Shadow Wolf

http://wii.ign.com/articles/868/868200p1.html I know it's cardinal sin linking IGN, but come on. BOTH Earthworm Jim Games, Boogerman, and Clay Fighter on VC! Best. Ever. EDIT: Since I've already sent you to Mordor, have a look at The Conduit while you're there. A Wii game that looks as good as Bioshock? Who could have imagined? The only problem is that this one can't seem to get any love from a publisher. Anyone here who can help with that? http://wii.ign.com/articles/867/867498p1.html

Burfday++! Congrats man, have a good one!

You all do realize that the IGN version of this box art will be fixed within days and this version of the game will be a collector's item though, don't you? Not that it'll ever be like, worth a ton, but still.

Nah, that's a big deal. I don't want IGN logos on my case art. (They haven't been boxes since the last N64 game.) My only consolation is that it looks like the wolf is trying to eat it.

If you're saying it came as a demo WITH Kotor, like some nostalgia thing, then I'd highly recommend looking into games that come from the people who created Kotor, which would be Lucasarts and probably a few other collaborators. Either that or the game it came with wasn't Knights of the Olde Republic, cuz that game isn't too terribly old. 2003 I think.

It makes me mad in my head. Seriously, this is like M*A*S*H* meets green acres meets spaghetti western meets Braveheart meets disney meets every other vomit inducing cliche in history. Great work.

I cried gumdrops and jelly beans when I saw that. Nice work.

I love how it looks like I pentuple posted happy birthday now.

Seems to be the fad thing to do today, so happy birthday!

Happy birthday Gecko, and thanks for all the car insurance.

Happy birthday!

I love you Tim.

Birthday dyslexic happy have a

Happy burfday Mr. The Coop!

Wow. Welcome home man, haven't seen you since 2003. This is a GREAT mix. It's reminiscent of the Wind Waker Soundtrack in some ways, but it somehow manages to sound like Earthbound, lounge music, and Samurai Jack all smooshed together. You win for having a piano solo in there as well, there's no better way to get my A+ on a mix. It just sounds whinsical, happy, and downright beautiful. Excellent stuff, and welcome back!

I've never played Phoenix Wright, due to my sad and shocking lack of a DS. Could someone explain in 50 words or less why it kicks so much ass?

I play everything by ear because I suck and I don't read music well at ALL. I mean, I CAN read it, but since I don't play anything, it's a lot like a steering wheel with no car. I just piano roll that shit in FLStudio. But as far as what I'm proud of? The Castle Courtyard Theme from Gauntlet Dark Legacy. I transcribed the entire thing note for note, by ear. I also found out that because Joe Hisaishi is a sloppy composer, His timing was just slightly off during that whole song. Not that the music isn't good, but that soundtrack is just SLOPPY.

Interesting interview. I love most of Soule's work, but what he said about sound sequencing is especially interesting for me. Let us speak of the Morrowind theme. Obviously an epic, great piece of music, I think most of us who've heard it can agree with that. But I always felt like he could have done a lot more with it. I felt like that theme was too subdued, like there was an amazing melody there just wanting to bust loose and have fun. It fit in the somewhat quiet, subdued context of the game, but still... something was missing. So then, a couple months after I first heard that song, Fray's song Fear Not got posted here on OC ReMix. A pulsating electronica track, and I feel like it expanded on the Morrowind theme musically and sonically, and gave it a power and presence that it richly deserved. That's what I love most about remixing. Jeremy had a great idea with the Morrowind theme, but in my opinion he didn't push it to the wall and take it as far as it could go. NOT because he was wrong, but because in his mind, the theme was finished. Fray took it and ran with it in a direction I doubt Jeremy even considered. He gave it a sweeping majesty, a great beat, and a raw power that were kind of hiding in the original, and it was completely electronic. Other people have remixed it other ways, using sequencing, composing, sound design... it's amazing to me to see people take that starting point of the original and explore all the different tangents it can musically take. The Final Stage was another take on the same theme, and it sounds like it could be the credits theme for Braveheart. Completely different from both Fray and Jeremy. The point is, what Jeremy's talking about is, in one sense, true. The classical 'components' of music, if you will, forms and structures, those are ageless, and I think composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Stravinsky, all of them will indeed be foundational to music as a whole probably ad infinitum. But it's closed minded to say that little to no good can come from composing outside of that mold. My favorite bands in the world are the rule-breakers, people that ignore certain parts of the musical bedrock in favor of pure sound. Bands like Rush, Tool, Imogen Heap, Blue man Group and others come to mind. It's not necessarily a bad thing to give the finger to some of the rules. Know them and respect them, yes, but feel free to cut new path too. EDIT: Mr. Robson, since you're here and most everything I've heard from you is jaw-droppingly awesome, I'll ask you. I know you're highly trained, but it's my understanding that you compose almost exclusively with samples. Provided my information is correct, what's your opinion as far as sound sequencing and editing being 'second rate' if you will?

