MIDI Week Singles: "Pond of La" - Elfaria II: The Quest of the Meld (SFC)

 

"Pond of La" from Elfaria II: The Quest of the Meld on the Super Famicom (1995)
Composer: Yukihide Takekawa
Album: No Official Release
Publisher/Developer: Hudson Soft / Red

Half going off of our last two articles and half because I did not have anything immediately in the queue for this week, I thought I would use a track from a game that is pretty difficult to find information about, such as who the developer was, who the producer was, and what Susumu Matsushita Company had to do with it all.

Like so many articles where we feature music that we have not played, I have zero context for La's Pond, where it appears in this JRPG from Hudson Soft, who I would feel somewhat comfortable saying were not known for their JRPGs, although since this game was only released on the Super Famicom in Japan, that could be part of the explanation.  I could see this music being in part played specifically at La's Pond and during other emotional moments during the game, as none of the other tracks (that I can recall) hit this level of serenity.  And while this song comes across as almost painfully mid-90s JRPG, I do really enjoy the music as it really reminds me of why I love that era of JRPGs on the SNES.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

More Thoughts About Media Preservation

 

Last Friday we talked a bit about video game preservation in regards to the 3DS and Wii U eShop's closing (to new purchases), and where that leaves people who came late to the consoles/games that are no longer actively distributed.  This is obviously not a video game only problem as the same could be said for any form of media from written music, previously performed music, movies, TV shows (including streaming), licensed toys (specifically Super Mario LEGO sets), and even content for apps that are no longer in existence.  What inspired me to write this snippet of an article was a recent search for a book after having watched Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Without going too much into spoilers (the movie is only 63 days old), the Red Wizards of Thay feature in the movie and both Conklederp and The Kid asked me about this group and region as they both have played D&D (pen and paper, and video games) and were not familiar with them.  While I have never played a game (either p&p or vg) that heavily featured them, I have read about them being referenced in books and modules.  I knew that they were an arcanecratic (as their historical system of government revolved around magic and typically those who were the most powerful magic users were its leaders, and they had a lot to do with liches) government, that they were typically depicted as being evil and that the wizards, more often than not, wore red robes.  In a quest, I wrote that our group played, I did have the initial antagonist (or at least who the PCs perceived to be the antagonist until the BBEG, who was entirely unconnected, was revealed in the closing act) formally be a Red Wizard of Thay until a magical mishap occurred, but that was all character backstory for myself that was never revealed to the PCs.

While thinking about Thay, I realized that I had never actually read a book or played a game that took place in Thay or heavily featured a Red Wizard of Thay.  So I looked up The Forgotten Realms Fandom page to find out which books/modules featured the Red Wizards.  That was how I found out about "Red Magic," written by Jean Rabe in 1991, being the earliest chronological book to feature the Red Wizards.  So I looked up the book on my Library's webpage, both in physical and digital format, and it was not available.  So my next step was to check Amazon's Kindle store, and again, the book was not available in Kindle format, but I could buy a used copy varying between $6.07 - $37.78.  Even Google Books tells me that there is no known eBook version of this particular book, which does not make as much sense to me because books 1, 2, and 4 (as well as others) in The Harpers Series are available, but not the specific one I am looking for.  Just my luck, I know.

Now, if I am going to buy a used book, I would rather visit one of the likely hundreds of bookstores in the PDX metro area and I have one specific bookstore in mind, but a lot of these bookstores do not have searchable inventories, so the hunt for a physical copy of "Red Magic" will take time and in the end, however much I want to pay for the book depending on its condition.  Or I could buy the one copy from Powell's which is located in Cedar Hills for $4.95 (not including s/h).

Again, this brings up the conversation of preservation.  I am not a person who is looking to buy a copy of "Red Magic" to build out my collection of 2nd Edition AD&D novels, but just a person who wants to read the story in this book.  I have been able to request that my local library "order" books, but this one is not one that I can do that with, likely because there is not an eBook version of "Red Magic."  One of the conclusions reached by this lack of media preservation (especially media that has not yet entered the public domain, which varies depending on the country you are in, usually 50-75 years after the death of the author) is left to third party entities such as the Video Game History Foundation and the Internet Archive.  Although both of these resources are limited by the formats allowed to the media, where the VGHF might have a harder time preserving digital-only releases when digital storefronts are no longer in service, and digital libraries if no digital copies exist apart from scanned images of the book to a PDF file.  In both cases, there could be the risk of unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted material, which again brings us back to the public domain.

