Powerglove no longer needs your help to name a track

As announced today by bassist Nick Avila, Powerglove's previously untitled Final Fantasy VII arrangement has been named thanks to Steven Gregory Passick of Muskego, Wisconsin and Cubby Nuxx of Lubbock, Texas.

"Omnishred" will take it's rightful place on the group's upcoming CD release Metal Kombat for the Mortal Man, alongside tributes to Mega Man II, Mortal Kombat, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Final Fantasy IV, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Tetris, Duck Hunt, Killer Instinct, Guilty Gear and Castlevania.

Not that you have to, but if you want to wait to pick up the album with the chance to get it signed by the band in person, you could always lay low until MAGFest 6...

Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero

God bless ya, The Onion. Washington, DC is the paper's ninth print edition market, and I love picking it up every week. The cutting edge of reporting.

And this? The cutting edge of video game music. The game's not a hot seller, I'm afraid.

Powerglove needs your help to name a track

Powerglove announced via MySpace bulletin today that they need title suggestions for their cover of Final Fantasy VII's "Still More Fighting".

Help a brother out (with the best suggestion of course), and you receive the band's upcoming CD, Metal Kombat for the Mortal Man, free!

Get crackin'.

(By the way, the tangentially related image, "Powerglove", is by the versatile artist Kari Fry. Check out her portfolio.)

bLiNd and Leifo playlisted by Ferry Corsten

I've known Jordan "bLiNd" Aguirre and Randy "Leifo" Oxley for many years.. Leifo first hit OverClocked ReMix in 2002 with a Mario Paint ReMix entitled "BLind is Dah BomB", a tribute to the style of bLiNd. bLiNd's music was an inspiration to Leifo, and, once the two became friends and musical collaborators, Leifo vowed to move from New Jersey to Las Vegas with the intent on making his name alongside bLiNd as an electronic musician.

Given Leifo's own astronomical growth as an artist in the past 5 years and bLiNd's staunch dedication to his craft, it's not a surprise to me that these two have finally been able to gain some traction in the electronic music scene, under their collaborative name "Vega Projekt".

Aaron "Global-Trance" Wu announced today at OC ReMix that renowned DJ Ferry Corsten has included Vega Projekt's single "The First Day" on the playlist of his radio show "Corsten's Countdown", syndicated on Digitally Imported (di.fm) and XM Satellite Radio. If you register at the Ferry Cortsen forums, you'll be able to vote at the Cortsen's Countdown page for "The First Day" to make the monthly top 10 countdown. It's a quick signup and will help Vega Projekt earn more recognition with an accomplished DJ and producer.

Wu also let it be known that the track may also be may also be incorporated into an upcoming DJ set of his and is also under strong consideration for pickup by Corsten's record label, Flashover Recordings. Hopefully, this is a watershed event for Vega Projekt towards expanding their audience and gaining notice within industry circles. They've certainly given it their all thus far.

Half-Life: Black Mesa developers on Cockbite Radio

Uh...Cockbite Radio.

But yes, the developers of the upcoming Half-Life 2 mod Black Mesa were on episode 5 of Cockbite Radio (there's that name again) this past Wednesday to discuss all things Black Mesa and how they're remaking the first Half-Life from the ground up. OC ReMixer Kevin "Lorenzo" Sisk, one of the voice actors of the game, intros the podcast. (Check for him also at the 11-minute and 53-minute marks as well.)

Kevin adds: "That screenshot [below], other than the surface tension dam, is a prime example of how the team is trying to bring the original game up to date with today's graphic standards, while preserving the game's spirit." Definitely give it that look.

Also of note for this podcast, 30 seconds in has a hilarious rant from Casey about 12-year-old boys on XBOX Live. Creepy, immature boys on the internet? Never.

Armcannon wants to be the next American Idol?

Hell, I didn't know Americal Idol was doing a spinoff show for bands, called The Next Great American Band. I don't care for American Idol. I'm sure not to care for American Band.

But I love Armcannon. Saw them play at MAGFest 5 this past January and djpretzel in particular was really impressed.

Right now they're trying to shoot up 4 other bands in WUTV FOX-29's local contest to send a band from West New York to Las Vegas for the auditions of American Idol's upcoming band-themed show.

