ZealPath

Wow that was great, I've gotta think the vast majority of gamers will enjoy this one! Very solid execution on the Mario theme, this had to be a lot of work but the end result is very cool and definitely unique.

Yeah, NewEgg used to be useless for Canadians, but they do have a NewEgg.ca now as well. Though I would strongly recommend NCIX to any Canadians, never had any problems and used to love not having to pay for shipping and just pick up my orders in store. Of course that was when I still lived in Vancouver, not sure that will still be an option living in the TO area now although I do know they have a warehouse here. Needless to say both Newegg and NCIX have a lot of great deals today, unfortunately I think it's a little early for me to be trying to rebuild my PC, though I'm wanting to more and more.

Today's deals are pretty boring imo, though if you still need the orange box, there is that. Isn't not having the orange box kind of like not having internet access though? That all said I am expecting tomorrow's deals to be more interesting, last day and all.

Machinarium is $5 today, normally $20 (75% off). I watched the trailer and was pretty much instantly sold, looks like it has a lot of old school adventure game elements, a unique and very cool art style, and of course, good music. So even though I had no idea what I wanted this time around sale wise, looks like I found something good, and at that price, I don't have to feel bad for impulse buying it! As for Torchlight, if you liked Diablo, you can't go wrong with it for $5. I didn't even think I'd enjoy it that much when I got it last Christmas, thinking it would be too simplistic or something, but naaaah, it was a lot of fun.

Excellent stuff, and all for a great cause! As much as I love ocremixes, sometimes a "remastered" version is nice to listen to as well, especially for something as now "classic" as the Super Metroid soundtrack. Looking forward to the rest, and I hope you get a lot of donations!

Oh man this is gold if anyone still needs those games, also, Torchlight is a great pickup if you have the time to play it. To be completely honest, normally during these deals I am on the lookout for specific titles but this time I'm not even sure what I want, if anything.

Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy will be making it's second trip to Canada this Saturday in Toronto, and as someone who has recently moved from the Vancouver area to the Toronto area, this will be my second chance to experience this awesome event. The Vancouver concert was absolutely great, despite the fact that Nobuo Uematsu was unable to make it, and with Nobuo in attendance at this one, I definitely can't wait to see how it all shakes down. I expect to see a lot of the same songs from the Vancouver show, along with a few new songs that were recently confirmed for this show such as FFXIII's Battle Theme, which I expect to be nothing short of completely awesome, and FFV's Clash on the Big Bridge/Battle with Gilgamesh, which should provide some mind blowing keyboard action. Even though I have already seen it live once, the FFVI Opera is also on the confirmed list, and I can't tell you how awesome it is to see that one live if you grew up with FFVI. I'll probably try to do another mini review sometime afterward, meanwhile, anyone else in the area planning to go to this?

This is very nice! I thought that an official OCR embedded album art was on it's way in with the updated tagging system (whenever that goes live...), but I have to say, I am very tempted to just apply this to all of my OCR mp3s immediately, good stuff.

Wow, I totally missed this somehow, excellent stuff, really digging this! "Never Better" is really standing out to me so far, but it's all great really, different atmospheres throughout the album, just like you described. This group of genres has really become one of my hands down favorites in the last couple years and if stuff like this keeps showing up, that isn't likely to change any time soon!

I use the G9x as well, excellent mouse, with so many features and adjustments you can make to it. My roommate and I grabbed a couple of these a few months ago and have never looked back.

Stumbled upon this last night and thought some other Doom/id Software fans might enjoy it. Basically this is footage a visitor recorded of the id Software office in 1993, sometime before the release of Doom. Worth noting that while he did not record this at the time (obviously, if you watch the video) it was actually uploaded by John Romero (yeah I had to do that, sorry) himself in April 2009. Early in the video, about 2 minutes in, there are several minutes with Bobby Prince, whom many no doubt know was id's music guy for a lot of its early titles. He demos one of the tracks he created for Keen Dreams, which actually didn't make it into that game and was instead used in Keen 4. This track actually has an OCReMix to it's name (gogo Mazedude!), so you may want to take a listen before you watch that part! Personally I found the part with Bobby Prince highly entertaining, seeing him describe why he made the song the way he did was just priceless. I would have loved to see him talk a little about how he put together the Doom tracks which sample metal music from the time, but alas, all we get after that is some talk about Pickle Wars. Can't help but think that somewhere in that mess of CDs that you see at one point are albums from groups like Metallica, Slayer, and Pantera who would have elements of their songs used in the Doom 1&2 soundtrack. A great deal of the later part of the video takes place in John Romero's office with him demoing Doom (single player and deathmatch) for some astounded observers. If you're a hardcore Doom fan, you'll probably really enjoy this part, if you aren't, it'll probably be totally lost on you. Picking out the little inconsistencies from the prerelease version John Romero is playing versus the final product was fun, and the "wow that's amazing" reactions from the people watching really helps put just how long ago this was into context. If you ever wondered what the id Software offices looked like back in the days of Doom development, well this is one hell of a time capsule. Only other thing I wish we got to see was maybe John Carmack's office but it seems he was not there that night.

