MIDI Week Singles: "Haunted Chase" - Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (SNES)

"Haunted Chase" from Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1995)

Composer: Dave Wise

Album: Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest - The Original Donkey Kong Country 2 Soundtrack

Label: Nintendo of America

Developer: Rare

I figured that since Halloween happens to fall on a Wednesday, I would use a song from the appropriately scary game from that horrific year of 23 years ago, 1995.  Okay, so '95 was not that bad from what I remember, but I loved the idea of using this song for today's posting.  But the level this comes from in Donkey Kong Country 2 does involve a ghost, and it is a mine cart-esque level so that is pretty scary in and of itself.

If you immediately write off "Haunted Chase" by David (Dave) Wise as being a bad parody or attempt at cashing in on Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" then you are going to be missing a great track from soundtrack.  Sure the intro is very much "Night on Bald Mountain" and there are elements and homages speckled throughout the rest of the song, but the song also managed to inject the piratey element that runs through most of the songs in the game.

The only real thing missing from this track, is the sound of enchanted wooden doors that are kapable of holding back the ghostly skeleton of a Kremling.  Along with the grinding sound of the wheels on the track and the jumping and subsequent klanging sound as the kart hits the tracks again.  I guess what I just need to do is watch someone play the level.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

First Impressions: Paladins: Champions of the Realm (NS)

I feel like at this point, after having spent 5 hours playing Paladins: Champions of the Realm on the Nintendo Switch, that I am only somewhat capable of writing about this game.  Although I have no real way of determining how many of those 5 hours was spent in loading screens or waiting for the timer to countdown while I customized my champion.  So maybe 4 hours?

If you are anything like me, you may not have even heard about P:CotR before it was announced that it would be released on the Switch during Summer 2018.  In short, each player picks a character (of which there can only be one on each team) and you attempt to kill the enemy team as frequently as possible (since you respawn after being killed) while also achieving some other objective; if your objective is not already to kill the other team as much as possible.  Each Champion comes with their own weapon, skills, and additional abilities.  One of the core components that allow this game to function without issue, is that you are supposed to be able to play a character for free and not be at a real significant disadvantage than someone who has purchased a Battle Pass (or whatever they are called in this game).

Well, after playing a 2-3 matches a day, off and on, for a couple of weeks, I can say that I do not feel like P:CotR is really my thing.  Yet, I continued to play it for at least a week more.  Why?  I actually do not have an answer beyond feeling compelled to do so, possibly hoping that the game grows on me.  But so far it really has yet to do so.

As Grover, I would usually get the Best Support award.

One of these reasons I feel that the game has not stuck with me, is that I tend to like to play Support characters.  These are the characters that will typically hold back, not deal a lot of damage, but instead heal their teammates.  When I sometimes play Team Fortress 2, half of the time I will end up playing the Medic, Engineer, or sometimes Pyro.  My aim, even when playing with mouse/keyboard has never been that great, so playing a Damage or Flanker never really leads to as many kills as other players who are much more proficient than I.

So the handful of times that the team I get assigned and someone already chooses to be the Support character, I will try to fill an empty roll (which thankfully the game tells you as characters are being chosen), which is not an issue for me.  I guess I am supporting the team by not picking another Support character, but I am not upset at not playing my preferred class.  What does upset me is when the person playing Support runs ahead of everyone else, or tries to act like a Frontline and goes full-bore against the other team, getting them selves killed so quickly that their special traits become useless.  On a similar note, when playing Support, I expect that some team members might actually try to protect me.  Instead, they are running all over the place while I am sitting there trying to hold my own in the one spot in the map that needs to be guarded in order for us to win the match.

Trying to approach the Onslaught Holding Area Didn't Turn Out Too Well.

Which brings up another thing.  In two of the modes, Siege, and Onslaught, your team is required to hold an area for a determined amount of time/points.  In Siege, this held area turns into a cart that you have to move by being in close proximity to it (it follows its own path and is essentially on rails) until it arrives near the enemy spawning zone and then you win that round.  Easily half of the Siege games I have played, the other people on my team seem more focused on hunting down the other team than trying to protect the cart spawning area.

