BardicKnowledge

I highly recommend "Evoking the Dawn" from the third disc of the FFIV album as a prelude before you walk in. http://ff4.ocremix.org/music.html#3

YES this. *fistbumps*

This is an extremely nice present to close out my summer. Thanks for all of the hard work, tweek! I wish more people did orchestral stuff on the site...

I can tell you that there is certainly a small subgenre of metal music focusing on racial hatred. However, to judge a very large group by reading a faq/wiki page on one small subgroup just makes you look foolish. It would be similarly foolish to say that all Christians are bigots because you saw the Westboro Baptists protesting something. As far as metal players being nuts, there are a TON of musicians who engaged in incredibly risky and deviant behavior in the 1970s (when metal emerged) across rock genres. Example: I wouldn't describe The Who as a metal band ever, but Jim Morrison did crazier stuff than anyone from a significant metal band (we can argue if peeing on your audience during your rock concert is more or less crazy than eating a bat on stage if you like, I suppose).

The thing is that FFIX holds up today -- I just started it again and am loving it. I have a very difficult time re-playing FFVII because of how terrible some of the graphics are -- it's right in the awkward middle of the 2D -> 3D transition. I prefer both FFVI and FFIX to FFVII, but VII is the one really in _need_ of an update.

I would pay a fuckton of money for a well-polished (see: Monkey Island 2) remake of Seiken Densetsu 3 playable online over Steam. Hell, they could even use the Neill Cortlett's fan translation if they felt like it -- it's functional enough for sure.

I was recently interviewed on my experience as a ludomusicologist for Game Informer magazine -- thought that a few people here might be interested in reading it. Lemme know what you think! http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/07/04/studying-game-music-an-interview-with-musicologist-ryan-thompson.aspx

Done this morning when I saw it on Twitter. Let us know if she wins, Jimmy!

Not worth looking me up, Jack -- I've got only 6 posts on Smashboards total, and one from 2008 in the ISP thread. I'd be more active but I feel that the majority of the community there is like trying to chat with a random DotA player It's a great resource for high-level information though, I've lurked a lot.

Yeah, ISP is awesome. As part of the organizing team for a few Melee tournaments up here in MN, I am also yet to hear anyone say the project was not completely worthwhile and a serious help to the community -- even those players who don't want to play with items were educated about what goes into forming a cohesive ruleset that holds up at the highest level of play. Jack is right in that there is a legit chance for some play with items to be the standard format for the next Smash game -- here's hoping the next Smash game warrants competitive treatment with Namco's involvement. P.S. Am I the only person here (besides Jack, who organized it) that read and followed the entire ISP thread on smashboards throughout its development? I might have even contributed a few posts here and there, though it's been so long that I forget.

Balanced Brawl is a good example; I have it and P:M both and enjoy both of them a great deal. Didn't mean to undercut your work (which has been great), but it ultimately represents a minority of competitive Smash, not the majority (again, not an attack on what you've done). Something like Nintendo stepping in with fixed item spawns might help make items more mainstream, which I'd love to see in future Smash games.

Yes this 100x! Everyone who can should take a look at Project M. While its goals are essentially to make a sequel to Melee (a goal the succeed at imo) and therefore keep a few things I'm not a great fan of (namely wavedashing instead of Brawl's neutral air dodge), it's a vastly superior version of Smash by almost all counts. Yes, though I don't know why since Melee is still a badass game for casual play and always has been. I would also like an option for fixed item spawn locations, which would open up the vast majority of items to competitive play.

Christopher Tin's Calling All Dawns, the first track of which is the title track to Civilization IV.

Great work, everyone! I'm especially impressed with Stevo here, singing consistently in a voice nothing like his actual singing voice. All of you are awesome though!

This a hundred times. Give me Arche from Tales of Phantasia! I'd also like to see Jin from Tekken and Leixia from Soul Calibur V. (and Mike Jones from Startropics, but that's a pipe dream...)

I love the Touhou games -- thanks for taking on one of their many tunes! So much weight is put onto the chiptune sound that the piano section feels out of place. Did you ever consider bringing back the piano for a more interpretative section? The chiptune portions of the piece really work for me, it's just that there is an aesthetic dissonance between piano and chiptunes that isn't addressed in the piece's current form. The best part of the piece is around 2:00 when the intensity increases, the motion slows down ever so slightly, and we hear something more original. This develops into a smooth chiptune section beginning at 2:18, which feels really good. After typing this, I have figured out what is unsettling to me about the piece: the piano plays very similarly to the original (which admittedly uses piano also) and the chiptunes have the interpretation. If this is the case, why not make an all-out chiptune mix? The piano isn't adding anything that couldn't be filled in with a different instrument (chiptunes)... Something to think about, in any case. I enjoyed the piece a bunch once it picks up around 1:50 or so; before then the piano sounds a little too close to the source to really grab my attention.

Bumping for great justice here, but I'm not a Chase customer and refuse to cheat. Will vote when it opens up though!

This album is so great -- I have been looking forward to it for a long time, and am looking forward to the rest of the MM3 soundtrack just as much. My recommendation for the OCR submission from this album is "Better Not Mess With Magnet Man" -- it has the best lyrics of any of this album's tracks imo.

Think of all of the mothers out there. They just buy the stuff -- can your mom tell you what anti-aliasing is? Mine certainly can't, and my parents own both a 360 and PS3. The physical appearance of the tablet looks like it might be compatible w/ the Wii, especially if all they show is NSMB2.

I'd really like it if the GBA remake of Adventure was unlockable. Similarly, the additional games from the DS version of Superstar would be really great also. Will probably take a pass unless Dream Land 1 and 2 are fully colorized or they add something to the game part of it, as I own them all already.

Deia entertains me in myriad ways (did people see her custom-made Pokeball? jeez it's amazing), hooray for her! Currently (until November, likely) my favorite girl to drink with also.

Newt and I are starting Act IV hardcore tomorrow -- it's a whole different game there. Should be through normal by Monday if things continue to go well. The sticky moments thus far: Act I Highlands -- watch the poison clouds after you get Karyna's Staff. Act II -- Belial fight you have to play 100% defense when the arms go down. Act III -- Suicide minions; they're not hard but you have to have a way to deal w/ them. We expect Izual to be the sticking point for Act IV overall. For the opening fight Tom (wizard) will AoE stuff down while I (barb) build enough Fury to cast Earthquake + Ancients.

Did anyone else catch the Team Marn vs. Team Solomid series at MLG Anaheim? Easily the most entertaining set I've seen in a long time despite the fact that MRN got facerolled. There was a guy in the crowd that unfurled a "Should have picked Heimer" banner after game 1... ...and Team Marn instalocks him. Fuck yeah! Also, the cheering for them was like 10x as loud as for any other team there, largely because a few people in the crowd (Kara and others) showed up with vuvuzelas. VUVUZELAS. The fighting game community is the best, even in genres that aren't their own. We need to see more fun in the competitive circuit for other games.

Karma's heal is AOE and hits your whole team, making much of what you just said invalid.

A thousand times this. Also would love a 2D Metroid title, preferably for console.