Been busy, but hey I was on a podcast!!!

     So it's been a very busy bunch of months... Aside from working, writing and trying to squeeze in some video game time. Me and my girlfriend (Erika) , had been asked to be on a friends podcast. He generally  does shows about industrial music but after talking to us for a bit and realizing how much we know about video games (some would say too much). He asked if we would help host a retro game  episode, which he had been wanting to do for quite some time.

  So several weeks later we recorded the podcast and here it is, right HERE! We had such a good time recording it!!  Edwin who runs/owns ISN Radio, certainly knows his stuff. Not only music wise but also retro games as well! We had a great gaming session before recording. We played River City Ransom, Cobra Triangle and Ghostbuster (for SEGA Genesis) to name a few... But seriously if you like the episode, listen to some of the others and show some support!!!

Challenges and Perks to and from Tsilon.ca

Challenges and Perks to and from Tsilon.ca

This section will generally be filled with pictures and screen shots for the ARG website tsilon.ca.

Which is for Canadian gamers, giving us the chance to complete trivia question and challenges for video game related merch, discounts on games and accessories  and so on....

So for my first screen shot regarding a challenge--> I beat Fry Guy from Super Mario Bros 2, with full health!!I forgot to put my G-list ID with the time stamp but it is BRAD_Respawn


Here is my next retro challenge....beat Chemical Plant Act 1 in Sonic 2 under 30seconds...

This was not a tough feat considering I played sonic 2 for years as a child and Chemical Plant was my favourite zone!!!Here is the screen shot with my incredible time, conmplete with time stamp and my G-List ID...only took me 20 tries.....

Caught a fishbones today(March7th) on a friends 3DS at work!!! Yaya!!!!

More to come!!!

Broken Bones, Retro Consoles and Mods!

So back in june I got a little too drunk one night..... anyway long story short I broke my left clavicle...again.  Afterwards I was doped up and not to mobile. While I was hurt and unable to work at my regular day job, I had some time to finish a couple of retro console mods I had started in the spring.

I finally finished the SNES for my friend Mike, which I'm sure he is using right now at home to play Contra III: The Alien Wars.  Originally I had planned to do a slime green paint job and replace the original red LED with a very bright green one. Unfortunately I had never opened up a SNES before. The mess inside was not what was expected. So being unable to access the LED, I had to leave the red one in and change my plan. So a couple of red parts and a couple of black parts. Here is the finished product.

Also I was asked by a girl I work with, if I could find a bright pink N64. I told her that there was a watermelon coloured N64 but was it was rare and hard to find. I did have a N64 I bought at a value village for 14.99 but it was only the main unit with no cords or controllers. So I told her, if she could wait I would eventually get all the pieces together. So several months later I had all the parts (even the Expansion Pak) plus I even found a copy of Star Wars Episode I Pod Racer for her as well. Here is the finished Raspberry Pink Console and Matching Controller. The console was also fitted with an ultra bright blue LED. You know, for some extra "zaz"!!!!

I will post more pictures of other consoles soon!

Music in games...Whats the deal???

It's always fun to find out how people started listening to the music that they like.  Stories like people growing up listening to the Beatles or Led Zeppelin or friends playing music for you and so on.

My favourite racing game of all time is WipEout and all of it's awesome incarnations. The first time I ever played a Wipeout game was when I was a kid growing up. There was a Microplay that was in an old bank. They had kept the vault that was located at the back of the store and welded its door open. Inside was a 50inch screen TV and a whole plethora of video game console(at the time this would have been stuff like the PS1, Sega Saturn and so on...) They would rent this out for 5 dollars and hour and give you free range to play any game in the store. So, lo and behold, this is where I first played WipEout XL (or WipEout 2097 if you hail from Europe). 

Being about 12 and playing this game for the first time was absolutely mind blowing!!! The graphics were so cool, the game was hard, it was eye watering fast and the sound track was life changing. Songs like Atom Bomb by Fluke,  Loops of Fury by the Chemical Brothers, Firestarter by The Prodigy and all these too. It was possibly the best soundtrack of any game at the time and dare I say EVER!!! What was really cool, was how if you put the game disc in a regular CD player you could listen to all the music!

