MindWanderer

Listening to it now. The vox synth that's used in almost every track is what makes the big difference. I agree that it's unnecessary and changes the feel from "exploration" to "space opera." Title screen: The starkness of the original was one of its most striking features, and the remake's effort to make a fuller soundscape at all times, and speed it up, definitely hurt it. Brinstar seems fine to me. Agreed about the item room. Same deal as the title screen. Norfair starts off generally fine, but the lengthy additional section only hurts it. I agree with you, and I know exactly what you mean by the "exploring deeper" feel of the original. Of course, that may be because I played Metroid as a kid and the association got formed that way. Kraid's lair actually works well with that crappy choir. It probably helps that something similar was in Super Metroid. This section should be epic. Ridley's lair always felt odd to me--you go deeper, but the music becomes more "space-y". Creepy as hell, and the remake covers that just fine. Tourian lacks that choir, which might be why it seems better than the others. It's adequate. I was generally disappointed with the game as well. The worldbuilding was a big part of it; it was also annoying that you didn't get the most critical exploration tools until the endgame, so you had to not only backtrack to get 100%, but go into the main area of the game from the endgame area, which was weird and players might not even realize they could do that. It took away a lot of what made Super Metroid special, and even Fusion was much better in this regard despite being deliberately railroaded.

If you don't monetize, you're usually safe. Valve generally has a good working relationship with the fan creation community (e.g. Black Mesa becoming an actual for-profit mod). OCR has several Portal remixes and a few Half-Life ones, and there are a bunch of other fan remixes of Valve stuff on YouTube already. They could take action, of course, but there's no reason to think they will unless you try to monetize.

Reminder: The first check-in is at the end of this month! if that's going to be a problem for anyone, best to let me know sooner rather than later.

OK, then, here are some of the VGM Remix YouTube channels I follow. Jonny Atma actually does have one ReMix posted here (as GaMetal), but he's a prolific YouTuber. Fantastic guitar work; while his arrangements are a little cover-ish, he really milks what it means to play the electric guitar and makes the music his own. He takes requests from a fairly eclectic fan base, so he frequently has some odd choices in there (such as this one from McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure). Ferdk takes a little more liberty with his metal arrangements. The creative tweaks are subtle, but enough to add personality. He also has great taste in VGM, and takes requests from his Patreon, covering a lot of fantastic songs that aren't necessarily the ones people remix over and over again. Here's the Squirrel Battle from To the Moon. Speaking of To the Moon, I'm sure most people here know Laura Shigihara from that game and Plants vs. Zombies, and one OCR entry back in 2011, but you may not know that she does tons of piano and vocal VGM remixes on her YouTube Channel. Listen to this Skyward Sword cover and tell me she's not amazing. Aivi Tran also has one posted ReMix (as waltzforluma) and collaborates with some other pianists and violinists for more. Sometimes she even collaborates with herself! But her straightforward piano work is beautifully expressive. She and her husband also do the music for Steven Universe! I also follow FamilyJules7X, Smooth McGroove, and Taylor Davis, but they hardly need any more press, and also a few other folks who have multiple OCR posts. Also Lindsey Stirling, who mostly does original music, but does have VGM stuff as well, with fun videos: her Skyrim one is particularly fun because it shows off what you can do with a whole lot of layering.

More physics engine wackiness. I hadn't heard of the Stasis Rune before, but it's brilliant. Apparently it locks an object down so that physics temporarily do not apply to it, which is common enough in video games, but when the effect wears off, all energy applied to the object takes effect at once. It's fantastic. I could tell from the level design up to that point that it was coming. BotW may be the first Zelda game where giving you true flight wouldn't actually break anything, so maybe.

Can we share whole YouTube channels here? I have a few of those saved, and I'd like to see what others have found.

I felt that way at first--I've sunken probably 200 hours into Oblivion without ever visiting Geoffrey--but seeing the stuff you get from the early shrines changed my mind. I definitely want the bombs, the magnet, and the parasail ASAP. And probably a fire rod. And if you can get all that in the first hour or two, what comes after that?

I don't think that game developers and casual listeners are looking for the same things at all. If I were developing a game, a good fit with the rest of the game's aesthetics would be the #1 criterion, but production commensurate with those expectations would be extremely high as well. Memorable, enjoyable music in a game isn't so much a requirement as it is a nice bonus, unless music is a critical part of the game for some reason.

And it depends what you mean by "people." I think in most cases, a general listener would be more inclined to listen to a unique and enjoyable composition with mediocre production than a mediocre composition with fantastic production. Audiophiles are often critical in the other direction, though. I read through almost all the posts in the Judges' Decisions forum here, and it's much more common for them to say, "This is a great arrangement, but the production could be improved" than "The production here is great, but the arrangement is dull." But when they get one of the former, it's always, "I really love this, please improve it so we can get it on the site," but with the latter it's more like, "meh, this isn't really what we're looking for." It's an interesting contrast--they seem to be much more enthusiastic about composition but much more critical about production.

