MIDI Week Singles - "Ending Theme" - Super Mario Bros 2 (NES)

"Ending Theme" from Super Mario Bros 2 on the NES (1988)

Composer:  Koji Kondo 

Developer: Nintendo

Super Mario 2 was one of these games from an era where we would just skip to the end and beat the game.  I think the first time I beat the game may have been over at Jaconians house.  And I think we just took all necessary warp zones to go straight to the end, and just beat the game in order to watch the ending sequence with the neat animation of Mario snoring.  It was so cool, and such a head trip "it was all a dream."   Deep, man.

This is another Koji Kondo offering, which should come as no surprise.  He is the flagship composer for Nintendo, and his contribution to the "Nintendo Sound" cannot be overstated. Look, I'll even try:  Koji Kondo IS the Nintendo sound.  Without Koji Kondo, the legacy of Nintendo could be very different.  Nope.  Those aren't overstatements. 

Enjoy this victory fanfare and sleepy little song.

-D  

Monthly Update - April '16

Good Evening Ladies and Germs,  

I'm here to say hello, and to give you a rough breakdown of my last month of media consumption.  I like these posts because it gives me an excuse to ramble, and sometimes I find I talk about things I want to talk about, or have the occasional insight.  It happens!

It happens that I read the first graphic novel in the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman.  I first discovered this series about ten years ago, and have been meaning to read it ever since.  So one day I requested it from the library and got started.  So far it's pretty interesting.  This first book was much more gruesome than I expected, containing a trip to hell, which is a nasty place, and also what Gaiman described as 'the only true horror story I've written' [paraphrasing].  I'm definitely interested in reading more, so I've got the next two books coming to my local library branch.  In the meantime, I'm reading 'Snowcrash' by Neil Stephenson, which is an early 90s cyberpunk novel.  So far, it's pretty entertaining.  Dated, and yet still fairly relevant, conceptually.  I'm excited to see how things develop; I'm still pretty early in this book.

On the board gaming front, Jane bought a couple new games, including a game called Suspend and Dominion: Intrigue expansion.  This Dominion expansion is pretty fun and interesting.  It really expands the game and gives me an idea of how people can go all nuts for this series of games.  However, I've already got one card game obsession, which is Magic the Gathering, and I just can't shake it.  Magic gets new expansions every three months or so, which really keeps you on the hook.  In the meantime, I've started making my own drafting cube, which has been a fun project, and what I hope to do more of in the future. 

On the television, it's been lots of Superheroes.  Finally saw Ant Man-  I liked it!  It was fun and slightly generic.  Just as expected.  I've also been watching Daredevil, even though I don't really like it that much.  I'm just getting really sick of everything being 'dark and gritty.'  It's like they decided Daredevil should be Batman instead.  Okay, it's not exactly like that, but kind of like that.  I did make it to season 2, where Shane from Walking Dead plays the Punisher, and is pretty great.  I don't know if I'll keep watching.

Video games, alas, are a footnote again for me.  I play Mario Maker every few days, and I play 80 days with Jane.  I've got my eye on some other games, and I'm always collecting cool-looking indie games for the Pak Watch segment.   Twitter is my primary source for these game previews, as I believe I have mentioned in the past. 

Okay, well, it's time to void my bowels and head to work, where I will repeat that process until the aching in my gut goes away.

Have a nice day,

-D 

Monthly Update: April 2016

Welcome to the month of April!

Well, gaming-wise, I feel that I can safely say that most of my time (presently 22 hours) was dominated by Tomb Raider.  According to the game, I'm 87% complete and I've been pretty consistent with 100%'ing areas as often as I can.  The inclusion of fast travel, although absurd that it's in the game, has definitely helped with making sure I haven't left any contextual stone unturned, nor a tomb unraided.  I've also been putting some time in Killer Instinct, which I also talked about last week, and I think the game might turn into a slight de-stressor.  I did read that, at least in the Xbox One version, that the free fighter rotates, and I hope that that is the case with the Windows 10 port, but if not, no worries.  At least for now.

On the 3DS, I've been playing through Fantasy Life, an interesting game that reminds me a bit of a toned down Dragon Quest world with a similar aesthetic to Final Fantasy: The Four Heroes of Light. I also finished SteamWorld: Dig, a game from the Nindie Bundle and there might be an article about that coming later in the month; or there might not be if you know me by now.  I've also been playing a lot more of ATV: Wild Ride 3D, which is kind of like a 3D Excitebike and is just as infuriating when you get cut off, or in this case, take a jump and end up skidding off a cliff face (and again, the soundtrack is pretty awesome!).