This is where my thought process on this topic ended as I did not go out to make a larger statement about media preservation or strive to solve the conundrum of what to do when a form/type of media becomes no longer available and the question of what happens to that media in the future.  All I have are more questions, some of which I brought up in Monday's article.  Just more things to think about as I decide if I want to add all 18 books from The Harpers Series to my reading list, and how many of those books already cross-pollinate with series that I am already reading, all before I rerererereplay Baldur's Gate (again).

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Thinking About Discontinued Systems, Storefronts, and Video Game Preservation

Following the closing to new purchases from the 3DS and Wii U eShops and picking up a handful of digital games (and a few physical ones), I have recently run into a bit of a self-imposed moral dilemma when it comes to writing articles about the games that I am playing on both those newly semi-discontinued systems.

I recently (as in Thursday, May 18th) finished Metroid: Samus Returns on the 3DS and found that writing about this game is difficult for two reasons.  First, the game was released six years ago, and being the first fully side-scrolling Metroid game since Metroid Fusion was released 15 years earlier, there are over 1.5 million hits when you search for the game.  People were excited, to say the least when this game was released.  Secondly, it is for a system that as recently as three months ago, is no longer available to buy unless you decide to pay increasingly higher and higher prices from scalpers and collectors looking to lighten their collections.  So writing this from the perspective of someone playing the game within the last six months for the first time ever, how do I approach that?  Do I still recommend the game to people who can afford to shell out the money for physical copies while snidely poo-pooing the people who can no longer buy a digital copy of the game?  Do I advocate the downloading of ROMs because the game is no longer available on actively supported consoles?

This is the question I have unintentionally posed to myself as I look at the games in my queue.  But then at the same time, would I feel the same way if I decided to go back and play Paperboy 2 or Star Trek: The Next Generation on the Game Boy, two games that are no longer available on that specific platform unless you go out and find the cartridges.  Or download ROMs and play on emulated software.  I think a lot of it boils down to the fact that the eShop for the 3DS and Wii U closed fewer than six months ago, whereas the last "official" Game Boy games were released in Japan on March 30, 2001.  That was 22 years ago.  

And now again, we find ourselves in the realm of game history and preservation, to which I do not have a fully-fledged out answer.

Part of me is in support of emulating software to be able to play games on consoles and systems that are no longer in production and the only way to play "legitimate" versions of those games is to have the original hardware and the original cartridge/CD/floppy disc.  I have even reviewed games here that I have played through software emulation.  Hell, we even have "Emulator Hour" as a not-all-too-often recurring series here, which essentially just means that we are playing a game not on the original system it was released on, be it a ROM or an official port.  And then what is the window for game emulation to be "okay?"  Is it within 24 hours of a system and/or its games being discontinued?  Should it be "okay" to emulate any and all 3DS games as of 12:00 AM on March 28th?  Should it be a year after that system is no longer supported as there might still be copies of new and non-purchased games still in circulation from non-3rd party retailers.  What is the acceptable window or time frame?  At what point do Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony no longer receive any kind of money from games after a system is discontinued and new physical games are no longer being purchased or sold?

I obviously do not have any of the answers to those questions because I am just a guy sitting at a desk in an office building wondering about these things while on my lunch break.  If I am lucky, I will have reread this article two more times before publishing it on Friday.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Do Your Best

MIDI Week Singles: "Warning" - 3D Tetris (NVB)

 

"Warning" from 3D Tetris on the Nintendo Virtual Boy (1996)
Composer: Ken Kojima
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer:T&E Soft

Music that plays before a game even gets to the title screen to direct you to read the instruction manual is not music that I would have pegged to be this catchy.  And while most of the gaming community wrote off Nintendo's first foray into virtual reality with the Virtual Boy, I actually find the music here to be quite chill.  And I guess that makes a lot of sense since you probably do not want a high-energy banger to play while you expect people to be reading about health and safety information.  I think that is why this song stuck out to me, is that I went into the music from 3D Tetris with little to no expectations of finding a song that would be interested in (although I could not tell you why because I love the music from the NES version of Tetris, the Game Boy version of Tetris, Dr. Mario, Tetris Attack).