Two words: RARE. WARE. THAT IS ALL.

How fortuitous. I just read Dune a few months ago and really liked it, although I couldn't get into any of the other ones and opted to stop before they began to suck. I'd love to see a truly good adaptation of this story.

I have bumper stickers to slap on my new Avalon, and you got $5.00. Or maybe 7. I think eStarland gets the shipping. Point is, you got munnied. Game on, Dave, the site kicks more ass by the day.

OH. MY. GOD. Any one of those 3 would make it the most epic movie in the universe.

Wow. Just wow. That is completely epic. Whether it's awesome epic, complete ass epic, or "Tom Cruise in Legend" epic, I'm not sure. Definitely an epic April Fool's joke.

Bomb. diggity. That is all.

Nobody's screwing Nintendo, they're developing on whatever system will sell the most games and let them develop it how they want. For example: I think most people have to admit at this point that the N64 certainly LOOKED better than the PSX, by a long shot. Any side by side comparison of a game that released on both systems will show that. But the reason the PSX rocketed to the top of the market is that it was incredibly cheap for developers to simply use more than one disc for a game. See Squaresoft for further info. They could put beautiful cutscenes in their games to advance incredibly long stories, all for less than the cost of releasing on a cartridge. Cartridges didn't have the space the developers needed anymore. Moving into the Gamecube era, in October 2000, the PS2 released, and it was much like the second coming of Christ. The system simply dug in and fortified an incredibly solid market position for years to come. The Gamecube didn't have a chace in hell of getting on top of it, especially not with how well the new X-Box was received as well. What was the problem with Gamecube? Why couldn't it draw developers to make larger and better games for it? Once again, I'd say that at least one of the reasons was that Nintendo, just like they did with the N64, was using outdated storage mediums. They opted to go with the 1.4 gig minidiscs when every other system was using 4.7 gig full size DVDs, and even later on dual layer DVDs. They didn't have the storage space so many developers want. Now, Nintendo has done it again. In order to stay on the cheap side, they've given us a system that uses 4.7 gig discs when the rest of the gaming world is moving on to Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, with 25 to 50 gigs of storage PER DISC. Furthermore, they haven't even given us music CD playback with the Wii, an option that was built into the Playstation ONE that released 13 years ago. They did the same thing with DVD playback, an option found in the PS2 that released 8.5 years ago. I understand Nintendo's position that most people have those machines already, and I understand they don't want their systems to be multimedia machines, but a.) Multimedia machines are what a large chunk of the market wants these days and b.) when you could add something like that by simply writing a few more lines of code into your firmware, it's ludicrous to NOT have it. Fact of the matter is, I've used my PS2 for DVD playback since 2002. My PS2 was crapping out on that end in 2007, so I was excited when I bought the Wii because I thought I was getting a DVD player as well. Imagine my surprise. So I went out and had to buy a cheap ass DVD player for a year, and now I use my PS3 for DVD playback. Anyone else catching the irony? I didn't have a standalone DVD player like Nintendo thought I would, and I bought their system with one of the (minor) selling points being its supposed DVD playback. Turns out Sony's media behemoths are the only ones I can rely on to give me that. I would imagine this happens to consumers far more than Nintendo would like to think. I love Nintendo's games, and they've released some excellent and wonderfully fun stuff for their systems, but that's the key word, "they." I haven't bought a Nintendo system since the SNES for the third party games. I buy them knowing that the main reason for it was Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, and every other awesome first party franchise that simply isn't going to move to any other system. If I want excellent third party games, I buy a PS2 or PS3. That's where I get the Final Fantasy games, Metal Gear Solid, etc. The point is, gone are the days when people can only own one system to have their cake and eat it too. They were gone all the way back when the SNES and Genesis were competing and people wanted to play Mario AND Sonic. For some reason the fanboys turned it into a landwar in the N64/PSX generation and now for some reason it seems to be earth-shatteringly important that the system you own is on top of the market. Why? Buy what you need to play the games. It's about having fun anyhow. But my main point is that I personally think Nintendo should rethink their stance on jacking up the cost of a system by 100 to give us more options. People have shown that they'll willingly shuck out 500-700 dollars for a media center system like the 360 or PS3. If I was Nintendo I'd be on it like white on rice on a paper plate with a glass of milk in a snowstorm.