Check out the contest. You've only got until Sunday, July 29th, with the winner announced on Monday. Center of the page towards the bottom. It takes literally 3 seconds to vote.

A vote for Armcannon is a vote for video game music. Help a brother out.

Chat with David Lloyd...

A cooler aspect of being involved at the top of the game arrangement community: I'm privy to creative flourishes such as...

3:31 PM David: dude

gerudo hip hop

I got it in my head

3:38 PM Larry: hahaha; one of the perks of working with you; I get to hear stuff like

"dude

gerudo hip hop

I got it in my head"

The crazy thing is that djpretzel can be counted on to make the idea work. However, he can't be counted on to actually finish the track. Too many ideas, too little time. For many arrangers, therein lies the game.

VGM Facebook Groups

I'm going to be gone on a trip for the next couple of days, and so I'm not going to be able to get the post that I wanted to finish done. So what is this special filler edition of VGF about?

Well why don't you just read the post title, you lazy good-for-nothing. Pretty much everyone, their mother, family pets, and great-aunt Tilly who's never used a computer before has a Facebook account; it's like MySpace except apparently less objectionable for some reason.

I found out earlier today that there is a group dedicated to composer Hitoshi Sakimoto, with whom I have been locked in a violent struggle since before this universe was created. In retrospect, it's pretty obvious that there would be Facebook groups like this, but until now I never bothered to search for them.

Unfortunately, Facebook's current group classification system doesn't make it easy to find these groups, which are listed under, among other categories, "Entertainment & Arts - Fine Arts," "Just for Fun - Fan Clubs," "Music - Songwriting," and "Music - Instruments." So, I did a little legwork in searching for some interesting groups. If you know of any others that look good or start your own, please let me know!

General

• Game Music Fans


• Mega Man series


• Videogame Music Doesn't Get Enough Credit

Live Performances

• Eminence Symphony Orchestra


• MAGFest


• Press Play on Tape


• Video Games Live

Remixes

• C64 Remixes


• OverClocked ReMix

Composers

• Michael Giacchino


• Masashi Hamauzu


• Rob Hubbard


• Yuki Kajiura


• Yoko Kanno


• Jake "virt" Kaufman


• Koji Kondo


• Yasunori Mitsuda


• Hitoshi Sakimoto


• Motoi Sakuraba


• Yoko Shimomura


• Koichi Sugiyama


• Kumi Tanioka


• Kazumi Totaka


• Nobuo Uematsu


• Akira Yamaoka

Awesome review on OC ReMix's IceCap Zone project, "ReCapitated"

Sometimes, it's the little things that make me smile. Check out this LiveJournal-based review on OCR's most recent project tackling Sonic the Hedgehog 3's IceCap Zone, ReCapitated:

ReCapitated
How did I not know about this?

It's a whole OCRemix arrangement project dedicated entirely to Sonic 3's Ice Cap theme. It's easily the most overmixed song in the gaming community, but that doesn't stop anyone from putting their spin on it. This is 18 tracks of the same song, remixed by different artists. Honestly, ever since the Duck Hunt remix project, I didn't think this kind of thing would fly anymore.

I guess why I didn't see it is because, it's not on the site projects forum of the web site. It's merely the artists getting together on their own to put out this album. Is it any good? Not really. It kind of listens like a few guys just dicking around on their keyboards. Some more organized than others, but I refuse to believe it's anywhere near a "best effort". One even mixed Chrono Trigger's Trial theme in the beginning and leads into some kind of weird crossover that should not be. It's not to say that the songs aren't worth checking out, it's just some of them are just plain bleh. Of course, what can you expect from the community's most single mixed song. There's only so much you can do with it.

In any case, check out the above link and have a listen.

Only the review's from June 28th. ... Did I forget to mention this? How did he know about the Duck Hunt project, but somehow not pick up on this? :-D

Too bad he didn't get into any specifics on the tracks. He probably thought mine was the best though, so I can understand him not wanting to tarnish the other songs in comparison. You know how it is.

bustatunez scores Hellgate: London trailer, revealed at E3

I had the pleasure of finally meeting Wilbert "bustatunez" Roget, II at the Video Games Live OCR meetup in Washington, DC. But we actually used to both reside in New Haven, CT, my hometown, and where Wil attended Yale University for his music degree (man, how my life would have been different had I gone there). We tried meeting up during Will's last few months there before he graduated but couldn't work out our schedules, so it was excellent finally getting to shake his hand and shooting the shit with him.