That is really all I have for this song.  It's short, it's chill, it's hummable.  It is everything you want from a song that is telling you to go and read the instruction and precaution booklets before operating.  If only all music that played during health and safety online seminars was as good.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Where Can I Hide My Keys From Everyone?

P.S.  I have played a Virtual Boy once, at KB Toys at our local mall.  I don't remember exactly which game was in the system at the time, maybe Mario's Tennis as screenshots of that game look somewhat familiar.  I am a little saddened that 17-year-old me decided not to spend the $80 that KB Toys was charging for the system as it was on its way out.  But I probably used that money to buy Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire for $75.

First Impressions: Boomerang Fu (PC)

Boomerang Fu

Systems: Windows, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5

Release Date: August 13, 2020

Publisher: Cranky Watermelon

Developer: Cranky Watermelon

Just a little bit of upfront information before we get to the actual game here.  I started playing this game (which was one of the games that Amazon Games gave away a long-butt time ago) because The Squire saw the thumbnail for the game and said that he wanted to see "the watermelon" (translated roughly from "deh wahdmeln").  I at first had no idea what he was talking about until I noticed that there was a watermelon getting its head sliced off by, I believe, a popsicle.  I have currently spent . . . [checks notes] an unknown amount of time playing because apparently, Amazon does not keep track of that information.  But I have played quite a few games at this point.  At least enough to unlock two additional character skins beyond the starting twelve, and a whole closet full of cosmetics that really function to remind you which character you are playing before the computer (or another player) slices you in half with an exploding boomerang thrown from halfway across the screen as you try to not jump into a bottomless cavern.

Boomerang Fu is an isometric co-op/single-player arena royale (is that a thing?) where you attack your opponents with boomerangs to be the last player remaining after an often chaotic 30 seconds.  With few exceptions, there is no real time limit to how long you play each stage, but after a winner is declared, there is a tally showing how many kills each player had added to their total and then the next stage begins.  After one character earns 16 kills, the game is over.  Despite this game being co-op, either cooperative or competitive, I have only played it as a single-player game against between one and five other bots.  You are able to set the difficulty of the bots between Easy and Hard (it affects all bots, you cannot set the individual difficulty of each bot, this isn't Perfect Dark), and I have found that I apparently play at a medium difficulty level, although Hard difficulty is not oppressively challenging. 

As far as the bots themselves, they do act more intelligently and aggressively on higher-difficulty settings.  On Easy, you can watch two bots bump into each other without anyone taking a swing, even when it is down to the last two bots.  They may also be less likely to pick up power-ups or accidentally jump into a hole/gap/water and kill themselves.  Across all difficulties, I have never noticed the bots teaming up against any of the other bots or against me which is something that I had worried about, but it is nice to know that the bots will attack everyone equally.

There are some built-in balancing mechanics that I actually really enjoy.  When each round starts, all characters are unarmed, although you can still punch other characters or hit a switch if you are close enough.  A literal second or two later, you are armed with your boomerang which you can either swing like a sword or throw like a traditional boomerang which can be a high-risk, high-reward maneuver.  When you throw your boomerang, there is a chance that it hits an obstacle on its return flight and you are now unarmed unless you run over and pick it up, or you telekinetically pull the boomerang back to you.  After several rounds of play, the player with the highest number of kills is literally crowned in-game, but other players who are significantly behind in kills will automatically be given a forcefield shield that can deflect up to one hit, essentially giving them two hits to be killed.  This makes engaging with other bots who are shielded significantly dangerous because if you are not and you are trying to take down their shield, there is the very real chance that the cooldown between swinging your boomerang (or throwing it), you could get hit by another player coming around a corner or jumping over a gap.

As I have been playing exclusively on PC, the controls are a little strange and take some getting used to.  Not so much the WASD for moving, but using J for jumping/dashing, K for melee attack, and L for throwing the boomerang all feel a little awkward and require a bit of practice to get the coordination down.  The game does allow you to remap the controls to whatever you want and I did try a few different combinations for the JKL keys, but in the end, I opted for the default setting, which I guess means that Cranky Watermelon actually knows what they are doing.

