My oh my. I'm not the #1 blogger in the world, am I?

Yup. It's been like a year since the last time I blogged something here. Maybe I'm too busy procrastinating on Twitter.. Maybe I'm just playing video games TOO DAMN MUCH!! Or maybe I just have a so called "life". Who knows right?? I certainly don't have a clue what happened.

But you.. Yes, YOU! The two people who ever read anything I blogged here!You deserve better. So here goes. My first post in hundreds of days!!

I'm hereby naming this post: The Post Because Why Not.

I kind of wanted to post something about my views on the numerous issues related to human rights right now. But that wouldn't be so great cause, to be frank, I'm not so good at arguing on stuff in english. I'm much much much better at it in my good old french language. Let me just say that I long for the time when humans will only view others as humans.. not as men/women/black people/white people/muslims/christians/etc/etc/etc. Over categorizing is one of the biggest problems society has, me thinks. Everything needs to have a sticker glued on it. Kind of sick of that.

But hey, I said I wouldn't talk about that so here goes!!! Let me just talk about something related to what I tweeted today. Chrono Trigger Symphony!! As you may know, this is the last volume of a series of three that Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra is doing (see http://syntheticorchestra.bandcamp.com/). It is a fully reorchestrated soundtrack of the game. So I kinda decided to talk about Chrono Trigger. And I know I know. I'm talking about games again. SHOCKING!!!

Well, as some of you may know, Chrono Trigger happens to be one of the most important video games ever made. It literally was made by a dream team:  Hironobu Sakaguchi, producer and creator of the Final Fantasy series; Yuji Horii, director and creator of the Dragon Quest series; and Akira Toriyama, famous manga artist and creator of the Dragon Ball series who also worked on Dragon Quest. I mean, are you even seeing this so often nowadays? It was a HUGE achievement.

And this was in 1995, mind you. The goden days of the so called "console wars". The days when consoles didn't had games that were composed of 80% cross platform games. Enix and Squaresoft had been huge competitors for years at that time. Both Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy had been a huge success. But then, we got on one console, a game created by some of the biggest names in japanese video game history. This was obviously an insanely HUGE game at the time.

What made the game special was arguably it's visual style, it's combat system, it's time traveling mechanics and how it drove the story. Yes, it was an amazing game alright. But I think that it wouldn't have been such a classic now if it's soundtrack didn't sound that amazing. Composed largely by Yasunori Mitsuda (Nobuo Uematsu did ten or so tracks btw), the soundtrack really stood the test of time. It is a soundtrack that has personnality and strong emotionnal themes. You only need to hear a couple of tracks to understand how this soundtrack made history.

Chrono Trigger had everything and the music was awesome. "Memorable" is the best word to describe the game. I played it when I was 17 years of age, I believe. And playing it today is a very different experience. There are moments in the game I find more sad today. Like the moment when Lavos crashes down to the planet, destroying the reptite race (and making it possible for the apes to become the dominant species on the planet). As a grown man playing the game on my DS, I found that moment to be genuinely sad.

I'm gonna end this post with my usual sharing of awesome game music! Here is my little selection of favorite tracks from the soundtrack. What an amazing soundtrack right?? Feel free to hook me up on twitter if you wanna talk about the game!! @sly16bit is the account name you'll be looking for! See ya later folks! (hopefully in less than a year this time around... oh and don't forget to check out Chrono Trigger Symphony here!! )

I hope you enjoyed my little post! 'til next time!

Tribute to Mega Man 2 (sorta)

As some of you may know, today Mega Man 2 was released on Nintendo 3DS virtual console. How could I pass the chance to do a little blog about that game? This game is probably one of the most important games in gaming history. As far as NES games go, it was a perfect mixture of gameplay, graphics, sound and music. The game was tough but not as unforgiving as it's predecessor. It featured varied stages, enemies and music all the way through. It may not seem to be such a deal nowadays but back then, variety wasn't so common in games. Mega Man 2 definitely stood out as a video game. It was an experience like no other.

Now.. since that is a blog post by me, I'm gonna talk about the music of this game. The soundtrack of this game was, and still is, one of the most memorable soundtracks in video game history. It's a soundtrack that stuck in the minds of the people who played that game over and over again to overcome it's numerous challenges. Obviously, this spawned a lot of covers/remixes over the years and here are a couple of the best ones I can think of right now.