At the VGL DC meetup, Will was only at liberty to say that he has just scored the trailer for an upcoming game and that the trailer was set to debut at E3. Besides being excited for the opportunity, he wouldn't tell us anything more, not even what genre the game even was. So just to let Flagship Studios know, he held VERY tightly to his NDA!

But with E3 now in the past, Flagship Studios (spun off from Blizzard North and responsible for the Diablo franchise) recently took the Hellgate: London trailer public. GameSpot has a great-quality version of the trailer to check out.

Now, I'm not about to praise the trailer merely to pay lip service to Flagship and suck up on behalf of anyone. Anyone familiar enough with the business of games knows that there are (unfortunately) a lot of games with great soundtracks that end up having awful "everything else". But this trailer looked REALLY polished. It may be for a game, but Hellgate: London has what looks like a straight up movie trailer.

There's no guarantee Will will be involved with the actual game soundtrack itself, but hitting paydirt with the release of this trailer is a potentially great sign of things to come for a young, talented composer like bustatunez. Be sure to give the trailer a look and send some congradulations Will's way for one of his first professional gigs, as I hope it's the start of a fruitful career in video game music.

"There's always too many projects"

Hey everyone, this is Fishy (also known as Cain irl). I would imagine only a few people know who I am, and I would wager that most of those people are on some of the ongoing OCR projects. This is because I’m what’s known as a ‘total project whore’. The projects are probably my favourite aspect of the OCR community. It’s an astonishing feat for a large-scale album to be made and hosted totally through voluntary and unpaid contributions. A huge amount of work is put into them, and the end results are usually pretty damn cool, so I thought I would chronicle my thoughts and experiences on the projects here.

When I joined OCR mid-2006, practically the first thing I latched onto was the project thread for the Pokèmon project. This was mostly because the track I ended up completing had “Reserved for awesome guitarist” in massive font written next to it and I was feeling cocky. Once I was in the forums and posting WIPs, I suddenly realised how preferable the environment was. For a new guy, it was pretty easy to be ignored in the WIPs forum, in fact the only person who replied to my craptastic first ReMix was good ol’ Geoffrey Taucer. In the project forums though, suddenly I was getting loads of useful help from some guys I was really looking up to at the time. I enjoyed being a part of a team, and getting involved and helping out so I set out in search of what would become a very long list of projects.

Recently, I started downloading many of the existing projects to check them all out. From the 60% Protricity "Relics of the Chozo," to the latest "Project Chaos," they are some really great moments out there. If you haven’t downloaded some of them yet, I really do recommend it. Theres always a few songs in every style, so there really is something for everyone.

It’s easy to see what has come, but its harder to see what is coming. I’ve seen some people only just realising some projects exist even though they’ve been running for months. The mods have been kind enough to put them all in one place though, so now it’s a bit easier, but heres the list (of the officially recognised ones anyway) with whos running what:

Boss Themes: Crescendo to Chaos – Pi_R_[]ed
Doom 2: Delta-Q-Delta – The Orichalcon
Dragon Warrior series: Children of Erdrick – Rexy
Kirby Super Star: Milkyway Wishes – Nicholas
Mega Man 4: No title yet? – Dafydd
Pokèmon: No title yet – The Damned
Radical Dreamers: Thieves of Fate – The Prophet of Mephisto
Seiken Densetsu 3: Songs of Light and Darkness – Usa
Super Dodge Ball: Around the World – Murmerli Walan
Super Mario 64: Portrait of a Plumber – POCKETMAN (and yours truly)
Tales Series: Summoning of Spirits – KyleJCrb
Tim Follin: Dirge for the Follin – Liontamer
Xenogears: Humans and Gears – Avaris
Zelda: Link’s Awakening: No title yet? – Aetherius

And they say they are too many projects going on. Sorry if I missed anyone but uh… I don’t think you can blame me. You may have noticed I left out one project in particular, but I want to talk about that now.


