Results tagged “video games”

Last week, I took a vacation and spent a lot of time on different trains roaming the region and then walking around a bit. For me, there is no better traveling companion than my iPod. I’m an audio-oriented kind of guy, I love music of (almost) all stripes and, if presented with a choice, will frequently pick audiobooks over their print counterparts for my consumption. But this addiction interplays with my inability to browse shops, be they online or offline, with any sense of discipline.

And so it was that, prior to my trip, while looking for more audiobooks to load on my iPod, I wound up looking through albums of remastered and re-imagined video game musical scores. It’s a convoluted path that isn’t quite out of the blue. Here’s the story: a few weeks prior I had heard an interlude on NPR of Super Mario Theme music being performed via acoustic guitar by a band called 4” Stud. While shopping for the audiobooks, I took a detour to purchase that song and was soon swept away in a sea of “suggested titles” based on that purchase.

This isn’t exactly a bustling niche of music at the moment, though the exceptions to this rule demonstrate that things might be changing. Final Fantasy scores, for example, are alive and well. So as I weeded my way though the catalogs, purchased and listened, these are the items that stuck out:

1. Video Games Live, Vol. 1 (more info)

Video Games Live is a concert series, much like the Lord of the Rings concert series, we featured earlier this year, wherein a live orchestra and chorus perform musical numbers from a series of games. Or, as they describe it on their site:

“(Video Games Live is) an immersive event created by the game industry featuring the best game music performed by top orchestras and choirs combined with synchronized lighting, video, live action, and audience interactivity. The first and most successful video game concert tour in the world.”

I’ve never attended one in person (they sell out quickly), but listening to the music, I’ll be it’s on helluva show. The arrangements are quite varied: from a piano rendition of the Tetris theme, to the operatic stylings of God of War, to the rock opera-esque Castlevania theme. It’s a blast to listen though. Below is their Civilization IV Medley arrangement for you to sample; it’s got a slight World Beat feel to it that makes for great train ride listening.

Civilization IV Medley

Not much to say about this, other than it remains one of our favorite viral videos of the year. Nintendo fans everywhere will dig this spot-on reinvention of “Inglourious Basterds” taken into Mario World. Don’t expect this to be coming to the Wii anytime soon. But that doesn’t stop us from dreaming.

I’m always a bit sad when authors I greatly admire write in other established worlds, and this year I’ve been made doubly sad.

First, Greg Bear is writing a trilogy of Halo novels for Tor Books. Greg is my favorite science fiction writer and a man I respect for his hard science knowledge.

Second, Greg Keyes has signed on to write two novels set in the universe of the successful computer game Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Greg is a beautiful writer capable of bringing characters to life ala George R. R. Martin, and I feel quite strongly his series The Kingdoms of Thorn & Bone is highly underrated and undersold.

Hmm… two Gregs this year writing in other worlds. Must be a first name thing.

Anyway, The Infernal City by Greg Keyes is a tie-in novel to the Elder Scrolls computer game. Although I am not a gamer, I am really looking forward to reading something new from Mr. Keyes.

It will be published as a trade paperback in November 24, 2009.

Let’s hope we can get an excerpt posted here in early November!

Stay tuned!

My girlfriend and I recently had a bit of a fight over going on vacation. Simply, she wants to go on vacation, and I’ve got a job that doesn’t really let me take a week off without everything going to hell. Also, I don’t want to leave NYC, as New York’s got stuff like this…

The good people at NEW YORK-TOKYO, UNIQLO, and NAMCO have joined together to host a Pac-Man tournment this month in NYC. The tournament features organizations including UGO, Gizmodo, Anime News Network, and even my own New York Comic Con competing online and in person for nerd cred and Pac-Man prizes. To learn more, visit http://www.newyork-tokyo.com/wp/pacman/. Also, check out the site to find out how you can enter the contest as an individual and kick NYCC’s ass.

The preliminaries are online from June 8-14, and the finals are at NYC’s UNIQLO on June 19.

No, that isn’t the title of a Philip K. Dick novel.

So apparently today is considered the 25th Anniversary of Tetris, a game of Russian space domination.

Wait…what?

I never quite got why successfully fitting different shapes into each other to eliminate lines caused rockets and space shuttles to launch, but for anyone who has played Tetris long enough, you’ll know that’s the end-result: destroying gradually speeded-up blocks allows for spacecraft to break through our gravitational pull.

It’s no wonder the Russians now sell flights into space to civilians (try using rocket fuel, comrades!).

It would have been pretty cool, though, if in a WarGames-like scenario, everytime you actually did send one of those rockets into space, the Soviets actually did launch a rocket. Alas, the fall of the Berlin Wall would have rendered this incredibly popular video game impotent in its real-world applications, but still—a kid in Des Moines could have been launching spy satellites by getting those descending pieces to fit just-so.

Obviously that’s crazy-talk. But for me, a person of the video game generation (you know, the first generation to grow up entirely in a world where home video game systems were available and prevalent—thanks, Atari 2600), Tetris was probably the first game I was ever actually better than my older brothers at, leading to a life-long affair with puzzle games (Dr. Mario, Columns, Snood, Puzzle Fighter, Lumines, Bejeweled). Tetris and my GBC (that’s Game Boy Color, for you laymen) got me through senior year of high school (and I still think Tetris DX is the best version of the game). And now, I know I always have entertainment literary at my fingertips, because I have not only Tetris, but Bejeweled and Columns on my cell phone.