Resurrect Thread! The Zelda thread reminded me to point this out: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1V6wPLSqNj88zuz0-Ms6RAtiBXXVoIlNnK-IjYcIeHGU/viewform?c=0&w=1 Yacht Club Games has opened a poll about what sort of 8-bit game you'd like to see them make next. And they know their game theory: it's a "how excited would you be about each of the following options" rather than "pick your favorite." I must be a huge game theory nerd, because the simple fact that they set up the poll this way gives me even more confidence in their skills. (I finally bought Shovel Knight on GOG last week, and it's at the top of my to-play list.) The idea I was most excited about was a Zelda-inspired game, but I hope they stick to the Shovel Knight model and don't ape one specific series too closely. Shovel Knight took cues from several different NES games, so I'd love a top-down adventure game that steals from games other than Zelda. A kart racer would be hilarious, though. Mario Kart has ruled the roost for too long; there are lots of other kart games worth stealing from. Chocobo Racing is a personal favorite.

Oh, the speedrunners are going to have fun with that. Combine with the parasail and you'll be able to get a lot of distance without getting the normal stamina upgrades needed to climb/swim that far. Supposedly the world is designed in such a way that this wouldn't break too much, but we'll see.

We've seen a little of it. Some of the Shrines contain Runes, and the way the bombs and the magnet thing work definitely would have put them in true dungeons in a traditional Zelda game. We've seen bows and the Fire Rod just lying around in random places. It'll be interesting to see if you need certain items to beat certain dungeons--it could be frustrating to have to track down the one shrine out of a hundred that has the right thing. The developers have made it really clear that the overworld isn't going to have Metroid-style roadblocks in it. I haven't played Link Between Worlds yet, but it may take cues from that. Because you're right? I mean, I think it's fun to theorize, but we all know Nintendo came up with this whole multi-timeline explanation way after the fact. There are a few references in the games that say something about a chronological order, especially Ocarina of Time through Spirit Tracks, and the Vaati/Four Sword stories, but most of the others are either completely disconnected or "This guy used to be the hero in a previous adventure of some sort." If Nintendo ever does put Breath of the Wild into the chronology in some official way, you know it's something they came up with late into its development at best, and possibly not even before it was finished.

I tried to recruit for a NG album a year or two ago. Wasn't a ton of interest.

PAX Prime (now West) used to be my gig. I went every year for a while. Taking a couple of years off for parenthood, but now it's crazy difficult to get tickets, they sell out in less than an hour. I might still go next year (I have a script that checks the site constantly and alerts me when tickets go up for sale), or maybe just PAX South. Not as much going on there, but you end up being able to do more of it because the lines aren't as long.

I don't know Edison, but C700 is tailor-made to create authentic SNES sounds. Doesn't do reverb quite right, but it sounds like you know how to do that otherwise. Just load an SPC into it and you're good to go, or you can mess with its parameters to create your own sounds. Of course, there's always Super Audio Cart for the easy win.

I know it's really late in the game but... maybe you should consider renaming the album? There will be a lot of confusion with Breath of the Wild with the current name.

That would mean the Era of Chaos, the Era of Prosperity, the Force Era (Minish Cap, Four Swords), the Hyrule Unification war (Ocarina of Time, ending in Link's adulthood), the flood, the events of Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, and the recession of the waters all take place over only 100 years. Bear in mind also that between Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker, enough time ("generations") had passed for the Hero of Time to have become an ancient legend, and for prayers for his return to have gone unanswered for a long time. Can't squeeze many generations into less than 100 years even without all that other stuff.

Brandwatch unable to merge "Star Wars Battlefront" with "Star Wars: Battlefront". Breath of the Wild is the only game to come out of E3 so far that seems unique and different. Most of the rest is either an in-place iteration of an existing franchise, a remaster, largely unknown, or disappointing so far. Also, it's Zelda, one of the biggest names in gaming. Also, Nintendo sank an awful lot of money into hype for it, with by far the largest amount of floor space devoted to a single game, a ton of press, and a lot of gameplay demonstration. They've also been really hush-hush about it so far, and just unleashed a huge amount of info. So, not surprising. You realize your first and second ideas are incompatble, right? Wind Waker takes place many generations after Skyward Sword. I'm sure he's only right-handed because they reused the model, and cemented his name because they decided on voice acting. (You could choose his name in Skyward Sword, although I found out that SS is the first game in which "Link" is provided as a default name.) I don't think the old man looks much like Ganondorf at all. If he's someone we know, it's almost certainly the King of Hyrule. But he could just be a new take on the generic old man from Zelda 1. Some other points I've seen elsewhere: The Master Sword in BotW is in its original pedestal. That's not where it ended up at the end of WW, and it would be strange for it to be replaced unless there's an intermediate story that hasn't been told yet. The Koroks' plan in WW seems to be to plant trees to fight global warming and lower the sea level. That would take an exceptionally long time, more than 100 years, but it could work. There's an item called Rock Salt in BotW. Apparently its description suggests it came from a dried-up sea, but I haven't been able to find the exact text yet. Edit: Found it: "Crystallized salt from the ancient sea commonly used to season meals." Not as explicit as people have been claiming. Wind Waker does seem to have some weird stone-based technology in one of its dungeons. It's never explained where that came from, but it could be the same as the Sheikah Slate.... The Sheikah seem to be incredibly ancient in the Zelda timeline. Their artifacts are old even in Skyward Sword. Why did we never see all this stuff before? Did all these buried shrines get exposed recently? It's true that the Calamity Ganon seems to be more of a force than a creature. They may be using "Ganon" to refer to any nonhuman incarnation of Ganondorf. It also might be a mistranslation--anyone know what it's being called in Japanese? It might be more literally "The Ganon Calamity", which would be something he caused rather than something he is. It's sort of a cloud--could it be related to the Wind Sorcerer Vaati? Skyward Sword contained a time travel element of its own. If time travel in Ocarina of Time could create fragmented timelines, so could the one in Skyward Sword. This could then be a completely unexplored timeline branching from then. But that wouldn't really explain the run-down Temple of Time.

