José the Bronx Rican

I didn't forget; gathering my pics and my thoughts take time. I love good buddies, video games and watching talented musicians perform. MAG is the jump-off! I needed more than four days to catch up with the shows, the games, and with all the new friends I didn't get to talk to at length. My performance? Not bad for first time ever, with lyrics I haven't fully memorized. I'll have something for next year, for sure. Those who watched, it's a collab from Taucer and myself, which did alright at DoD. EDIT: Hotlinks from Gallery failed miserably; see my next post for pics.

Original Tank Police had great replacement tunes, but generally speaking I'm kinda glad they don't do that a lot. Some of the canned stuff on older series can get on your nerves. Teknoman did it too, right? ("Let's just play nothing but generic techno! Genius!") How about G-Force? ("doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-dooooo-do-doooo-doooo-do-doooo-doo-doo-doo-doo...") In Street Fighter Movie the change was a lateral move; however, Chun-Li vs. Claw worked a lot better without "YOU CAN-NOT HURT MEEEEEEE!!!!"

[bIG FAT JOKE]Well, since they got together through our community, and if the Internets really is a high-speed version of real life, it'll be a world record if they divorce a week after nups. Extremely long. bLiNd and JaDE are already stretching the limits of credibility with their union.[/bIG FAT JOKE] I'm stuck at work right now - all alone, because the only other person assigned to help me out retired a week earlier (how brainless can the folks in charge get?) - so I finally have the opportunity to *salute* Andill on their engagement. Congrats.

First, my dittos: Aim for the Top! Gunbuster is still my all-time favorite; I don't know what took it so long to come to DVD. Riding Bean is also way up there, but please watch it in Japanese... I haven't to this day found an English dub more embarrasingly amateurish than this one. It's unlistenable. Project A-ko and Dominion Tank Police I also recommend; they're both bananas. Second, I bring what hasn't been brought up yet: Vampire Princess Miyu OVAs - youngish, sort-of vampire goes against, and teams with, initially skeptical psychic while catching escaped ghost-monster-things. Doomed Megalopolis OVAs - evil spirit Kato's no M. Bison knockoff; one of several animes tied to the cause of Japan's great early 20th century earthquake. The Dagger of Kamui - epic film runs from Japan to America, ninjas to pirates, and even Mark Twain! And third: You reminded me of my unpopular viewpoint that no one's had a better dubbing output than Carl Macek's Streamline.

I've been waiting for expert verdicts on this stuff, because I don't always trust my own ears through my headphones and home theater, and all the required time, money and effort on treatment - which I def. do not have - may not guarantee results on my tiny, tiny studio/former-bedroom.

There's a few seconds of your "staff" so far on youtube.

Bump, because the game's finally out. Like, RIGHT NOW! Perhaps all you PSN'ers can give user reviews here.

When we last left our heroes... I helped Kanthos finalize a design in April, for Dave to integrate into the site database. AFAIK, the ball's in his court.

One of the things djp worked out when the contract was written up was that we'd be able to freely distribute the music, just like always. This is actually a tough choice. I'm looking at it as another in-game soundtrack to collect. I'm the kind of person that would alter even professionally released music if I thought it wasn't satisfactorily looped or mastered, or if it didn't have ALL the tracks accounted for. For me to do that, of course, I'd prefer lossless. However, I've done stuff like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 out of ripped .adx's and NiGHTS into Dreams... through audio cables straight out my Saturn, so it's probably not so big a deal. LAME's V3 VBR setting (which dances around 175kbps) is what I use on my encodes for listening, and it's reasonably transparent, so 192 sounds like just the right compromise.

Maybe the really annoying stuff I've seen in movies make her look tame, but apart from "You are special!" and the "lost cosplayer" look, I don't have a problem with Roll. Acting in the finished product will probably need to be graded on a curve. Otherwise, awesome so far. LOL moment: Wily. Omar Sharif as "Killer on the Loose."

And with the prereg completed, I'm finally officially a definite. Now to see if I'm crazy enough to try making this New Year's bash down there.

Why didn't I think of that?!? Someone, buy me a 360! HD Remix is coming out NEXT WEDNESDAY! Congratulations, Mattias.

Props and salutes to the first console I ever bought with my own cash (I was all broke during the NES generation); at that time, Sonic was the pack-in. Still working; until I find time for regular gaming again, it's usually for a quick SOR2 game after coming home from work. It's where I first started collecting videogame music for personal listening... on CASSETTES! Nothing beats lo-fi FM with warmth, hum AND hiss!

