Arcana

Age does have an effect, especially with how quickly you learn and how quickly you are able to adapt your mind to something like music. Your paragraph below is supporting evidence of it, where you describe that you, someone who's young, is doing better than someone who's older. The younger you start the more of an advantage that you have. There are a lot of studies of the effect of age on learning, and that in particular, skills that are quite mathematical and involve that are of the brain (such as music) are more difficult to pick up as you grow older. Not to mention, older people tend to have more constraints in their lives.

When was the last time we saw a strong female lead in an adventure movie? I don't really watch movies so I don't know but I'm wondering if this is isolated to games.

I was being serious. Average of five years to get a song that's up to today's OC ReMix standards. If you got yourself posted after a few months of starting music from no knowledge then I would call you exceptional. I mean, there's a whole range and there are going to be exceptions. "Experience" is kind of hard to define. If you start at the age of 4, do violin for 2 years, then don't touch it until you're 18, you don't have 2 years of music experience, really. If you buy all kinds of gear and then do only five hours a year and do that for a couple of years, that's not really two years of experience. I find that interesting. I can't sight-sing from the piano roll (that is, I don't know how something sounds by looking at the notes on a piano roll). I'm one of those people who gets frustrated at music. I listen to things and want to make them. I sit down and crank something out and it's not what I wanted to make and I don't have the skill or the technical knowledge to make what I want to make. I try making some kind of trance song and I can't do it. I get frustrated and I try to look up "how to make trance" but you get all kinds of people like who really can't describe what they're doing. Even though there's thousands of conventions for trance or similar music, no one's thought of writing them down. People keep trying to reinvent the wheel. Even here people are reluctant to describe or teach in technical terms what it is about a track that makes the merging of a certain kind of detuned saw and a PWN string pad work "together".When you're old like me small things are extraordinarily more frustrating than when you're all young whippersnappers learning a new fancy hobby.

At least half of the games I bought in the past year are casual games. Peggle and Plants vs Zombies woooooo

Ahh, this is a bigger picture of the puzzle, then. I don't think it's necessarily a prerequisite, but the ability to play piano (or any instrument) to some extent also appears to give you (not you zircon specifically but just in general) the ability to work faster. I know that there are exceptions, but almost all of the video tutorials that I look at seem to feature extremely able musicians who can barely explain what they're doing. They go to the keyboard, say, "This piece needs pizzicato strings" and begin to pound out arpeggios with their fingers. Personally, I took a year of piano, and was took up piano because I wanted to start up remixing. In fact, I was totally unable to work with the sequencer until I learned some basic piano-playing. I can barely play anything, but it's enough to arrange a few melodies. However, playing it all one note at a time (or drawing it in with the mouse) is an extremely slow process and without more lessons I fear that I will never be one of those "I crank out an OC ReMix in two days" musicians. I still stand by my previous statement of "you probably need five or more years of music experience to get featured on this web site".

But my statement is that the datalog provides information that the cutscenes should have provided. It's not like, "This is background about the neighbourhoods of Cocoon's cities" or "Here are the technical specifications of the various vehicles you can fly in Cocoon" or other complimentary information. I agree with Necrotic, there's information in there about the main storyline that either deserved some cutscene time, or shouldn't have been listed in the Datalog because it makes the Datalog appear inconsistent. I don't really believe so much that Datalogs are a specifically Western thing though. It was used extensively in Xenosaga for example, as well as Ogre Battle/Tactics ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics.

Yes, I realise the Datalog does update - the info I posted above about Vanille disappears after a few scenes. If there's something else I am disappointed about in the game it's how the text in the Datalog seems incongruent with the cutscenes that you've been shown, like the example I listed above. There are a few other cases as well where the event synopsis reveals more than what the cutscenes show. -spoilers- Like how they decided why they went to Oerba isn't explained well in cutscenes and is explained better in the Datalog. Also, another instance where Vanille "decided" to go onto the train to Pulse is explained in the Event Datalog for Day 11, but never presented. Also, how Vanille and Fang found Serah is also described in the Datalog but no flashback scene was given (though I am expecting one to come soon, so maybe it'll still happen). There are a few other small incidents. Anyway, they're small but it kind of makes you as a player wonder "did I miss something", even though you probably didn't because the game is so linear. -end spoilers-

No, I got that cutscene: -spoilers- I know that Vanille remembered what happened whereas Fang does not (you see it when she's kidnapped with Sazh and she tells him about her past). However, in the Datalog it clearly says that "Vanille became Ragnarok". Later you get a cutscene (when Vanille gets her summon) about how Fang figures out that she was actually Ragnarok (though there's no reason given as to how she figured it out) and calls Vanille out on it. My confusion is: (1) why'd the datalog ever say Vanille was Ragnarok? and (2) How did Fang figure out? -end-

Maybe you'll be pro and submit a MOD that, while comparatively not as good as zircon's track, has five times the music?

