $2000 to the site.
I tried contacting them to thank them (profusely) and see if they at
least wanted shirts, but it seems they preferred to remain relatively
anonymous. Their combined donation was what me made confident enough to
proceed with migrating the website to its own dedicated server, which
was a smooth process that’s been nothing but successful so far.
Everyone who’s donated or helped out in any way has played a part in
getting OCR to where it is today, but these individuals
disproportionately acted as a catalyst for this development, and for
the ensuing shirt order that was made, and they deserve singling out,
albeit in an unnamed manner.

So, what does being on our own server mean? For starters, the site’s
been faster and more stable. Sure, it was only a matter of degrees, not
a quantum leap, but it’s still been nice. The folks at LiquidWeb,
where our box is hosted, have also been amazingly helpful when we’ve
run into any issues, so our downtime has been limited. The increased
speed of the site has also let me make more regular backups, so I feel
more comfortable with our disaster recovery capability. But none of
that’s too sexy to the average visitor; one of the bigger things that’s
occurred as a result of all that, however, is that we (rather smoothly)
transitioned from our old forum software, phpBB, to the more powerful and consistently updated vBulletin.

I hate to do this, but I feel like I philosophically have to… while I
love the open source community, and this site runs largely on open
source software, I think that phpBB
represents a failure of a large, popular, and very visible OSS project
to responsibly manage software development goals and operate on
anything approaching a professional timeline
. Sure, they responded
quickly enough to the myriad security holes that were found with their
forum software, and still do, but the confusion surrounding phpBB 3.x
and the refusal to continue adding much-needed features to the
widely-deployed 2.x line has made many admins wary of the package, and
prompted just as many to jump to more powerful, more secure, or more
streamlined alternatives. It’s frustrating to see software that was at
one point at the top of the heap stagnate for so long; when phpBB 3.x
finally comes out, I’m sure it’ll be great, but what about the years in
between, when 2.x became obsolete and insecure? Alright, I’ve bitched
enough about that… moving on…

OverClocked ReMix’s site development philosophy centers around stability, gradual growth, and a consistent online presence.
We’ve been doing this for over six years, now, and we’ve never been
down for more than a couple weeks and have never gone more than a month
without posting something. We’ve constantly added incremental features,
rather than throwing the whole thing out and starting over, and I think
the permanence and cumulative momentum of this path is something we can
be proud of. There’ve been hiccups, rifts, layout additions that (ahem)
took some getting used to (cough… sidebar), but I don’t feel like
we’ve ever really tripped and stumbled. This may come off as an
implicit diss at another game remixing community, vgmix.com,
so I’ll just come right out and say that it’s not – there’s room on the
INTARWEB for two sites about game mixes, they’ve got a radically
different approach, and last I heard variety was a good thing.

Server migration and vBulletin weren’t the only developments in 2006,
of course. Far from it; here are some other items of interest, with
apologies to anything or anyone I’m missing:

In
addition to these highlights, we had judges and moderators come and go,
we improved site searchability, added a Wiki (with limited editors) for
better organized site information, some of us attended Video Games Live
in Philly and hung out with Tommy Tallarico and other game composers of
note, and special props should go out to Jill for coordinating many of
these events and to Larry Oji for improving the quality and accuracy of
our site database and guiding us through a second lockdown.

In a word, we grew. 2006 was phenomenal. Expecting 2007 to
be better would probably be optimistic, since many of these events
could only happen once in the history of the site. Also, it sounds
obvious, but throughout all these releases, additions, events, and
developments, we also did a little thing that happens to be why most of
you visit in the first place: we continued to post some amazing music from some very talented artists.

And now, some new business…

2007 will probably be a
less eventful year for OverClocked ReMix, at least from the perspective
of major site changes. We’ve got more powerful forums, we’ve got a
better server, we’ve got mirrors and we’ve got shirts and hoodies (or
had them, until they sold out… more on the way!!), so those issues
have been addressed. In talking about this year, I’m going to split my
comments into two sections. First, I’m gonna get all mushy and talk
about my personal life a bit. I rarely do this in these addresses, but
it’s pertinent… I think… and I feel like it warrants expressing.
Secondly, I’m gonna address some of our tangible plans for this year,
which is probably the more exciting stuff for most if not all of you.