So this soundtrack sparked my interest in bands like The Prodigy(who put on an AWESOME live show), Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers and electronic music in general.

The music was not only amazing, it suited this game perfectly. The future of racing with a soundtrack of nothing but pulse pounding electronic beats. 

So what other games have had good soundtracks??? I can only think of a few of the top of my head. Games like Brutal Legend, where the soundtrack was all hand picked by Tim Shaffer and Music Director Emily Ridgway. But this game was very much all about it's music not only to drive the game, provide background noise and influence the look of the game but also it was also a major part of the plot. Plus with a bunch of famous metal icons doing voices(Ozzy, Jack Black, Rob Halford and Lemmy to name a few) they had to keep it METAL.

Jet Grind Radio and Jet Set Radio Future also had very cool soundtracks filled with a mix of music like Electronic, J-Pop, Hip-Hop even Funk. It also featured some very interesting artist likeBS 2000 and Cibo Matto. 

Now whats happening with the whole revival of retro games or retro remakes is a whole new Chip Tune music scene based of the old NES and Gameboy music. Which in my humble opinion is FREAKIN'AWESOME!!!  Bionic Commando Rearmed with it soundtrack based off of the NES Games original soundtrack. Which you can compare here for original 8-Bit and the new revamped music here. Capcom did a great job on keeping the game true to the original and the music is just as good.  

Scott Pilgrim VS. The World being a major box office smash help push more retro video style and sound further into the mainstream. So naturally a video game was made. A very good old school styled side scrolling beat'em up! Which is an excellent video game, also being a Torontonian makes it very cool to play a game that takes place in neighbourhoods  I know and love. But the music for this game is really really really good. Anamanaguchi did the soundtrack and they do not disappoint! Check it out here. They also put on a really good live show as well.

For a while I was very disillusioned with video game music.  It seemed that the only thing people wanted was the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, with it intense operatic chanting and giant symphony bands.  I mean given the choice of that or some Heavy Metal while blasting noobs.... I know my choice.

That was certainly a very different post then what I intended. But hey, sometimes these things take on a life of their own......

Look at the Time!

Well it has been a while since i was last here... Been busy you know how it is. Work, work and the Gears 3 BETA! So unfortunately because of work I did not get as much time to play as I wanted. But thats life.

So lets hit the ground running! Right from the start the Gears of War 3 BETA was like being shotgun'd in the face, over and over again. As I said before they introduced a new double barrel Sawed Off shotgun to this game and boy does it pack a punch but only when you are a step away or closer then you opponent. I liked using it to blind fire at opponents as they come up to the corner where I have taken cover. Works great if you time it right but if you miss your opponent is in for and easy kill as it takes forever to reload the beast of a gun.

As for some of the other new weapons...... There is the new ONE SHOT which kills opponents in one shot(go figure). It only ever spawns with 3 rounds and it takes some time not only to reload but also to charge up a shot. If you time it right and hit someone with it, they explode in to glorious gibs!!! Pretty straight forward that one. Next was the Digger Mine Launcher. A neat gun that when fired launches a rocket like projectile that burrows in the ground bypassing all cover to pop up beside an entrenched enemy.  Was a neat weapon when used as it was intended but more often then not I witness players using it as a shotgun style weapon. Oh, someone in front  of me. BLAMMO! we are both dead..... The new Incendiary Grenades were fun but did not have enough splash damage in my opinion  to really replace the Frag Grenade.

Probably the best addition to the Gears Of War arsenal is the Retro Lancer. Like the Lancer it is a straight forward machine gun if you will. It has more power per shot which means it also has was less accuracy but with the bayonet you can charge. The Charge is so much fun if you can pull it off but it could always be stopped by a Sawed Off Blast to the face.....The Retro Lancer is the gun, I feel, had the most thought and work put in to it. Which certainly  paid off.

I myself love team games where there is an objective. King of the Hill was lots of fun to play and always meant you knew exactly where the fight was gonna be in the level. There was also Capture the Leader. Sorta like capture the flag but the flags are made out of people!!!! It was also neat to play as the leader, when you used your TAC-COM you could see every player both friendly and hostile. Never helped me too much as my team was always watching me get captured!!