Ah finally, this is definitely one that myself (and clearly a lot of other people) remember the WIP of and have been waiting to see on the front page for a while now. So now that it's here, it has actually been a long time since I've listened to the WIP which I have kept, and I don't totally remember what has changed, but I am definitely digging the completed version! At the time of the first WIP posting, I particularly remember thinking, man, another MM2 Wily Stage 1? These concerns were promptly put to rest by how unique this song is, and the vocals certainly add to it in a positive way. I really like how while everyone including the artist seems to agree that while the vocals aren't "technically perfect," they are perhaps, perfect for this arrangement in which the style in which it is sung just seems to flow perfectly with the rest of the elements in the arrangement. The subject matter is an interesting one, once again I was glad to see a general acknowledgment of how vague they are, but there's nothing wrong with leaving it up to interpretation, and I can live with that being the meaning in the end. The change to a more uplifting sound towards the end, particularly the last 30 seconds or so is a nice contrast from the rest of the song, and also leads to a "true" ending for the song which I don't believe was present in the WIP, well done in any case. This doesn't feel new obviously, for the good chunk of us who were familiar with the WIP, but it's still nice to see it officially completed and up on the front page where it belongs!

I distinctly remember being very far in Quest for Glory 3, only to run out of food and have the game end due to my character being dying of exhaustion. However, from where I was, there was absolutely no way to backtrack to town without dying along the way.... every game after that I would cap out food as soon as possible, oh old games.

Oh it's not polished at all, and still rather laggy at the best of times, but I do think it will only continue to get better. I also think that while it can't properly be reviewed at the moment, it will and has been, and for what they are reviewing, I would say yes, absolutely it does not deserve good marks yet. Personally I've been having a lot of fun, though I think SE would have been smarter to not rush the release as the initial lack of polish is the thing that will scathe it in reviews (which is basically what is happening). It's not a huge secret that it was originally intended to launch on both the PC and PS3 at the same time in March 2011, rather than Sept 22 (CE) or Sept 30 2010 (non-CE). It was presumably pushed up to let players have a chance to get into it before WoW's Cataclysm launched. I'm not totally convinced this was a good move, as the game still feels entirely too much like a beta for the most part, and this may put people off (or make them all too ready to jump back to WoW, if applicable). At the same time you have either old FFXI players who have been through this before and would rather play now than wait, people who are having fun despite the unpolished state of the game, and perhaps some newcomers who haven't really played MMOs to realize how unpolished it is at the moment. The launch of FFXI was actually very similar to this, however since it launched in Japan a full year (and expansion) before making its way to North America, a good chunk of the most glaring problems were no where to be found and are only known through the translated stories told by Japanese players. In the end for me, despite all of its obvious problems, I am having fun, so I'm sticking with it, and I expect that FFXIV will do ok, much like all of my thoughts in the past. It's not going to take over the #1 MMO spot or anything like that, and it knows it, and between the Final Fantasy name, and a substantial number of old FFXI players looking for something new, it will have a half-decent playerbase. Basically that was a long way of saying I think you're right, things should be a lot better come PS3 release (if they're not, who knows, even I might have grown tired of this pseudo-beta by then).

Coincidentally, a friend of mine recently directed me to this video , which is essentially having some fun with vulgar lyrics, in this case, from Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit." This was nothing but funny to me, but this thread has me wondering how many people out there can't laugh at this and would be offended by it. I've always enjoyed hiphop and went through a phase in high school where it was pretty much all I wanted to listen to, now I only listen to it occasionally really but I've certainly enjoyed all of the hiphop mixes that have come out of OCR, whether they be like this more recent MM4 mix, a Rhymes with Elixir, or even an Everclear Hangover.