How does a site like this come into existence? Better yet, not to pat
myself on the back, but how the hell does one dude who works for a
living find the time to administer it, develop it, participate in it,
and also create ReMixes of his own? I’m gonna try to make this the only
time I discuss this particular point about OCR, because if repeated
it’d sound dangerously close to emo whining and livejournal fodder.

Running this site has had a severe impact on my personal life.
Especially from 2000 to 2004, when I (arguably) should have been doing
a lot of things that most people in their early twenties do, I was
focusing an inordinate amount of time and energy here. In recent years
that’s changed and I’ve managed to reconcile having what most people
would call a life with running OCR, but that’s a four year dent that I
can’t get back, period. Do I want it back? If I could trade it for
everything OverClocked ReMix has come to represent, would I do it? I
think not. Nevertheless, in recent years I’ve focused on delegating
more, streamlining where possible, not getting overly involved in
dramarama and intersite/intrasite politics, and I’ve also gotten better
at software development and administration, which has reduced the
overall workload.

I still have plans for this site, some minor, some major, that still
require significant investments of my personal time and the time that
our site staff so graciously contribute, but more and more I’m also
making sure that I devote time to living my life. For the last couple
years, it’s been working out, and in recent months I’ve barely spent a
single weekend at home, as certain drunken IRC ramblings that were
unfortunately logged will testify to. The moral of this story is, while
I might be a little scarcer, I’m focusing on spending the time I do
have to work on OCR more effectively, and it’s been successful thus
far. I’d advise anyone that spends tons of time on personal projects or
other goals like OCR to take a step back every once in awhile; I don’t
regret the investments I’ve made, but I also don’t regret refocusing
and adjusting so I could spread things out a bit more.

(begin second, more specific, part)

That’s all rather relevant to one of the themes for 2007, which is
integration with some of the larger social networking sites on the
Internet, and other relevant services. Some of you may have noticed
that an additional field was added to your forum profile for storing a last.fm
username, if you have one. This is the first of many planned steps to
integrate not just last.fm, but other large networks, into OCR (and
vice versa), to whatever extent is possible. Plans include:

  • Prominent links to OCR groups on Facebook, MySpace, and Last.fm
  • Integration with various aspects of Last.fm’s data feeds and services
  • Additional user profile fields for other identities, such as Xbox Live gamertags, Wii numbers, etc.
  • Integrating forum threads with more areas of the site, potentially consoles, game series, etc.

These are all loosely coupled with the idea of making OC ReMix a bit more… social.
I’m not naive enough to think that adding these features will create a
stronger sense of community, more interaction, and an expanded user
base overnight, or even at all, but I do think they could potentially open up some new doors, and I’m interested in seeing where it all could go.

Another big goal is for OverClocked ReMix to be registered as an L.L.C.;
while this doesn’t mean much for the end user, it’s long overdue,
protects yours truly should we ever get into legal trouble, and will
pave the road for other developments by making me more comfortable with
our official status.

Of course, there are some fantastic site projects on the
horizon, more great mixes on the way, and we’ll continue to refine
aspects of the site that benefit from it – all of that’s almost a
given, but shouldn’t be taken for granted. The expansion of our site database
to include data not explicitly linked to individual ReMixes is also
something I’ve been toying with, that may or may not happen depending
on time constraints. A new release of Chipamp should definitely be expected, with support for even more formats. Bumper stickers may finally show up over at eStarland.

And… who knows? These are just a few of the ideas that I’ve got right
now. Feel free to chime in on this thread about how you think ’06 went,
what you think of our plans for ’07, and any specific
ideas you think would also be worth considering in the months to come.
As always, I’m grateful to have the privilege of running this site, and
thank each of you for your varying forms of participation and support.

Sincerely,

David W. Lloyd
President & Founder, OverClocked ReMix

NiGHTS to be on Wii?