In the mobile gaming front, I've downloaded Nintendo's first foray in the mobile marketplace with Miitomo.  Although Miitomo is less of a game and all of a social application that basically just asks you questions and those answers are shared with people whom you've allowed to be your friend.  Nintendo is great on this front in that you already have to be a friend/follower via Facebook or Twitter, or meet in person, in order to be friends on their app.  What I wish they would do, is for people who link their Miitomo profile to their Nintendo ID (which I did because why not), is allow people whom you've already shared your friend code with to add as a friend too.  OR, maybe that is a thing and the few people I've shared my friend code with aren't using Miitomo and/or linked to their Nintendo ID.  At the moment, it's fun/cute and I'll check it a number of times a day.  Plus there are non-real world money monetary rewards (like with the old Club Nintendo) that allows you to use points/coins to purchase digital rewards such as in-game items, games through Nintendo's eShop and discounts on specific games.  Again, I'm sure there's more, I just don't know about all the bells, whistles and mushrooms about it all yet.

I am looking forward to attempting another escape room, seeing as how the group we went with had so much fun a few weeks back.  Our original plan was to make a second go (at a new room this time since we had already figured out (were told) the final solution to the puzzle (which we had already figured out, but were missing pieces that allowed us to complete it).  I will update y'all if that does happen, as I really hope that it does, but it may have to wait until May because of people's schedules.

Conklederp and I are very much looking forward to the return of Game of Thrones and aside from the first couple of trailers, we've been intentionally in the dark about what is going to happen.  Partly because we want to be surprised with what the show does, but also because Mr. R. R. Martin hasn't published volume six ("The Winds of Winter") yet so most/all of the fans are in the dark with what certain character story-lines are going to entail and how the already differing plots in the TV show will translate to the book (hopefully published by the end of the year).  I think Bates Motel is also returning pretty soon. . .actually it looks like we're already four episodes late, which just means that we'll have to catch up in time for the new episode next Monday.  In Vikings, things are kind of odd, but I read in an interview, that by the end of the season, everything that's happened is supposed to make sense, or you know, storytelling.

Well, that's all I can think of to update y'all with about the upcoming (and present) month of April, in this, the year of our Cthulhu, two thousand sixteen.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Don't You Worry About A Thing

First Impressions: Killer Instinct (PC / Windows 10)

Earlier this week, Killer Instinct became available through the Windows App Store to be downloaded for free, exclusively for people who use the Windows 10 operating system.  Presently I've put a couple of hours into the game (although I've only spent 20 minutes in 15 actual fights; I've won 14 of those and the game's currently on "Beginner") and I feel like I can talk a bit about the game, or at least my impressions of it.  Eh!?

Wait!?  Really!?  This game is rated T for Teen?

When I first saw that Killer Instinct had become available on PC, I went to the Windows App Store and searched for the game, the main thing, and only thing that confused me was the "XBox Live" banner above the game icon.  Not being one who has a current generation console, I wasn't sure if that meant that this game was only compatible with XBox One consoles, if I needed an XBox Live subscription.  Then I told the old curmudgeon man in me to go drink his Metamucil since right there on the page it says that it's "Built for Windows 10" and "Is your PC Killer Instinct ready?" So obviously the game would work well enough on my computer.  So, I clicked the download button (labeled as "Free+") and began the 23 GB download that Windows 10 would soon recognize as Killer Instinct.

When I first started the game, I was greeted with a few company logos, (Microsoft Studios, and Iron Galaxy), and then with the iconic music that Robin Beanland wrote for the original 1994 arcade and SNES release (titled "The Instinct").  This was a good sign.  Then the game went to the "Checking Downloadable Content" screen.  It stayed this way for well over 10 minutes and at first I just chalked it up to a Day One patch.  An additional 10 minutes later, I decided that I had had enough and I closed the game down.  Perhaps my computer wasn't actually capable of running the game, although I had read that the game ran a benchmark test when you started it up for the first time.  Upon rebooting the game, I was again greeted with the Checking Downloadable Content screen, but this time for only a few seconds before I was given the start screen.

Then I started to play the game.

As it turns out, this free version of Killer Instinct (a fact which I knew before downloading, so it wasn't a surprise) only allows you to play as Saberwulf, which I was fine with as I did like the character when I played on the SNES, although I do favor Jago pretty heavily in both the arcade cabinet and the SNES game, but Saberwulf is a close second.  I mean, his stage music ("Tooth and Claw") is some of the best fighting game music out there.  One note on the music though, is that I don't really notice the music while I've played.  This aspect of the game makes me a little sad since I love the soundtrack from the original game.  Maybe I just need to play the game with a greater focus on paying attention to the music, but at the moment, I couldn't tell you anything about what the music is like during the actual fighting, which comprises 85% of the game.  