I think what has always drawn me (and so many others) to these types of games is the combination of necessary concentration, problem solving skills, logic, and nerdiness needed to excel. Perhaps that’s just a stigma I put on myself, but I know I put in the time to be be good at these puzzle games (oh yes, I have stratagems), while not working hard to get good at more popular games, especially as the technology has advanced beyond the hand-eye skills of my aged body. Honestly—I find most sports games just too hard, now—and who wants to play a game that’s too hard (yes, I’m now Old Man Pomerico, waving his two-button controller at the pesky kids and their new-fangled X-Cubes and Playboxes)? At least with puzzle games, the basic mechanics don’t seem to change too much, but the skill level increases over time, meaning the more you play, the better you get, and the better you get, the harder it gets, and the harder it gets, the better you get…it’s a self-perpetuating cycle.

It’s a great way to kill a few hours.

And don’t forget the music—who couldn’t base a party entirely on that soundtrack?

So, spasiba, Tetris, and happy birthday. May you continue to rain down your colorful blocks and mesmerizing fun.

Watched Resident Evil: Extinction for the first time last night. I grew up on the Resident Evil games, and first two films - while different - both proved to be competent. My thoughts about Resident Evil: Extinction? It’s differenter and competenter. I utterly love how it’s not a slavish recreation of the games, instead cherry picking characters and ideas from the game’s mythos and spinning an original narrative that stands alone.

Also, it wasn’t a bad thing having Milla Jovovich parade around the whole thing dressed up as post-apocalyptic cowgirl. Not a bad thing at all.

Of course, more than anything - and I’m spoiling the ending here - the film’s conclusion is easily the best ending ever. An army of Milla Jovoviches fighting zombies in Tokyo? Sequel, please!

A friend of mine passed this along to me - there is apparently an orchestral tour of Final Fantasy music! It’s called the Distant Worlds Tour and they’re still playing now. See if they’re coming to a city near you!

Here’s a sneak peek of the battle theme from FFVIII (you can find plenty of videos of other songs on YouTube as well):

Sometime in the mid to late nineties, mainstream video games left me behind. I wish I could say it was a gradual thing, like two entities slowly drifting apart, but no, it was sort of like being pushed out of the car on the way to a party. It seemed like everything was going hard core First Person Shooter or MMO and while I’m not here to knock those kinds of games, they just don’t do it for me. There’s a disconnect between us. Which is to say, I suck at them.

I’m one of those games who was weened on Mario and Zelda and just never quite developed a taste for the other stuff. 3-D games? Awesome, I guess, but if you really want to excite me, show me a side-scrolling platformer with juicier graphics. Don’t get me wrong, I tried to get into the next gen systems before. I bought a PS2 a while back, played games like Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, GTA 3, and Devil May Cry.

I tried, I really did, but by the end I was spending all my gaming time on ported game anthologies from the Atari and NES systems. And then I sold the PS2 and didn’t really give gaming much of a thought…until recently.

[read on after the jump]

I know we don’t talk about games as much as we could here, but I came across this game, by way of the Totally Rad Show, and had to share. Lately I’ve been addicted to my iPod games - Reversie, Klondike (or solitaire, for those who haven’t played the apple version), Tetris, and Vortex have become favorite things for me to do while listening to Book Radio. So, I’m into puzzle games. And if you are too, then I’ve got a great new game to kill off whatever productivity is left in your day for you to try.

The game is Auditorium and if you’re looking to kill time without even know you’re doing it, then this is your game. And guess what? It’s free to play.

So what’s it all about? Good question. This is a puzzle game that has the player using directional “lenses” to alter the path of light particles in order to fill up volume meters. You complete each level by filling up all the meters at the same time. By doing so, you also complete the melody that is playing. As I mentioned, the lenses are directional and you can grow and shrink them to alter the way that they reflect the light.

Gradually, color coded meters and more lenses are introduced. The color coded mirrors require you to filter the light through a similarly colored ring before you fill the meter, adding a layer of complexity to the proceedings. I haven’t played through the whole puzzle game, so I don’t know how many variations there are, but I have found a lens that swirls the light, allowing you to fill color coded meters that would otherwise be next to impossible to fill.

[more after the jump]

So Sue Moe’s awesome post on living in a Super Mario Bros world reminded me of one of my favorite YouTube viral videos of all time. Many of you have seen it, but it’s worth seeing again — I never tire of it. College students doing a spot-on live re-enactment of Super Mario Bros. for a talent show. One can only wonder what a Metroid skit would look like.

In less than a month, LucasArts will release their much-anticipated next generation Star Wars video game, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed — a bold new chapter in the expanding saga that tells a never-before-told tale of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice. (And in case you missed the news, a downloadable demo will be available this Thursday!)

For those who cannot wait to explore this story, this is the week to visit bookstores and add The Force Unleashed to your Star Wars bookshelf, as three major titles are unleashed: a novelization, a graphic novel, and a behind-the-scenes book.

The hardcover novelization by bestselling author Sean Williams (co-author of the Force Heretic trilogy of The New Jedi Order series) uses the video game story by Haden Blackman (read an interview with Haden) as a foundation for an original novel set in the dark times between Episodes III and IV. While the video game itself presents a player with myriad options and story paths, this novel can be thought of as the “true story” of the Starkiller. Here is an link to Chapter One.