The humongous, and highly anticipated Final Fantasy VII project, "Voices of the Lifestream". This game is the cream of the fanboy crop and the thorn in the elitist gamers side, but no one can deny its popularity or its significance, which is why it’s being run by zircon. If this project was going to be made, it had to be totally awesome to live up to its source, so who better then a judge to run it? I left this project until last because it is more or less definitely the next one to come out, and soon too. zircon will be announcing the date at Otakon, but I can tell you its not far off at all.

It’s also, interestingly enough, going to be my OCR debut. I’ve had a ReMix in the ‘to be posted’ cue for months now, but its not going to be released until the Pokèmon project is released, much after the FF7 one. Funnily enough, its my highest quality ReMix so far, so when my other project tracks come out you’ll see a regression to my initial abilities, which is odd.

Lastly, I just wanted to mention two recently planned projects. The first one is Ladies of Legend of Zelda, which is DarkeSword’s quest to reveal the true pimp that is Link. The other (which was announced literally hours ago from me writing this) is a Final Fantasy VIII project proposed by kungfuchicken. I hope these both take off, as they should make great albums, but for now, I’m gonna gtfo.

Tl;dr.

Composer Spotlight #3: Koichi Namiki

Alternate title: "Sales Pitch #2: Koichi Namiki"

Works featured in this post:

• Bakusou Dekotora Densetsu 2 (PlayStation)


• GuitarFreaks (PlayStation)


• Rail Chase (Arcade)


• Super Hang-On (Arcade)


• Thunder Blade (Arcade)

full list of works

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Koichi "Mickey" Namiki (who has also had the nickname "Pretty K.N") is an oddly system-specific composer. He's also old guard as far as video game composers go, starting in 1987 with the game Super Hang-On, which he composed with Katsuhiro "Funky K.H" Hayashi and Shigero "Recruit O" Ohwada. For eight years, he composed solely arcade games, mostly ones published by Sega.





"Winning Run"
Super Hang-On (Arcade)


"Type II (BGM2)"
Thunder Blade (Arcade)

The soundtracks to many of Namiki's older games have the same style: they're not the strongest in the melody department, but they have enough hooks to get through the song and just groove along. Rail Chase stands as the most notable exception with its almost adventure movie-style score.


"Stages 1 & 4"
Rail Chase (Arcade)

Starting with 3D Shooting Maker in 1996 and reaching until his most recent game credit, Akudaikan 2 in 2003, he composed solely for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 systems, with the exception of 2002's Magides Fight for the Xbox. Even though he composed more games during this second time period, fewer of those games were released in the U.S. or even had soundtrack releases.

Namiki was a member of the S.S.T. Band, Sega's official band composed partially of Sega composers who played rock arrangements of different songs from Sega games. He was one of two guitarists in the band (the other was Jouji Iijima, who composed the soundtracks to Galaxy Force II and Zero 4 Champ RR), and played for the full five years that the band was active. In some of his later compositions, Namiki wields his mighty axe.





"Dream One"
Bakusou Dekotora Densetsu 2 (PlayStation)
vocals by Shoji Koganezawa


"J-STAFF"
GuitarFreaks (PlayStation)

I did mention in the first line of this post that this should be called "Sales Pitch #2," so let's get to that. Over the past couple of years, Sega's Wave Master sound development studio has released soundtracks to classic Sega video games, such as the Monster World and Outrun series. They have also started the "SOUND!SHOCK SERIES" of albums, the first of which was released this month, SUPER HANG-ON 20th Anniversary Collection. In addition to the soundtracks of Hang-On and Super Hang-On (of which Namiki composed three tracks, including "Winning Run" above), the album also includes five new arrangements, one by Hiroshi "Hiro" Miyauchi and four by Namiki, all of which rock.

The second album in the series, Galaxy Force II & Thunder Blade Original Soundtrack, is set to be released on the 26th of this month. I mentioned Galaxy Force II and Jouji Iijima, its composer, earlier; its style of music is actually quite similar to Thunder Blade's. This album will have another four arrangements by Miyauchi and Namiki. Both albums are available from VGM World, along with the ten disc Game Sound Legend Series Box 2 ~Platinum Box~, which contains the soundtrack to Bonanza Bros. and many, many more games.