First of all, mister Mega Beardo (@megabeardo on twitter) did an amazing tribute album to Mega Man 2. You can look up this great album on bandcamp here. For those of you who simply don't feel like clicking the link and experience all the awesomeness of this album, here's a shining example of why you should:

This my friends, is what I'm talking about. This isn't the only example of great tributes artists have done to Mega Man 2's insanely good soundtrack over the years. Numerous rock covers were done by bands like The Advantage, NESkimos, Arm Cannon, Minibosses and more. Some bands also made live covers of the game's soundtrack. Bit Brigade did just that and you just HAVE to check that one out:

Chiptune remixes were also done by numerous artists (like A_Rival, djpretzel, Project X.. just to name a few). A number of theme can be found on OCRemix. I could go on about the OCRemix stuff but I'll leave that for other blog posts.

As much as I love the covers and remixes that were done for this game, the original music remains the main attraction for me. I find myself listening to it time and time again! Can't get bored of this! Anyway, just wanted to write a little something in honor of this great game which, no doubt, helped shaped gaming as it is today. Here's Bubble Man's theme and Dr. Wily's Castle theme from the game. Just cause you know.. You have to end a blog post in style right? Here you go then:

The huge, heartwarming world of video game music remixes

Video games used to be all about colored pixels and miniature sounds here and there. Then there were those old 8-bit systems which added much needed music in games. Music I love even today, 25 years later. The music of these games.. I always thought they had personality. Real personality! Then there were the 16-bit systems.. and oh my god did these sound good to my ears!! That's when the fire started to spread inside me. The fascination for the work of all those composers who managed to put so much personality in music tracks that were meant to play on admittedly very limited sound hardware.

When I was in college, I marveled at that new thing I could access through my computer which I believe was called.. the internet or something like that. Oh the possibilities!! And yet, most of what I did with the said internet at that time was to search for music.. video game music to be precise! A couple of years later, I stumbled into that new site, OCRemix. There I could download free MP3 remixes of games I loved in the past, old (mostly) but also new. Oh the great music I got to listen to at that site over the years! That's why I wanted to post a couple of OCRemix tracks that had a lot of impact on me over the years. Some of these I actually listen to since late 1999, early 2000.

Here goes!! The first track I want to share is one made by AmIEvil in 2000. This track made me fall off my chair when I first listened to it really.. I thought it perfectly captured the spirit of the source material, which is the variation of Terra's Theme in FFVI that was played at the beginning of the game in that scene with the Magitek Armors marching towards the city of Narshe.

The second track I want to share is actually still one of my favorite remixes even today. This one is a remix of music from Earthbound. Yeah THAT game which we're never gonna play again except if 1) you already own it or 2) you're ready to drop an insane amount of money for the game on Ebay. Rellik did that remix back in 2004 actually. For some reason, this track sends me in a strange state of mind.. It's like it's imprisoning me inside my mind for a couple of minutes. A very nice remix that is!

Last one for now, I wanted to share that track from Dj Redlight. A remix of music from Final Doom made in 2004 as well. Talk about a really moody remix! I listened to this one a lot at work and enjoyed it more and more every time. Enjoy!

Hope you enjoyed those few tracks! I plan on posting more of these in the coming days/months/years/who knows. I also plan on sharing original game music from old times to today. See you next time!

Retro's good!!

Ever since I heard from this game, I was intrigued to try it out! The concept just seemed so addictive to me since I'm kind of a nostalgic kind of gamer. At first I thought that those "fake" classic NES games could be boring to play but I'm quite pleased with them so far! Cosmic Gate et Robot Ninja Haggle Man are pretty fun and the challenges of the game master are cool to do. I'll play more of the game for sure!

OH. MY. GOD.

I recently bought my first real HD TV this week and I'm floored by the upgrade in picture quality for my beloved 360! All the detail just pops right out of the screen.. INSANE!!

Just wanted to say.

My Love for Dismemberment

Just baught this sweet game and I must say that I absolutely love the blood! I haven't played a lot yet (cause the Lich King has too much power over me), but I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into it. I loved the first one on XBox so I'm looking forward to a fun, rewarding and very challenging adventure. Ryu ftw!!