There were many other addition to the game, some more minor then others. Too many for me to talk about today. This is definitely a huge improvement from Gears of War 2s multiplayer. I am also really looking forward to playing the Campaign and Horde Modes upon the games final release.

I leave you now, but look forward to more soon. Here is some more gore. That should hold you over.....for now.

Lookin' Good...

 CH-CH-CHAINSAWS is what every game needs. But alas we can't always get what we want.  Luckily for me (and you) Gears of War 3 delivered (the chainsaw that is) plus a little more. Along with some other additions this game is looking really good. Really Really Good.

Last Thursday (April 7th) I was lucky enough to attend the Gears of War 3 Multiplayer Beta Preview, at Microsoft Canada. This is the second time I have had a chance to attended a preview event such as this. The first being Halo: REACH in September. Which was a little different. But this was only a beta preview where as when we saw Halo:REACH it was ready to ship and I had already been able to play the public BETA for that at home.

So as we arrive at Microsoft Canada here in Toronto, we are greeted and while enjoying "refreshments" we are placed on 5 person teams for a DeathMatch tournament. Shortly after we are given the pleasure of having a brief presentation by EPICs own Executive Producer, Rod Fergusson (follow him on Twitter @GearsViking) about what to expect in the new GoW3.  Now here is the thing that really blew me away. Rod Fergusson loves Gears of War.  Now I say this because, when I worked as a Video Game Tester at VMC in Montreal, none of the producers be it executive or otherwise that I talked to about the games I was working on had never played any of the games that were being discussed.  So it was a very refreshing experience to see him talk about the game in way that showed he actually had played it and also ENJOYED playing it! After he told us about the games new features and answered some questions from the attendees, it was on to  the game.

The tournament was played out in 5v5 Death Match, best 2 out of 3 rounds of 10 respawns a side. Locust vs COG. The level was Trenches and it was fought fast and furious. Unfortunately for me, my team was eliminated during the first round of play. So all in all I had about ten minutes of actual game play. :'(  The only new feature I had a good chance to see in action was the new Tac-COM which is an amazing improvement from previous versions. Not only does it display a map of the level your playing and where your team mates our on it. It also shows you the positions of the weapons on the map! Blew my mind! We were also told about some new finishers but in the heat of battle trying to do them was a little harder then I thought. Also the new weapons were fun too, a super close range sawed off shotgun and the Pendulum Wars Lancer with the bad ass bayonet. Several tournament rounds later a winner was decided and they were presented with the spoils of war....Cool trophy bro!

After all was said and done it was a very well done event and it was quite evident that everybody had one hell of a good time! Thanks to everybody who worked so hard to make it a killer party! I look forward to more of the multiplayer beta and seeing the new campaign in the fall. Which I'm sure I will talk about in great detail.

-Brad Out!

 Also, the cup cakes were DELICIOUS!!!

Gears 3 you say....

....So tomorrow is going to be a very interesting day.  So I am lucky enough to be invited to the Gears of War 3 Beta Preview Event!!!  So yeah, what do we know so far about Gears of War 3, well this look like a good place to start-->HERE. That is an old trailer but gives us all a good idea of what this whole crazy Gears universe is about. Fighting crazy aliens on a far of planet ravaged by endless war. Sounds exciting.

    I would just like to take this time to actually thank EPIC for doing this because when they first released Gears of War 2 the multiplayer was horribly broken. On the second day of it's release i waited 45 minutes to join an online game that only lasted about 5-7 minutes......WTF! Not only that but it took them months of tweaking and behind the scenes fixes to get the online experience up to snuff! Just look at THIS article detailing all the many fixes they had to implement only several months after the game was released.

   Now hopefully there was enough interest in the game BULLETSORM, which is EPIC's new fast paced, in your face FPS that comes with access to the GoW3 Beta to guaranty enough people online playing the damn thing! I tried the demo, it was fun but not quite fun enough for me to spend my hard earned cash on it. Especially when Mortal Kombat comes out this month as well(I can't even wait!!!OMG!!).

So with that said I will be posting about the Gears of War 3 Beta very soon.

-BRAD Out!