I was really confused in the presentation of elements of the story especially related to Vanille and Fang. -highlight to read- I never, ever got the feeling that Vanille ever presented herself as having become Ragnarok. The only reason I learned about this was because I read about it in the Datalog. Then, somehow Fang finds out that she was actually Ragnarok. I don't understand where she got the prerequisite knowledge to make this deduction. It's possible that I might have missed a cutscene or two, when I got to Chapter 11 I went straight for Oerba and am exploring Oberba now, instead of going backwards to explore missions. Did I miss something here? -end highlight-

I see someone bumped this thread. I have a working theory: it takes an average of five years of steady music experience (give or take a year) before your work is of good enough quality to get posted on OCR. That get shortened if you go to school for some kind of music. I've asked almost all of the remixers that I talk to this question and none of them have ever said, "Well I got posted to OCR after two years of making music, with zero music background". Zircon in this thread is an exception if he in fact had no musical knowledge in 2002 and got a mix posted in 2004. I personally started music in late 2004, made about 6 or 7 songs, and then quit for three years. I started again approximately one year ago and still struggle a lot, especially with song structure and sound design. And to follow the year-old discussion, I do believe that there's such thing as talent, and that it's not only hard work. There are people who do something and it "feels natural" to them. They advance very quickly. You teach them something new and they get it right away. It may be a culmination of other things but I don't think that someone understanding complicated ideas right away is a reflection of hard work in related disciplines - it's talent. If you think that there's no such thing as talent then I think you should learn to teach in a classroom - you'll see talent (and non-talent). What I do agree with is that hard work is essential. Talent alone will not get you anywhere nor is it mandatory. Talent will however save you time.

Keep in mind that Japan isn't as far ahead with respect to women's equality as North America and Europe as well, and it likely reflects in their character design and presentation. There's still a stereotype in Japan of what a "good woman" is, and this isn't a stereotype applied by men only - it's a stereotype that the women apply to themselves. In the west, there are also stereotypes but they're less defined now than they used to be. In addition, if you actually admit or suggest that you believe in a particular stereotype with respect to women, people in North America are probably more likely to call you out on it.

There was software that was developed specifically for the GBC that the original Game Boy (or Game Boy Pocket... now the Pocket was a useless upgrade) can't play. Outside of the downloadable contenet for DSi (which I have heard nothing about, no game reviews or anything for content that's exclusively downloadable) there's nothing exclusively for DSi yet besides a few gimmick tools on the DSi. Also the GBC had a better screen and better battery life, as well as being significantly smaller (like half the size) than the original Game Boy.

woah I'm officially weirded out now

While a lot of video games wouldn't work as movies, a lot of video games I think would make passable TV series. They're very different media.

I use the Play Free edition and it likes to crash Logic Pro every time I close a file. If I had $1000 lying around for music stuff, I'd probably pick up the huge pack deal things, but I really don't have that kind of money right now.

I've refused so far too :3

I think I'm going to see Avatar this weekend even if I have to go alone.

Because amateur people aren't remaking a 100-hour game and getting paid each $70 000 a year to do it, and then releasing it within a reasonable amount of time. Square-Enix would need to ensure that they get a reasonable return on investment since the time and money they're spending remaking Final Fantasy 7 could have been spent on other ventures that are cheaper or more profitable. Even if it is profitable, they need to ensure that they have the people who are willing to work on it and not die from boredom or whatever. It's also possible there are licensing issues with subcontractors or something. There's a possible chance that people in Japan don't really care for Final Fantasy VII or something as well which limits its potential sales? I'm not sure.

But you see, the 3D models in FF7 were ugly. They all look like super-deformed models on the overworld maps, and they were simple and blocky in battle. They didn't have noses, mouths, or fingers on the overland maps. So first of all, you have to change two sets of models (or, you'd have to unify them so that the game would use only one set of models), and likely you'd have to reanimate them if they are modified at all so that they don't clip or do other ridiculous things. Second, you *know* that 90% of the fans will be bitching and complaining that Square did a shitty remake if they come up with anything less than the model quality that you have in, at minimum, a game like Dirge of Cerberus/Crisis Core. And ideally, you'd see the characters resemble what they looked like FF: Advent Children. Aeris dies -> It's nostalgic but it's also a reminder of how much detail was left out of the scene.

Basically he means that everyone learns every spell and it becomes boring.

Final Fantasy VII is nostalgic... but I don't know if it's exactly a classic in the same way as Super Mario Bros 3. Basically - there are many elements of FF VII that aged poorly, which means then it's not as timeless as you might think it is. Give someone SMB3 - it's still fun. I don't know about FF VII honestly.... maybe I should try playing it and see how far I get before groaning in disgust.

Hell yeah! For only $2.99 too.