I almost don’t want to write this story. The rumor that NiGHTS
is going to be reborn on the Wii has been going since before the Wii
was even called Wii. But there is now at least one nugget of
significant evidence that it may be happening. Go Nintendo
posted some scans of Official Nintendo Magazine that mention a “world
exclusive” scoop on the rebirth of a classic franchise. The picture in
the scan shows the stars, clearly outlining…something.

So Testicular Sound Express at NeoGAF (no relation) put together the scan with the cover art of NiGHTS to produce the following image. You decide for yourself.

Source: GAF

DOSBox 0.70 Released

The fine folks who put their blood, sweat and tears into creating the famous DOS emulator have recently released a new version! It has been a bit of a wait for this new release but lots of stuff has been added in this installment. If you find you can’t enjoy those old DOS classics on your computer, then this just might be the answer you’ve been looking for.
(taken from DOSBox official website)

  • Speed up the dynamic cpu core (certain games get much faster).
  • Added a dynamic fpu on x86 hosts.
  • Improved the cycle guessing code (and make it default).
  • Better and more configurable joystick support.
  • Improved the image and fat drives.
  • Added nullmodem emulation.
  • Various win 3.x enhanchments (video/audio/ems/win32s).
  • Improved CDROM detection and support.
  • Speed up the screen drawing code.
  • Added support for different keyboard layouts.
  • Various fixes to the (C/E/V)GA emulation.
  • Extended and improved all types of emulated memory. (umb/ems/xms)
  • Dynamic core should work on Intel Macs.
  • Various timer related fixes.
  • Added a few more graphic scalers.

Some default settings have been changed in this one so be sure to update your configfiles and read the readme.

Check it out here!

OS News: French Parliament, Linspire adopt Ubuntu

This happened a little while ago, but thanks to the guys at Slashdot I was informed that Linspire was making a switch to use Ubuntu as it’s base instead of the traditional Debian distribution. Currently, Freespire 2.0 is slated to debut during the first quarter after the release of Ubuntu 7.04, codenamed Feisty Fawn, this April.

Also in Ubuntu news, the French Parliament has decided that they will replace Windows with the popular OS. It had been announced late last year that they were going to migrate, but had not decided on which distribution they would be using.
Thanks to Slashdot.

Linspire’s Press Release about the migration
Ubuntu’s post about the French switch (contains links to the original post on ZDNet and the news posts on ZDNet.fr and latribune.fr for those who can read french)
/. post about the French switch (who doesn’t enjoy reading slashdot commentary?)

New Spore Videos

About a year ago, we took a look at Will Wright’s latest project, “Spore” – and this video was already a year old. At one point we were hearing release dates as early as Fall 2006; six months later, we’re still no closer to seeing an actual release date.
However, at GDC 2007, there’s at least some new video. The following is a compilation of six short gameplay segments demonstrated recently.

Miyamoto: Violence is Killing Video Games

During the GDC in San Francisco, the venerable Shigeru Miyamoto said that developers should resist the temptation to rely on shock content such as extreme violence, revenge, or simply just horror, and the sequels which are a direct result of the big sales such games create.
“I always want that first reaction to be emotion, to be positive – to
give a sense of satisfaction, glee,” Miyamoto said. “Certain obstacles
may temporarily raise feelings of suspense, competition, even
frustration. But we always want that final result, that final emotion,
to be a positive one.”

The respected game maker’s comments are seemingly at odds with an industry that seems to sell itself to what would seem to be a niche market, yet the increasingly violent games only gain more popularity as they are villified by the “outsiders:” politicians, pundits, and parents.

I’m not certain what exactly Miyamoto is trying to say, whether violent games are inherently bad (no more Metal Gear Solid?), or whether it’s the proliferation of violence as the medium for which games are to be sold. Certainly, the Metal Gear series is quite violent, but the violence is not rewarded; indeed, the player is chastised later in the game for killing people needlessly. To contrast this, many games designed and developed in the United States tend to reward needless killing: in Mortal Kombat the player is awarded with a gory graphics fest when he performed a Fatality death move, in the Grand Theft Auto series players could kill pedestrians and steal the money they drop. Is this a strictly cultural argument, or is there something a bit deeper to the problem? Or is there a problem at all?

Read on The Australian.