benprunty

Sinewav, I love your point about how the game helps you listen to music more critically. I wrote an article called Listening to Music Intelligently here at makeshiftmusician.blogspot.com/2008/02/listening-to-music-intelligently.html, but I didn't think to apply that to Guitar Hero itself. It's particularly interesting if you haven't heard the song before, and you can only listen to it in a critical way.

I mostly wrote about sight reading and eye movement in the article, and a little bit about muscle coordination. yodaisbetter had some great insights. I didn't think about the pinky exercising; I have trouble with that finger with piano playing as well. Also for some reason I didn't even consider Rock Band, though I'm excited to try the drumming, after what everyone said.

Hey, everyone. I just finished writing a blog on how Guitar Hero skills relate to actual musical skills. You can read it at http://makeshiftmusician.com/ For the record, I don't think that Guitar Hero skills necessarily translate to real musicianship. But I did find some interesting things in my research. What do you guys think? I've also written other articles that I think you guys would like. I written stuff on building a simple computer studio, gaining the confidence to compose music, writing efficiently and how microphones work. I love feedback and I would love to hear it from you guys, my favorite forum community on the internet. Thanks everyone! -ben

Thanks everyone for the fantastic replies. I was hoping that I would provoke some interesting thoughts, but I didn't expect this much. I'm glad to know that OCR has impacted other people's lives as much or, clearly more than mine. Thanks again everyone, and keep it up! I'm sure everybody would love to hear more.

Sorry if this has been done before. For me, OCRemix has enhanced my life in many ways. DJ Pretzel got me interested in funk music with his Shinobi Consent remix, and Shnabubula enhanced my interest in jazz overall. I've made about a dozen CD's with carefully chosen and arranged OCR favorites. I now listen to several artists original stuff as well, like Star Salzman, DJ Redlight, and Shnabubula. All the music I've gotten from OCR inspires me in my own music writing every day. OCRemix has added so much texture to my musical life since I started listening to it around 2002 that I honestly can't imagine life without it. Thanks to DJ Pretzel and all the remixers. How has it enhanced everyone else's life?

Though I live in California, I grew up in Maine. I'm a Mainah. It's baked bean suppahs and clam chowdah for me.

If you can find it, Shatterhand is awesome. My friends and I STILL play Blades of Steel, one of the finest multiplayer games ever. And Solar Jetman is a very cool thinking man's action game that experiments with physics. RC Pro Am is fun too.

You know, I thought that moving to California would allow me to go to more cool events, but now I'm missing awesome stuff like this. Argh!

If it's a song done by a favorite remixer of mine, like Star Salzman, Adhesive Boy, Mazedude or Shnabubula I'll download the song without even really thinking about what game it was from. When stuff exists like Israfel's Glass Cage and the Wingless's All the World in One Girl, which twist the source material so far that familiarity with the original becomes irrelevant. It's really quite fun.

For me it wasn't any particular game, but I used to read DJ Pretzel's overclocked.org, and he had a link to this site. It was a little picture of Pretzel with two turntables. Feels like forever ago.

Happy birthday! Thanks for making my favorite site on the web.

I just remembered: Jurassic Park for the Genesis. I used to play that thing to death when I was 11. I thought it was awesome. I dug it out again years later and now I can't stand it. It's just about one of the most sluggish and unresponsive games I've ever played. But when I was a kid I loved it. Dinosaurs! Hot damn! It was awesome. On a slightly different note, I just started playing Advent Rising which got mixed reviews and it is incredibly fun so far. Cartwheeling in slow motion while simultaneously lifting a monster in the air and shooting him in the face is really satisfying, as is throwing aliens one by one into the void of space and watching them flail around.

T&C Surf Design's Wood & Water Rage by LJN for the NES. I still kind of like that one. Everyone says its crap, but I still think the skateboarding part was fun. I always used to think that the surfing had some sort of hidden depth that I couldn't grasp. Turns out it just sucked. It was the first game we had for our NES after Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt back in 1988.

Here's what I think: The push towards realism isn't necessary for games to evolve but it will happen anyway because a lot of people make money off of it. One of my favorite games of all time, NetHack, has only ASCII graphics. It is also one of the most complicated games I've ever played. But there's something to be said for well-done graphics. Here are some games that benefitted greatly from having well-done graphics/art direction: Turok 2 Shadow of the Colossus Zelda: Wind Waker Star Wars:KOTOR/Jade Empire Seiken Densetsu 3 Half-Life DOOM series Castlevania 3 and 4 Metal Slug series Monkey Island 3 At the same time, Tetris, NetHack, Zelda 2, KABOOM, Super Mario Bros., Wario Ware, and Intelligent Qube all are really fun to play without awesome graphics. So I guess its all in what your going for. Remember that the push for realism is mostly a marketing one. The true classics will emerge above and beyond that.