I will usually play up to two full games although The Squire usually wants to move on to something different by the time the first game is completed as very rarely is it a complete blowout with any one player beating everyone by more than five kills.  As a single-player game, two games are about my absolute limit because killing bots by yourself is only so much fun for only so long.  It would definitely be a lot more fun as a couch co-op party game, which is probably how it was intended to be played.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Yeah But They Don't Wave

P.S.  The game does have a "Save Video" feature at the end of every match, I had been under the impression that it saved the entire 30+ second round, but it only saved the last 3 or seconds.  And while I was obviously able to find the videos at one point (because they are included here) the Amazon game client saves them not in the same folder the game files are saved in, but somewhere else entirely.  I saved a couple of additional videos leading up to this article, but I have been unable to remember where they are saved.  Which is all different than where the Steam Client saves the "Save Video" videos.  Just wanted to throw that out there.

MIDI Week Singles: "Title BGM" - The Legend of Zelda (NES)

 

"Title BGM" from The Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1986)

Composer: Koji Kondo

Album: Famicom 20th Anniversary Original Sound Tracks Vol.1

Label: Scitron Discs

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo R&D4

Surprisingly, in the eight years we have been doing MIDI Week Singles, we have only pulled from the original The Legend of Zelda one time six years ago.  Since everyone, myself included, is on a Legend of Zelda kick at the moment (tack on another 150+ hours likely), I thought we should return to the original game, and with that, we have the original title music, gracefully titled, "Title BGM."  Leave it to Koji Kondo to write amazing music and have simply descriptive titles for his songs.

"Title BGM" is my preferred version of this theme as it is the "Overworld BGM" theme, but it comes across as grander and befitting of the legend you are about to experience.  The melody is the same, or at least all of the parts are there that you hear in "Overworld BGM," but it is the way that the song starts off slow and dramatic before the "Boléro" drums kick in and the waterfall inexplicably really starts going and that is when you are given the cliff notes lore of Hyrule.  Any time I would play this game, I would let this music play through the opening sequence at least once, sometimes twice, before I would start the game and hear the more march-like driving "Overworld BGM."

Just a classic that I have already used up too many words on.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I'll Say These Final Words My Friend

Not a First Impressions Article for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

 

I could not tell you how much time I have spent playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom so far because neither the game itself tells you how long you have been playing and the Switch still only tells you in increments of 5 after a certain number of days after first playing the game (and I do not have the child watching installed on the Switch which can give you a breakdown of time spent).  The point is, I have put in a healthy amount of time in this updated version of Breath of the Wild's Hyrule. Most of that time has been in the starting tutorial-esque area which is pretty massive in its own right. I am 100% confident that there are things that I have missed as I unlocked some of the various new game mechanics (I will not get into them here because that is not the purpose of today's brief article).

The point of this article is to illustrate why I do not have an article ready for today (Monday, May 15th).

Yes.  No surprise to anyone, I have been playing Tears of the Kingdom and the one thing I want to emphasize is that failing in this game is actually a lot of fun, or at least it is for me in the early game.  Whether from a construction project gone awry or a device not functioning the way I was anticipating, unexpected results can be more amusing than frustrating.

Like testing to see if Link himself is flammable.  He is.  And so is his wooden gear, and so is the grass.  Things I probably should have remembered from Breath of the Wild.

Or like trying to figure out why a particular contraption failed and left you plummeting towards your death, or at least, leaving you with one less heart.

Or not realizing that the device you are standing on has a lifespan of its own and decides to disappear while you are still quite a ways up in the sky.

Or potentially exploiting a feature of the game (completely by accident) that resets your fall distance if you momentarily cling to a surface even after freefalling at terminal velocity for at least the last 45 seconds.  That is my only explanation.

So yeah, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a lot of fun so far, even if I am not playing at my most efficient or really playing all that well by my own pedigree standards.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
And Attacked On His Own

More Thoughts on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

The Legend of Zelda: The Tears of the Kingdom

Systems: Nintendo Switch

Release Date: May 12, 2023

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo EPD 

Well, by the time this article goes out on Friday morning, I will have played 0 hours, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds of Tears of the Kingdom because I ordered the physical version of the game on January 15, 2022 (when it was still $59.99 and thankfully Amazon honored that price despite the $10 price jump earlier this year) and I will be at work when the game is delivered.  So I have nothing to report on or comment on about the game, but I still felt the need to put something out today about one of the most anticipated releases for the Switch this year.  I apologize for the implied deception.