Maybe this is because I do not have voice chat activated?  Maybe they do not realize what they are supposed to be doing to win that match?  Maybe they do have voice chat activated and are hunting down the enemy who said something about their Mom?  But no.  Because in the team shooting games I have played (of which I can count on one foot), communication is primarily possible between team members and not all of the other nine people you are playing with and against.

Whatever the reason is behind my frustrations with the game, coupled with my inability to actually be good, I think I might be done with Paladins: Champions of the Realm for now.  Or maybe for good.  Only time will tell.  Or if I delete it off of the Switch, unless of course Conklederp decides to take up the mantle for our house.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I Had to do Some Self Atonement

MIDI Week Singles: "Player Select" - Major League Baseball (NES)

"Player Select" from Major League Baseball on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1988)

Composers: Tsukasa Masuko

Album: No Official Release

Developer: Atlus

Today is day two of the 2018 World Series, and since we do not want to get sued here at Stage Select Start (and not at all because this post might have been written before the first game was played), we are not going to mention the outcome of last night's first game of the series.  But woo boy was that one play a doozey, but go Dodgers! 

I decided to use "Player Select" from the 1988 NES game Major League Baseball, partly because it was the only baseball game that I owned on the NES, but also because there really is not a whole lot of music in this game.  I spent a lot of time in the late '80s and early '90s frequently play as the Los Angeles Dodgers, unless I wanted to play in the American League, and then I would play as the Toronto Blue Jays because they had (at least) two players on their team who had batting averages above .400.  And playing the All Star Game, I would always play as the American League because they seemed to have rosters of better batters and pitchers compared to the National League.  I guess I could look at the 1987 stats to see if there was any truth to this theory I had.  

Being a somewhat simplistic baseball game, I think the only reason to enter the player select screen apart from choosing your roster at the start of the game was to swap out pitchers when they started slowing down, or to bring in a pinch hitter.  That was when this song would play, and even now looking at the player select screen and hearing this music brings back all kinds of good childhood memories, of apparently playing a video game by myself in front of the TV and trying to ignore my family.

Ahhh, good ol' nostaglia, and isn't that why baseball is America's past time?

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

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Book Review: "Ready Player One" - Ernest Cline

I actually finished reading Ready Player One a number of months ago, maybe sometime after the first of this year.  I wanted to finish reading it before the movie came out because based on what generalities I had heard about the book and story, they had me interested enough to want to see the movie before I had even started reading the book. 

Now, in order to spare you reading an entire article to find out how I really felt about Ernest Cline's praised story of one forlorn in life and love in a race against The Man, I should probably just tell you what I thought before we go any further.

I did not like Ready Player One.  And there are going to be spoilers, so y'all've been warned.

What I did not like about the story, was that, at least to me, it was about a boy (or a young pre-adult teen) who manages to develop no real self identity and instead has modeled all of his likes and dislikes off of the developer (James Hallidy) of a massive online virtual world/interface called the OASIS.  There is no development on this front for our main character Wade Watts aka Parzival.  He is essentially the same character at the beginning that he ended up being at the end.  I admit that he is a very smart, intelligence-wise character and his ability to learn, adapt and retain knowledge from  movies and playing various types of video games is impressive.  However, I found him to also be a self absorbed entitled male character whom I wanted to shake by his hairless shoulders yelling at him to get over himself.  When he can't understand that the female personality/avatar that he meets in the OASIS (whom he has already fantasized as an online personality before actually meeting her) is not romantically interested in him, he becomes angry, aggressive, and secludes himself away, deducing that all of the effort he put into pursuing his love interest was a worthless waste of time.  In the end, the two characters end up meeting in real life, she's afraid that he will shun her for what she sees as her physical deformity.  He doesn't, and they fall in love.  Just like he always wanted.  But he's the good guy because he is able to look beyond what she sees as a negative aspect of herself?  Is that really taking the high ground and Art3mis should be thankful that this a guy who is able to look beyond her deformity?  I'm going to stop this line of thought now because I could just run myself in circles.