HD Remix was already up and running, so no idea about the startup. And whether Rey wanted to give a release date or not, it'd probably come out wrong: he was just the slightest bit blasted as I was leaving.

It bothered me that I didn't catch anyone playing as SFIV Chun-Li the whole night. Yes, Mike Fass mostly in character. I'm sure the first thought in most of our minds was "I thought he'd be bigger." I had no idea about Neostorm. Rey didn't have my contact info; I was just lucky Shael did. Then again, location-wise, my screenname could be filed under "dead giveaway." "Army Girl," so yeah, Malcos. And I didn't get to hear, so I didn't know what was on Dhalsim's stage, so thanks, Larry... "Reaching for Nirudha" was my absolute favorite on the project. When this game's released, I intend to talk to Stephen about extending "PTSD" (Cammy's ending) into a full-length collab.

José AND Shael Riley. Thursday afternoon, Shael cc'ed a message from Rey Jimenez specially inviting him to the event held in Brooklyn on Friday, since he lives so close. He also noticed that I live in the Bronx, so invite me as well. There you have it. Shael was there with Devon and some buddies. Got my first look at HD Remix and "console" SFIV live. (Sakura was playable; I overheard "She's overpowered.") Shael held his own as Sagat in IV, but I scrubbed it up out there (I haven't touched a Capcom fighter on the regular since MvC2). They had only one of those new Mad Catz sticks: looks great, but I haven't tried it. Several tournament players were there... I don't recognize any of 'em, but I heard one was Justin Wong. The wait for HD Remix was killing me, so this will definitely tide me over. I went there straight from work, left near midnight, and pretty much slept until this morning. The story behind the pic is simple. I, of course, wanted to hear the fruits of OCReMix's labors for myself. However, between the DJ spinning hot beats and the crowd sounds, I thought it wasn't happening. Then I had a brainstorm: I've got headphones, and the HD monitors had headphone jacks! - If I haven't said it before, I'm glad "Sexy Trunks" was included. - Finally heard Dave's Honda track for the first time, and it's excellent. - No "I Don't Fight Boys," but the speedy revision of "Army Girl" is glorious. - The HD Remix build wasn't "final," music-wise: one, there was no "hurry" music yet for Blanka... the BGM just went silent; two, the Vega music used was the next-to-last revision I sent... dunno if that will change.

Obligatory where-is-anything-from-Yuzo complaint.

I'm on record right now as claiming "Iron-Blue Intention." Top twenty might not have helped either: as far as many folks are concerned, Nintendo consoles had the monopoly on classic music. It's a bit of a pity. I wonder if anything close to a decent amount of suggestions from arcade titles of the 80's were made (Shinobi? Outrun? Hello?).

...I'm just glad my "29 days" will likely be a bit shorter than Shariq's "in the coming week."

I've got a ton of ideas for you. At the moment I'm right in the middle of a massive research project exactly for this purpose, and the biggest reason I was disappointed you couldn't make it to OTAKON was that I wanted to discuss it with you. My website update (finally) mentions this: I want us to have some sort of standard for untitled tracks, because I can't stand seeing folks just taking "guesses" - some educated, most not - and presenting them as official. I'm forced to do mostly the same while creating MIDIs, and I have to stop. I'm close to something resembling a plan, and I may run it by you soon before possibly bringing it to various VGM communities (Gamingforce, VGMdb, etc.) for help and suggestions.

http://vgmdb.net/album/9649 Sometime in the next 29 days, then?...

I didn't notice this until this morning. Couldn't make it, but I considered going out there after the event to catch up with you guys and shoot shit for a while. That didn't work out either. At least we got two of us repping the HD Remix product. Hope the networking was worth it.

I gave attention to this much earlier, mostly because I kept telling folks I wanted to be first with some kind of "official" OCR Music Video. Audix first posted this in the review thread for "Day's End," which I only ran into after seeing it on the vgfrequency blog. I tried to bring it to djp's attention in the "youtube" announcement thread. I wasn't sure what the protocol was anymore for asking to put videos in his OCR youtube group, but I think it'd be a great addition.

Boo to closed-minded opinions, but I'll take this moment to say I support the original love for Yuji Ohno's Lupin soundtrack. Been a fan of Ohno's work since Mighty Orbots. And if I ever get around to transcribing a sequence of the 1980 Lupin theme, OverCoat will get his remix soon after that.

Can't compete with AnSo, who creates complete, hot tunes in his sleep. I'm grateful for the opportunity and the placement. This can now also go into my website update. Looking forward to the swag!