I have watched the various trailers, but I stayed away from watching the gameplay demonstration from last month for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, when I played Breath of the Wild, I never played around with the Sheikah Slate and runes to try and do crazy stuff like trying to launch Link from the starting Plateau all the way to Hyrule Castle before earning the glider.  For me, the Sheikah Slate was a tool I used to solve puzzles and throw bombs while I explored Hyrule, primarily on foot.  I do not want the potential anxiety about trying to Scribblenauts my way to find a solution clouded by what other people have already done.  I mean, I do know about the new mechanics like the recall ability and the fuse ability, but I am more interested to see how the game introduces all of these new game mechanics without having preconceived notions about how I am going to use those abilities before I even play the game.  I feel like I know Nintendo games well enough for them not to have expected that everyone will have watched a trailer as a form of tutorial before playing the game to not have a classic in-game tutorial.

I think I am also excited to play another LoZ game that is a direct sequel.  While not common, I personally had not realized that nearly half of the LoZ games are in fact direct sequels as I usually tend to think of only Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Majora's Mask being the only direct sequels; 

• The Legend of Zelda -> Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
• A Link to the Past -> Link's Awakening
• Ocarina of Time -> Majora's Mask
• Wind Waker -> Phantom Hourglass
• A Link Between Worlds -> Tri Force Heroes

Really I am just excited to revisit the Legend of Zelda world that was created in Breath of the Wild, being the third game now to visit this creation (yes, Age of Calamity counts, @ me all you want) and I am fully expecting connections to Skyward Sword, which I am thankful I was able to play before this came out because 

That is really all I feel like I can say about Tears of the Kingdom.  I am excited about a new Legend of Zelda game for the first time in a long time (I think the last LoZ game I pre-ordered might have been Majoria's Mask back in 2000 as I do not remember when I bought Wind Waker, The Kid bought me Twilight Princess around 2015 I think, and my in-laws gave me Breath of the Wild for Christmas in 2017).

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

This is Our Time.

MIDI Week Single: "Windmill Hut" - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64)

 

"Windmill Hut" from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64 (1998)

Composer: Koji Kondo

Album: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Sound Track CD

Label: Nintendo of America

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo EAD

Over the past eight years, we have featured music from eight of the (checks notes) now 20 games in the mainline Legend of Zelda series (not counting spinoffs), and with Tears of the Kingdom being released on Friday (May 12th), having a track from a Legend of Zelda game felt appropriate.  And seeing as how we have somehow managed to not use any music from Ocarina of Time, now seemed as good a time as any.

The "Song of Storms" that you learn from the Phonogram Man is one of my favorite songs in the game.  Really the whole story and events surrounding the "Song of Storms" is strange, to say nothing of the overall strange vibe from the Phonogram Man himself.  But this song, "Windmill Hut," is the song that plays when you are in the windmill where you learn the "Song of Storms" and is just a longer rendition of that song that you play on the ocarina.

That is really all.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

Game EXP: Four Last Things (SD)

 

Four Last Things

Release Date: February 23, 2017

Publisher: Joe Richardson

Developer: Joe Richardson

Time Spent: 3 Hours 6 Minutes

Four Last Things is a video game that I feel like I am very much the target audience.  I love Hieronymus Bosch.  I love Baroque, Classical, and Romantic era music.  I love point-and-click games.  I love Monty Python.  My mother longingly refers to me as her "little heathen" (or you know, a fallen Catholic).  The goal of the game is pretty simple, to commit all seven of the "Seven Deadly Sins" and then be absolved.  There is an actual story as to why you have to commit these sins, but that is the straightforward explanation as to why you are doing what you are doing.  In classic point-and-click fashion, you accomplish this by talking to people, picking up items, giving items to people, and performing tasks.

One of the things that I greatly appreciate about Four Last Things is that the game never got too big (looking at you "Dropsy").  The majority of the game is played on 10 screens, some that scroll to encompass multiple screen widths (nothing vertical), and at the most, I might have had eight items in my inventory, including a piece of paper/velum with which sins I had already committed and which ones I still had left to do scribbled onto it.  This is to say that the game never felt overwhelming as some point-and-click games end up being and with the exception of one solution (that actually led to two sins), the game never felt too complicated.  That being said, I did have to look up a guide for three of the sins and I will get into those in the P.S. to try and be as spoiler free as possible here.

I have made the executive decision to talk as little as possible for the rest of the article because a large part of the game is experiencing it as you would experience a comedian.  It would be like trying to write a paragraph about why a particular joke is funny to the writer.  Like, how and why I found "1997 Toyota Corolla" so hilarious in Tux and Fanny.  And because I played this game on the Steam Deck, I only have pictures and no videos (I have not figured out how to make that a possibility yet), and like a good joke, there is often a dialogue of set up and separate dialogue for the punchline.  There I go explaining a joke.  Like I said I would not do.

Four Last Things is full of these moments and while it did take me just over three hours, a person who is better able to parse point-and-click puzzles better than I could probably finish the game in less than half the time.  My biggest complaint about the game is that there is no manual save option and I noticed that the game would only save after specific events like when you picked up a new item or successfully sinned; which means that there are technically a pre-determined number of times the game saves.  And that is really the only negative thing I can think of about this game.  A lot of the puzzles were well thought out and there was plenty to do that kept me entertained that was not directly related to the act of sinning, and the game coming in at about 2.5-3 hours was the perfect length as there did not feel like there was any padding for padding sake.  Good thing there is another game in the same vein available immediately with another on the horizon.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

With a Step to Your Left, and a Flick to the Right

P.S.  From here on out, there will be a partially specific spoiler for a couple of the sins.  Most of the sins could be committed within a couple of steps, like talking to one character who leads you to another character where you get an item, then you go back to the original character and commit the sin.  One sin in particular required a lot more steps than any others in the game, an item that I did not know was even an item as it blended in with the rest of the back/foreground, and another object that I did not know that I could interact with.  Essentially, you had to use a jug (item I didn't know existed) and fill it up with ale (from a cask I didn't know you could interact with) and give it to a drunk guy who then walked away from you, who you were supposed to follow into a different screen to collect his urine (before he stopped urinating) to then give to a doctor as a sample who then allowed you access to three jars, one of which you were supposed to use on another character.  This was the only puzzle/sin that was this complicated.

Another puzzle (or was it the same puzzle???) required you to talk to a character and after choosing a dialogue option that distracts them (they move their head away from you), you have to drag a specific object from your item menu onto a somewhat small target before they look back, maybe fewer than five seconds.  If I were playing on a computer, this likely would not be a problem as my hand/mouse dexterity speed and skill is decent enough, but playing on the Steam Deck's touchpad, I made this attempt five or six times before getting it to work.  And that was only after four or five attempts with the wrong object and the dialogue went by too quickly for me to read to know that I was using the wrong item.

Lastly, there was another puzzle/sin that required you to have a portrait drawn by a blind painter with various dialogue options describing yourself.  If you described yourself wildly incorrect (Homunculus/ Light Hair Light Eyes/ Riding a Horse/ in full plate armor), the painter would tell you that they could tell when you are lying and they refuse to paint your portrait.  If you give them your correct description, they paint your portrait, but only once.  Had I not looked up a guide for one of the two sins I needed help on, I would not have known that I needed to use the blind painter and get him to paint someone else who was not your character even though they are lying.

But this is all just me complaining about apparently not being intelligent enough to figure out either of these puzzles as I tend to overthink things

MIDI Week Singles: "Virtual Tension" - Descent (PSX)

 

"Virtual Tension" from Descent on the PlayStation 1 (1996)

Composers: Ken Allen, Brian Luzietti, Larry Peacock, Leslie Spitzer, Jim Torres, Tim Wiles

Album: No Official Release

Publisher: Interplay Productions

Developer: Parallax Software

In a surprise to absolutely no one, I was unaware of this game before coming across the music for Descent.  And by "the music for Descent," I mean the music for the PlayStation 1 version that was released in 1995, and not the music for the PC Ad-Lib OPL3 version, or the Mac version, or the MS-DOS version, or the RISC OS version, and apologies if there is any overlap for the MIDI version or any other variations in the music.  From what I can tell, and I fully admit that I might be wrong in this assessment, the music for the PlayStation version of the game is vastly different than the rest of the music for the game, so I am not 100% sure if the same composers who are credited for the Ad-Lib OPL3 and MIDI versions are the same who wrote the music for the PS1 version.

That being said, "Virtual Tension," being the music for the first stage is interesting and I realized that as the song plays and new instruments and elements are introduced, I become more invested in the song and where it is going.  When the song starts, I feel like I am listening to a generic early-mid '90s house techno song.  Even the clap/drum beat nine seconds in makes the song slightly more interesting, but not so much that I want to blare this while driving on the freeway.  The rapid baseline at 0:16 receives a similar reaction, more interesting, but still kind of, "meh."  But it is not until the clap/drum beat comes back at 0:31 did I realize that it stopped at 0:16 when the baseline started, and the combination of the current elements now has my brain going, "Okay, maybe we've got something here."

And just like that, I start to lose interest in the song again because at 0:39 it feels like the song is now going in another direction.  But then the guitar comes in at 0:55, and now I am more excited by this direction and then at 1:11, the guitars are boosted even more and that is when I am fully in on this song.  I could do almost whatever it wants, but as long as the song builds again to those guitars (which it does at 1:56), then I am a happy person.

Knowing the full song now, I really wish that each segment of the song lasted longer than 10-15 seconds, but that is just me thinking how "I" would try to improve a 28-year-old song.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Monthly Update: May, 2023

 

You know, for a hot second there, I was writing this as if we were going into April, but no, we are now in May.  Somehow.

Somewhat related to my updates for March and April, but also not, Conklederp and I have not been to the theater since the pandemic started.  We also now have a two-going-on three-year-old so we are firmly in babysitter territory if we wanted to do anything that would not live up to the aforementioned almost three-year-old's attention span or was an indoor place that served alcohol.  We do have semi-built-in child care in the form of Conklederp's parents if they are in town and not busy, and we do not want to saddle Conklederp's brother TonTon with looking after The Squire since he's got his own stuff going on.  Plus the thought of going into a theater right now is what Conklederp would likely refer to as "absolutely not."  And I honestly do not know how I would feel about going into a theater right now either, partly because of being around any given number of people in a closed room for 90+ minutes, but there would also be the guilt of going out to a movie by myself and leaving Conklederp and The Squire at home.

All of that to say that I fully acknowledge that both the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and The Super Mario Bros. Movie are both movies that we would normally have covered by this point in their respective release schedules.  But unless we get words from Dr. Potts before either of the movies are released on Blu-Ray/Streaming, then you will just have to wait until then to hear about either of these movies from us here.  I just did not want anyone to think that we had unintentionally missed either of these movies, had no interest in them, or Bhaal forbid, just did not know about their existence.

Speaking of Bhaal, I am finishing up "Darkwell," the third book in "The Moonshae Trilogy," being the first published books to take place in The Forgotten Realms campaign setting (where Honor Among Thieves takes place, as well as 80% of D&D video games [citation needed]).  In the second book, it is revealed that the demon from the first book, Kazgaroth was under the "control/influence/direction" of Bhaal, the God of Murder to wreak havoc on the Moonshae Isles.  Not having read any previous story to feature Bhaal as an antagonistic main character with a point of view at varying times, I had always approached Baldur's Gate from a particular point of view, but after reading this book, I have thought about your character, one of the Bhaalspawn differently, and because of this book, I once again want to rerererererereplay Baldur's Gate, but with a completely different character.  Most of my previous iterations have been either some variation on a Fighter/Thief Halfling, a Half-Elven Mage, a Half-Elven Cleric, or most recently, a Human Fighter (based on the character stat block for Abdel Adrian from "A Murder in Baldur's Gate", although I flipped the name to be Adrian Abdel and played them as a woman).  

The point is, that I am likely to replay Baldur's Gate again soon, this time with another human, but multiclassing as a Thief/Cleric, and that I will not be starting out as my typical True Neutral alignment.  I have realized that the characters I create in Baldur's Gate are all non-interesting from a narrative perspective.  They do good and help people because that is what makes following the story most accessible and is the easiest/fastest way to earn XP and level up.  I think anyway because again, that is the only way I have played.  This time around, I plan on roleplaying (or at least trying to) a Neutral Evil character, heavily influenced by being a Bhaalspawn, but that over the course of their travels/adventures, will convert closer to a True Neutral or Neutral Good alignment (maybe by the end of Baldur's Gate II?  Of course, this is assuming that I finish Baldur's Gate because as The Kid knows, that is an easy game to start but difficult to muster up the gusto to see through to the end.

Although maybe I will wait until I read a few (dozen?) more books?

Also, stop shooting people because you have an inferiority complex mashed together with an overblown mentality of white persecution all while trying to compensate for the fact that you have not matured since you were two and lash out at any and everything that you are told is supposed to frighten you.  Or you know, just don't shoot people.  Period.

Bigotted assholes.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Under the Hide of Me