Another story element that bothered me, was the deus ex machina part that came near the end of the book, because of course this book would use this type of literary device.  Now, I am not against this as a plot device as long as it makes sense and does not seem to come out of nowhere and is written well.  Aragorn showing up at Minas Tirith with an army of the dead could be seen as one, as well as the Eagles rescuing Frodo and Sam from the slopes of Mt. Doom.  In Ready Player One, it was used when it seemed all hope was lost due to a series of unfortunate events, Parzival and his group are nearly on their way out from completing the main objective in the story.  Then co-creator of the OASIS, who is somewhat of a wealthy recluse (and mentioned a few times earlier in the story), flies in and offers all of our hero characters a wealth of resources at his private estate that helps them to be the winners, becoming the new owners of the VR world.  What irritated me was that any risk the characters had going up against the mega corporation IOI was immediately dashed when Ogden Morrow shows up.  Any feeling of struggle or loss was completely negated for me, which made the final victory seem all the more hollow and meaningless.

The other thing that really irritated me about the book was that it seemed like it was written with the idea of referencing anything having to do with geek or nerd culture from the 1970-2000.  Fewer than five pages into the book, I felt that if the rate at which various aspects of pop-geek culture were being referenced, I would be very tired of it by the end.  In American Psycho, which is an altogether very different book, Bret Easton Ellis used a lot of pop and high culture references, but he managed to do it in a way that made sense for the character's mind and by the time I finished the book and started in on whatever book I was reading next, I legitimately wanted to know what brand of clothes the characters were wearing or what brand of alcohol they were drinking and why it should only be drunk straight and never mixed.  Most of the time, it felt like something was being referenced just for the sake of it as opposed to it having some kind of impact on the story, and that was something that I felt was difficult for me to look past.

The most enjoyable part of the book for me, I recently found out was left out of the movie entirely, which almost makes me 85.47% less interested in actually getting around to watching the film despite like Stephen Spielberg directing and Alan Silvestri's music.  Although maybe I will just so I can have something else to complain about?  In the book, Parzival discovers that one of his goals lies within a life size rendering of the Tomb of Horrors, which is an original Dungeons & Dragons quest written and published by Gary Gygax back in 1978.  I have read through the module a number of times, but admittedly have never played it.  Having parts of this quest in the book was pretty exciting, like reading someone playing a D&D quest that you happen to know.  Granted I do not know the quest front-and-back, but seeing this in an non-D&D book I was reading was pretty cool.

And I think that is where a lot of the excitement for this book and its continued support comes from.  There were times when one of Ernest Cline's references hit me hard in the nostalgia feels, but for me, I felt that a lot of the attempts to create real nostalgia felt disingenuous and often forced.  Because I do not have the book in front of me, I cannot cite any specific examples, but at the same time, how do you quote a passage from a book and have that lack of feeling come across?  And at the same time, these are just my words, and for all I know, they may be just as lacking.

The better late than never tl:dr (or if you missed the short third paragraph), is that while there were some elements that I liked in the book, such as a few of the references, and even the world that was created (which I wish had been explored more outside of the OASIS), they did not stand up to all of the things that I did not like about Ready Player One.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "Stage Theme: Dr. Jekyll" - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (NES)

"Stage Theme: Dr. Jekyll" from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1989)

Composer: Michiharu Hasuya

Album: No Official Release

Developer: Advance Communication Co.

Another game that I have never played, but piqued my interest during my #AllTheNESMusic days.  I can recall seeing the box art at Placer, but never even thought of renting the game as I had no knowledge of the story aside from it existing.  Plus the cover art is, well. . ., it is just kind of weird, especially to a 10 year old kid who is looking to see if Mega Man III has been released yet or not.