Play-Asia.com has the GUITAR FREAKS 2nd MIX ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK, which consists mostly of tracks from GuitarFreaks 2nd Mix, but also has three tracks from the original GuitarFreaks, all written by Namiki, as well as extended versions of each. Also available is SEGACON: The Best of SEGA Game Music - Vol. 1, which also contains the soundtrack to Super Hang-On, as well as those of other older Sega games.

Finally, CDJapan might have a copy of Bakusou Dekotora Densetsu 2 ~Otoko Jinsei Yume Ichiro~ Original Soundtrack. ("Usually ships within 3-7 days" means that CDJapan doesn't know if the distributor has any in stock, but if they do, it'll take about 3-7 business days to ship.) The tracks are all vocal like the sample above, and there are four vocalists other than Shoji Koganezawa.

"I Hate Arrangements That Have Vocals..."

For readers of the various message boards in the amateur VGM arrangement communities, a hot button topic for some is "arrangements that have vocals".

Every once in a while at OC ReMix (you don't hear this come up much in smaller, more tight-knit communities), a fan starts a discussion specifically seeking out arrangements with vocals in them. Vocals are an expected component of almost any mainstream music one may listen to, so on that level I at least understand the expectation. While I don't understand the infatuation, I realize that for the general populace out there vocals are needed to "complete" the musical experience.

However, the opposite argument that vocals ruin music is one the most out there complaints heard in the community. And yet around these parts we hear it all the time. Go to Ormgas.com even, and within its chatbox you'll see the occasional "I wish there wasn't any singing" complaint. And then you get the always-insulting "Can I get an instrumental version?", when asked specifically because they didn't like the vocals. Granted, when it comes to video game music (especially older material), vocals are generally nowhere to be found. It's not a stretch to infer that this could condition some listeners to not want their music intruded upon by a voice.

Is it wrong for us to fall in the middle and not pick either ridiculous side? As much as there are some guys who neeeeeed vocals, I've also never heard nearly as many people on that side outright dismissing instrumental music. If I had to pick one side, it certainly wouldn't be with the vocal haters. Taking a close-minded approach to music on any level is unwelcome around VG Frequency. Make sure you outlaw it in your neighborhood TODAY.

We's goin' to Otakon

Now I'm no anime geek, but I do love spreading the gospel and playing video games with the peeps. So I look forward to Otakon in Baltimore, Maryland once again this weekend. Courtesy of our crew of djpretzel, zircon, pixietricks and myself, OC ReMix will be officially representing there on Friday, July 20th for our second annual panel. OCR's latest press release gives the dirt.

Last year featured two hilarious guys cosplaying Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle. Who knows who'll be there this year. The Phoenix Wright girls from Video Games Live plan to make an appearence.

Dale North (providing coverage for Destructoid), Injury, José the Bronx Rican, MIDIman, and Xaleph plan on being there, and SGX will be arriving later in the day on Friday.

I'm also looking forward to two of the con's musical guests in particular. Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy Tactics, Breath of Fire V) with be at the con, also performing alongside part of the Eminence symphony orchestra.

If you see anyone with OC ReMix t-shirts on, let them know how sexy they look. Hope to see you there.

zircon review's Beatdrop's new album "In the Dark"

Andrew "zircon" Aversa's big on reviewing music. Either at Broadjam or the OverClocked ReMix judges panel, Andy's been all about giving out criticism and hoping for some in return.

Recently, zircon has positioned his MySpace blog as a central location for music reviews, aiming to spread the good word. While zircon focuses on electronic music in general, it's always relevant when he takes a look at original music from artists within the game music arrangement community.

Dain "Beatdrop" Olsen recently hit professional paydirt, co-winning a Broadjam-sponsored contest on May 8 to have a track added to the official soundtrack of Konami's Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA 2.

If you do as zircon recommends and check out Beatdrop's free album, In the Dark, you yourself can obtain a copy of the winning track "Until Forever", and pretend to stomp on some arrows as you await DDR's latest installement.

Keep an eye glued on zircon's MySpace for addtional music reviews in the near future.