I'm a sucker for this style of music, even though Dancing Mad has been done to death using it, the Bravely Default source added in keeps it interesting. ("Under the Duchy's Banner" is missing from the remix info, though.) I can see why the judges considered it muddy, but it's a highly entertaining remix and I'm glad it got posted.

They did talk about it a little. It's very ambient and minimalist. Definitely nothing like the huge anthems Kondo is known for. I'm not surprised he's not involved. It does have several other similarities to Elder Scrolls games: Equipment with varying stats and durability, foraging for random fruit and junk everywhere you go, crafting, a slew of random minor dungeons. The combat system is very Zelda-ish, as are the "items" like the runes and the paraglider/leaf. No word on character advancement, but Link doesn't seem to have stats other than hearts and equipment, so that's more like Zelda so far. I haven't played Shadow of Mordor yet, but certainly the exploration mechanics and world layout are unlike Elder Scrolls. They've made it absolutely clear it will be out on Wii U. They were demoing it on one. I imagine the graphics quality will be different, but no word on controls. But the Sheikah Slate sure seems like it was designed more for the Wii U than for whatever the NX will have.

Not necessarily. The Koroks are descended from the Kokiri from Ocarina of Time, and that's the canonical nexus of the divergent storylines. The Zelda team seems to subscribe to a sort of convergent evolution--multiple paths of events leading to the same endpoint. So the Kokiri could have become Koroks in a different timeline. It looks and sounds a lot like a retelling of the original Zelda so far, although with the magitech from Twilight Princess. Since there doesn't seem to be any reason to think the Twilight Realm would involved again, my best guess would be that this is the far future of one of the original timeline, after the people of Hyrule invented magitech on their own, and later disappeared for some reason. Also, if I recall correctly, Ganondorf never became Ganon in any timeline other than that one, and he's very clearly the "Calamity Ganon" in BotW. Of course, the Zelda team has always been in the habit of designing a game first and maybe shoehorning it into the overall timeline later, if they feel like it. Sidenote: I haven't played Skyward Sword yet (never picked up a Motion Plus controller), but is this the first game in which Link is actually "Link" in the game? In every other game, you could choose his name.

Kingsglaive certainly has some stupendous animation there. English trailer below: The gameplay, on the other hand, looks like it wants to be a cross between Metal Gear Rising, Dishonored, Monster Hunter, and a little bit of Final Fantasy XII. Might not be a bad game, but it sure still seems like Square Enix isn't interested in making Final Fantasy games actually called Final Fantasy anymore.

Was about to say exactly what Odai said. While it does seem to be influenced by Monster Hunter and Shadow of the Colossus (or perhaps Assassin's Creed), and perhaps Okami, I wouldn't call those "modern trends." These are ideas 10 years old at the least. What is interesting is that they're not trying to go out of the box to do things that hadn't really been done before, like most Zelda games have done. Nothing novel here, but it does look like a fun combination of things that hadn't been combined. I've always wanted to get into Monster Hunter but was turned off by its seeming lack of directed progression, and Zelda could be an ideal solution for that. What I didn't see a lot of was... well, Zelda. Other than the doodad that creates objects, the art style, and the name Link, this could have been a trailer for a new Monster Hunter game. And the doodad is only semi-Zelda-ish; it seems to be equal parts Zelda, Okami, and Minecraft. The hands-on reports do say that it has dungeons of some sort, though there's disagreement as to how those work. Edit: I'm watching the Treehouse now, and the gameplay is much more Zelda-ish once you get into the shrines (mini-dungeons). But the items (runes) you get from them are much more useful than the typical Zelda items. You can be a lot more creative with them. Also interesting is that the game can be played with the Pro Controller. Not surprising that there are no Wii U gimmicks, since it'll be on NX as well, but I would have expected there to be some elements implemented differently in both. For instance, object creation and placement with the touchpad or whatever analog controls the NX has.

Yeah, that's how I discovered Lindsay Sterling, who is amazing.

Yeah, I was really struck how much this still sounds remarkably like an MSX song despite using acoustic instruments.