While not necessarily spooky, which is something that we sometimes like to aim for in the month of October, it is quirky and kind of odd, and by that perspective, potentially unsettling.  Perhaps fitting for the mind of Dr. Jekyll?  Something simmering there below the surface that might crop up at any time to take control and. . .kill bees apparently; again, I have not played the game but from what I have read, you can kill bees with your cane while as Mr. Hyde.

Remember kids, bees are our friends.  Don't be like Mr. Hyde, on more than one level.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

We Are Living in the Future

The other day I was walking through the local massive mall (massive in that it is two stories and has apparently upwards of 169 stores) and noticed something that was both confusing and amusing at the same time.  It was something that I had only seen in both anime series and live action cyberpunk-esque stories.  It was a VR arcade.  A VRcade?  I do not know/remember what the store was called, and as I just looked at a map of the mall, the space it occupies is unlabeled, like some mystical Dr. Who pop up shop; that may not be an accurate reference as I have only seen sporadic scenes from the entirety of Dr. Who.

The point is, there I was, walking through the mall and see something out of Blade Runner or A.I. Artificial Intelligence.  The room itself was carpeted all in black, with either black lights or green lights set up as the primary source of illumination.  The people running this VRcade were all in black too.  There was one person actively engaging with the set up, and they were in a reclining, low-to-the-floor chair with a screen in front of them despite the headset they were wearing, along with one person who was sitting on a couch behind all of this action putzing on their phone.  I presume the screen was there for friends of the person playing, for the workers of the shop, and presumably for any passerby like myself.  What this was not was a private and secluded cubby/pod where you could watch/play whatever you wanted.

Now, I do not know what was being played, but whatever it was looked like a custom game that you may not be able find on the PlayStation Store or Steam.  The poster that was on the outside wall looked like you had one of two options to play.  A not too violent first person shooter and a walking sim puzzle game maybe?  Again, I was viewing this from over a dozen yards away, while moving as I did not feel like stopping to see what was going on, mainly because I did not want to be approached and have someone talk to me about something that I did not have time to engage in.  I also do not really like talking to strangers out in public, so there was that too.

And despite a tone that I may accidentally have taken, I do not want to come across as shaming either the person playing in the VR set up, the friend "watching" from the couch behind them, or the people working the shop.  I was just mainly taken aback by what I had previously only seen in movies and to a much lesser extent, in cheaply taped and stanchioned barriers at the local AT&T Wireless stores or even Fry's (if Fry's is still a thing).

I do not know.  Maybe I am overthinking things, partly because I am reading Neuromancer by William Gibson right now?  Either way, coming across this still amused me.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
But I See A New Light

MIDI Week Singles: "Restoring the Light, Facing the Dark" - Ori and the Blind Forest (PC)

"Restoring the Light, Facing the Dark" from Ori and the Blind Forest on the PC, Xbox One (2015)

Composer: Gareth Coker

Album: Ori and the Blind Forest (Original Soundtrack)

Label: Microsoft Studio Music

Developer: Moon Studios

This is the second time we have featured Gareth Coker's score from Ori and the Blind Forest, but this time around, it is a different theme altogether.  I actually got around to playing this soundtrack while at work since I will usually play orchestral music, which some people in the office tend to like more than top 40.  So, while playing this soundtrack, I was away from my desk and could still hear the music, and I heard one of my coworkers humming along to this theme.  And this track happens pretty late in the soundtrack, so I know that by that point it was already somewhat stuck in her head.

As was the case three years ago when Dr. Potts first featured "Naru and Embracing the Light," I still have not gotten around to playing Ori and the Blind Forest, but actually sitting down and listening to this music has only strengthened that desire.

But as for this song in particular, I like the transformation the song goes through.  It starts out really strong and sounds like it is about to go into a Final Fantasy-esque boss battle theme, but then at nearly 30 seconds, you get this wonderfully beautiful piano melody with backing strings that basically runs the rest of the song.