Oh I didn't mean to sound disapproving, more just that it really did kind of come out of nowhere. Valve is one company I'd be happy to give more money to, though I expect that will be in the form of a Portal 2, or dare I even suggest, a HL2 Ep3. I'm also really glad they didn't make the transactions in the form of some sort of points that you have to buy in weird nonsensical increments, but just straight up dollars, which can even be used elsewhere on Steam. Side note, I was a little surprised to see that the promotional hats such as Bill's Hat or the Sam & Max ears were tradeable, cool for those who missed it and are interested I guess.

Well this microtranscation store thing sure came out of nowhere, I guess every developer needs some kind of DLC or similar these days though. Prices do seem insane but I can't imagine ever buying anything with real money in TF2 so it doesn't really matter I guess. This would only annoy me if the items weren't obtainable by other means, but since they are, none of them should be that big a deal in a month or two especially with trading in. I'd love to see someone who hadn't played TF2 for about a year come back to this, so many new items now. The thing I was most happy to see come in is trading finally, new hats and fancy new items are cool and all, but I really just want to get rid of a few hats that have just been sitting there. If anyone wants a Trophy Belt, Bloke's Bucket Hat, or Camera Beard, and has hats they want to get rid of, by all means let me know.

Have to say I really enjoyed reading this, the Doom stuff really resonated with me. Maybe I had thought about Doom like that before, but mostly subconsciously, and to hear your take on it both brought back a lot of memories but also made me think of how often I would think about just how weird yet how perfect the world of Doom was. I was maybe a couple years older than you when I first played it, and I can still very much remember how absorbed I could become in what is really such a simple game. It was that very lack of explanation, yet the obvious fact that you were slowly working your way into Hell itself that made the original Doom so much more of an immersive experience than Doom 3, which still had great atmosphere but too much contact with "the real world," to convey that sense of complete isolation and desperation that the original game, and for the most part, Doom 2 had. Reading that also made me want to listen to Asphyxiated Soul again for that dose of the desperate and scary Doom experience that it provides so well. To hear you mention Braid also brought a smile to my face, as I think it's probably the best game to come out in the last few years. and the main reason why it's so good in my mind is once again, the fact that not only is your hand not held, very little info is provided aside from the fact that you can jump and rewind time. You have to think, mostly outside the box, and the game itself is for the most part, a lot of just sitting there staring at the puzzles saying what the hell do I do now, and that sense of accomplishment that comes when you finally figure it out. To look up how to finish a game like this would be a complete waste of the experience, and I wonder how many people felt the same as they played it. In any case, I look forward to more entries, very interesting and thought-provoking stuff!

* Portal 2 will definitely be a "drop everything else and get right to it" game when it comes out for me, and the trailers just make me even more excited for how similar yet progressively different this game will (hopefully) be. The fact that it will also be "a full size game," presumably a lot larger than Portal, is promising as well.

You get to give your character a first and last name, regardless of the version you are playing. Anything not ridiculous (and some things are are!) will get through the filters fine.

Here's hoping everyone's CE versions are ready for pickup tomorrow!

For the most part I would say no, since I have been a genre-jumper for years, but maybe the one exception would be jazz, as I tend to love the vast majority of jazz mixes while having previously listened to very little jazz outside of OCR.

If you're talking about the Manoria Cathedral mix he was working on, then hell yeah, that was gonna be what I posted here too! Still listen to the WIPs every now and then, this is definitely the one that sticks out in my mind, it was already very polished, and had plenty of deviation from the source.

Nice, didn't even realize it was on Steam. For $5, I think I'm finally ready to give this a go, I can't get enough of these indie platformers it seems. Edit: aaand purchased, let the fun begin!

I actually really enjoyed this as well, continued proof that there is no such thing as an overmixed source as long as the variety is there. The subtlety of the source tune is what makes this so good, that schala vibe is there but it's hiding a little bit, and certainly takes a while to get started, and because of that, this doesn't feel like "oh god another Schala mix," which from the writeup is what I was expecting. I also really like trance. so that surely helped, but as far as Schala mixes go this is right up there for me!