Maybe I'm old, but that seems like a lot of blood for a T Rating.

So basically, I was okay being relegated to only playing as Saberwulf.  Except that you are able to play as Jago too.  But only in the "Dojo" tutorial stages.  Which is kind of odd.  In the Dojo, you learn the basics of playing Killer Instinct and the basics really only last for a handful of tutorials before it starts getting complicated when you have to perform a Heavy Opener followed by a Heavy Auto, followed by a Medium Linker, followed by another Heavy Auto and finishing it all up with an Ender.  Granted leading up to this, the game will give you on screen directions as to how to perform a specific move, and then just like school, the training wheels come off and they just tell you to perform a move without the cheat sheet, which I fully acknowledge is a good thing.

What I find annoying, and maybe it's a marketing tactic (and if so then it's a good one), is that while in the Dojo, you learn a lot of Jago's moves, which are pretty typical for a Jago/Ryu-esque-type fighter in a street fighting game with Down->Down/Left->Left performs a fireball and Right->Down->Down/Right doing an uppercut.  But not all of Jago's move translate to Saberwulf as he doesn't have (at least not that I've found through experimentation) a fireball attack, although he does have a charging attack that I haven't quite figured out how to implement properly yet.

The rest of my time has been spent in either the survival mode (lose once and your session is over) and once through of the arcade mode to which I lost once to Maya, and then beat B. Orchid.  One thing that I've noticed, is that this iteration of Killer Instinct is very forgiving when it comes to performing combos as well as executing Combo Breakers.  I guarantee you that in the original Killer Instinct, I never would have been able to pull of a 29 (which turned into a 32) hit combo, let alone having a 12 in-a-row winning streak (even on the Game Boy port, I'd be lucky to beat the game on easy).  And I just realized that all of this is because I have "Combo Assist" turned on (which it is by default), so I'll have to give the game a go with this function turned off; I will report back later.  Combo Breakers can easily be performed on the Xbox 360 controller by pressing either up, right, or down (up=Heavy, right=medium, down=light) to perform the corresponding Combo Breaker, but if you get it wrong the second time you try to break the combo, you're locked out from trying to execute it again and you're given a visual timer while your proverbial crap is kicked from your digital person (or in my case, wulf).

So how does one go about acquiring additional fighters?  I believe the only way to do this is to buy them, but I could be mistaken.  There are a couple of cameo fighters (Rash from Battletoads, and (the?) Arbiter from Halo are two that I recognize) with Rash having a countdown timer until he is "Available," which either means he will then be a free to access/play character or he will then be available to purchase.

This area of free-to-play games is where I have conflicting feelings.  I most likely will not be buying individual fighters (costing $4.99 a piece) or by buying one of the full priced bundles which include anywhere from 8 or 17 up to 25 fighters, along with KI coins (which unlock character art, backgrounds, music, etc), for between $19.99 up to $49.99.  My feelings are conflicted here because since the game was free, I don't want to spend money on it, because it is in essence, free.  I can already play the game, albeit, a limited version of the game.  I blame free smart phone games in this respect.  Plants Vs. Zombies2: It's About Time has been the only game over my four years of smartphonedome that I've spent any real world money on (and that was only $2.99 for the Snow Pea).  Maybe if there's a sale (a Steam-esque level sale mind you) will I decide to throw money at the developers/studio/intertubalwebbedcloud, but until then, I've resigned myself to playing only as Saberwulf, which again I am perfectly fine with.

[. . .sounds of chirping crickets maybe. . .]

There are a number of aspects and features of this game that I know that I haven't covered (the Shadow Lab, Online Play, Multiplayer?, Experience Points, Shadow Moves/Meter, Finishing Moves), mainly because I haven't delved into those depths, but also I feel that I've been going on for quite a bit already.  I will say though that one part of the game that I've noticed possibly something not working quite right is that during the character animation intros, there often seems to be sound missing.  When Saberwulf comes on screen, he'll growl, then stand up and apparently roar (as above), but there is no sound effect.  There's the ambient background sound and some intro music, but nothing from Saberwulf.  I don't know if this is an oversight or something that will eventually be patched.

Basically, if you happen to be looking for a fighting game and you have a spare 23 GB on your hard drive, I would recommend picking up Killer Instinct to at least give it a try.  If you're not happy with it, uninstalling should be a simple enough endeavor, although I don't see myself doing this any time soon as I am very much enjoying my time with Killer Instinct.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Here Be Monsters

P.S.  And lastly, here's a picture of Saberwulf bitch-slapping Riptor, if only because Dr. Potts will typically beat me at Killer Instinct, especially when he's playing as Riptor.