I really should get around to playing this game.  On my computer, because it's a Microsoft property and will never see its way to the Switch.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

Monthly Update: October 2018

September ended up being a slightly different month gaming-wise than I had originally thought, with games that I had played a couple of years ago coming back into the fray, a game that over the last 10 weeks had spent over 100 hours playing, and games that I do think I had every previously played before.  Board games have not really been happening though, but out Facebook Dungeons & Dragoning has seen a couple of updates each week which has progressed the story in a way that I have been very happy with, including one accidental event that I may actually take time to write about here if I could find a way to have in make sense in written form for those not familiar either with D&D or our group.

Around the beginning of September, Vorlynx and his family came up to visit, partly because we live up here, but also because he was filling in on bass for a friends' band that was playing up in Washington.  While up, I introduced him and Chreekat to the pre-alpha release of TABS, aka Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, which I had not really tooled around with for quite some time.  After that, and to continue with the hilarity that comes with video games and beer, I showed them Rock of Ages, which we played all the way up to the Renaissance and then were not able to build up our defenses fast enough, and avoid the wrath of the War Pope.  The following evening, saw Streets of Rage 2 being pulled up on the Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics client on Steam, which I had never before played, much to the chagrin of 2004 Retro Gamer editors.  After making through a number of stages, I downloaded the Battletoads mod so we played up until the Turbo Tunnels, but trying to get through that one two players is some other kind of difficult.

I am now solidly in the middle of Dead Space 3, and this time around, I have become paranoid about building the best gun that I can without consulting the Internet for advice, although I know I could just pop over to the Dead Space subreddit and get a lungful of advice.  I think I want something similar to Ripley's pulse rifle/flame thrower from Aliens, but I just need to find the right parts and attachments to make it do what I want.  I am still very sad about Visceral Games, but I think after Dead Space, I will do another runthrough of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and write about it here after a nearly 8 year absence from that game.

With the end of September saw the end of Season 5 of Fortnite, and the start of Season 6.  I decided that I would not purchase the Season 6 Battle Pass even though I had more than enough V Bucks to cover the cost without spending any real money (that's what happens when you Scrooge McDuck your V Bucks by not spending any of them during the entire season.  I figured that I would hold off playing Fortnite as much as I did last season, if only to give my brain a rest and focus more on games that I bought, like Battle Chasers: Nightwar.  I feel like I am making a final push to finish that game, which has been a real blast and will definitely garner a Game EXP article by the end of the month.  That being said, I did replace Fortnite with Paladins - Champions of the Realm for my free game of the month.  I may get around to talking a bit about Paladins, but at the moment, I do not see myself putting as much time into that as I did with Fortnite.  Maybe Arena of Valor next month?

For future game releases, I am really looking forward to the 19th, which is still the tentative release date for Dark Souls on the Switch.  Presently, I and very much considering doing a Deprived run, partly because I want the challenge, but mainly because I love the idea of fully customizing my character into whatever I want them to be.  Although I am honestly not looking forward to the Asylum Demon fight.  And for games that I will have to wait longer to play, there is The Evil Within, which I recently discovered had a playable demo on Steam.  What I also discovered was that my computer maxed out at 10 fps and would frequently play at a fluctuating 8-9 fps, which is genuinely not playable at that state.  I could play through if there were occasional dips down to 10, but when the starting area is consistently at 8-9, before anything begins attacking you, you know you are going to have a bad time.

And D&D as mentioned earlier in the month, has been progressing better than I could have expected, which is what I already said.  But it is progressing in a more input laden manner than I had intended, but that is something that I am perfectly okay with.  In the current event, I gave the PCs a description of what was happening as well as a list of 'choose one' options.  However, being the group that I love, they voted, but then added comments in order to help further color the encounter.  As each person commented, I replied with how I felt the interaction would go, figuring that this was only a few seconds before I had the event proceed to its next step, which will probably happen tomorrow, October 2nd.

Why don't we leave it there for our look back at September and glimpse ahead to October?  There will be plenty of time to talk as the month progresses.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Won't You Please Follow Me?