MIDI Week Singles - 'Save/Continue/Retry" - The Legend of Zelda (NES)

"Save/Continue/Retry" from The Legend of Zelda on the NES (1985)

Composer:  Koji Kondo  (cover by xoNoodles)

Developer: Nintendo

Here is a nice little remix of the Legend of Zelda retry screen.  This song entered my head unbidden today, and hummed peacefully in the back of my mind as I went about my business.  I decided that I would write up a little Midi Week Single for it when I got home.  

However, to my consternation, the original track wasn't nearly as peaceful as the one in my head.  This is due to the abrasive tones coming from the NES soundchip.  Listening to the original version of this track brings back the sense of disappointment which comes from dying in the Legend of Zelda. So often it happens suddenly, after you've made progress in a dungeon and can't bear to do it all over again.  Rather than a peaceful lullaby, the abrasive sounds grind in my eardrums, telling me that I must start the game over if I want them to stop.  

No, thank you.  This peaceful music-box style cover is how I would prefer to remember this track.  I could stand to have it repeat a couple more times, and maybe have the volume up a little on some of the softer hits, but this is definitely the best cover of save/continue/retry I could find.  Enjoy.

-D

Beautiful Zelda Art

Zelda Open World
I stumbled across this art project by illustrator Jessica Smith, wherein she imagines what the words and environments of the new open world Zelda game might look like. I really enjoy these pictures, they tap into the potential of the Zelda Universe in a way that resonates deeply with me as a fan of the series since its inception.  Here are a few for you, and please visit Jessica Smith's website if you'd like to see more.  

First Impressions: Tomb Raider (2013)

We've talked a little bit about when we feel it's right to write up a First Impressions article and after only two hours with Tomb Raider (the 2013 reboot), I feel that I'm just about ready, which is not to say that I know exactly what to expect from the game, just that I'm ready to talk about my two hours.

Pretty good looking game, despite all the destruction.

First off, this game is gorgeous.  I'm running the game on "Normal" settings for those of y'all who want to know, but that's because I'm not sure if my computer could handle the "Ultra" settings and even at "Normal," gorgeous.  I'm also using mouse/keyboard controls instead of a controller because the keyboand preset bindings didn't look to be too complicated (Looking at you Dark Souls and Assassin's Creed) and I have had no problems with playing the game.  There have been a number of instances where I have been required to quickly tap the left-right buttons (A and D), which is kind of awkward, but so would trying to fight off a wolf who is going for your throat.

Presently, one aspect of the game that I feel it suffers from, is the "hurry up and go do something else in the meantime" syndrome.  I'm sure there's a better name for that, but I cannot think of what it is.  What I mean is, in the beginning of the game, you're trying to locate a member of your team who has gone missing, so the remaining members start looking away from you.  After leaving camp, the person you're with radios for you to meet them up a hill.  I then proceeded to thoroughly explore two open-ish areas connected by an underground tunnel.  I also explored an optional cave turned tomb (My first foray into raiding I guess) and I still have a bit more to explore after finding a treasure map.  The point is, in each area, the game tells you how many tombs, artifacts, team member journals, et cetera can be found in an area, and I'll be damned if I'm going to leave stuff in an area unexplored and undiscovered.  It's been the same with Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, that there are some pseudo-time sensitive ("Quick, you need to do this!") quests/missions that you can put off while you explore and upon meeting back up with your quest NPC's, there is no acknowledgement that you've been off gallivanting around uncovering buried bits and pieces of who knows what.

I know that I could just roleplay Lara Croft and only uncover items when I come across them, as opposed to actively searching an open area for them, but the video gamer in me constantly tells me that I should go and find these items because getting to certain areas is basically a puzzle.  AND because the game is actually telling me that there are a specific number of items to be found and what percentage of the items I've already found, I'm going to feel like a failure if I knowingly leave an area without finding 100% of the items.  Granted I say this now, but if there's a scene where I have to Indiana Jones away from a 12 ton boulder, I'm not going to stop and look for that one elusive GPS device.

So only two hours in, I'm very happy with Tomb Raider, being the first game in this illustrious series that I've played for more than 10 minutes (I previously tried Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider 2 on the PSX, and couldn't stand the control scheme so I had to stop).  It's already passed the Bechdel Test (which is nice since it's currently 2016, although the game was only made three years ago) and Lara's outfit seems fitting for the character/story (I like the nod to a similar color scheme as the original series) and doesn't play directly towards the T&A community.  That's really all I have to say about a game that I'm maybe, 5% through.  More to follow later.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental