The Alphabet of Music

If you’ve been around here long enough, reading that post title may immediately lead you to think that maybe I’ve started working on the increasingly-obsolete CD Archive. Or at the very least maybe I’ve made a WordPress-style page for it. No. No I have not.

It’s probably a slightly more interesting story in reality. Probably.

I have a long work day. It consists of a 40-minute bus ride to work, eight-and-a-half hours in the office, and then another 40-minute (if traffic is light) bus ride back home. So I listen to a lot of music via my iPhone, not unlike many other downtown-based drones. I’ve noticed that over the last few months I’ve been falling back on one or two albums to listen to for so long, until I pop a new one on there and it replaces one of the old ones.

Not a huge deal in itself, but I feel bad for neglecting the other 95% of the music on there, so I decided to do something radical. No, I did not hit the shuffle button, that would offend my OCDishness far too much. Instead, I decided that for the past week, I would listen to one album for each letter in the alphabet, in alphabetical order. It’s not really the best way to spice up my listening tendencies, but it’s something.

I might also mention that the mix of music on my phone is a little past eccentric. I’ve got everything from classic rock to nerdcore rap to classical. From Ke$ha to Hawksley Workman to Ghost Hounds. I have both the Xenoblade Chronicles soundtrack and Dustin Kensrue’s Please Come Home on there. It’s varied, and while it’s not all in the best of taste, it’s all squarely in my taste. So go suck and egg if you don’t like it.

Because I will take any reason to make up a list, the results of my project and some musings are after the jump.

Continue reading The Alphabet of Music

The numbers game

So one of the fellas over at Game|Life posted a story today about how Nintendo product sales make up roughly 70% of the Japanese video game market. Whether these numbers are skewed or not, this makes me very happy, being a big fat Nintendo fanboy and all.

Now we just need to find a way to make those numbers happen over here, and all will be right in the world again. Also then we might get Dragon Quest X, the first traditional MMO I actually want to play.

It also makes me happy that New Super Mario Bros 2 is selling really well, and that people are enjoying it. If you hadn’t been keeping up, the internet didn’t seem to be looking forward to it. To put it nicely.

One of the things that stood out to me is that Nintendo platforms make up roughly 75% of console sales in Japan, and Sony has approximately 23 of the other percents. I’m going to go ahead and assume that the Xbox 360 has the other 2%, and all the other lesser consoles combined account for less than a percent. Also of note is that the only 360 game whose sales are worth mentioning is Monster Hunter Frontier.

So let’s have a look-see at the facts here. MH Frontier is the most popular Xbox game in Japan. Xbox is the most popular console in North America. So why, Capcom, do you not bring Frontier to North America? I don’t have a lot of disposable income, but I would gladly fork over a little bit of what I have each month to have the opportunity to play a big, fancy, HD version of Monster Hunter. I know there’s more to it that that, but seriously. Capcom’s got peanut butter and chocolate here, but they refuse to mash them together.

I kind of hate Capcom right now. Or I would if Dragon’s Dogma wasn’t so rad.

Tongues on fire

Hey, remember last summer when I was writing about those limited-time Doritos that claimed to be the spiciest ones, and came in three different levels of heat? Yeah, those ones. Since I’d decided to pick up each different kind on separate occasions, I was made the victim of some sort of conspiracy to make it seem as if the third tier of these special Doritos had never existed. Of course, the bags of lesser hotness themselves touted the “3rd degree burn” variety, but when the time came to give those 3rds a try, I could not for the life of me find a bag to purchse. I searched high and low, but was forced to write them off as a lost-forever.

Imagine my elation upon finding that 7-11 had begun to stock the Scorchin’ Habanero exclusively.

I’ll admit that I’m not certain of whether or not the 3rds were the only member of the Burn family to be restocked this year, but I don’t rightly care. As far as I’m concerned they should be the only ones to make a return, after their mysterious disappearance last time this promotion ran.

For all I know the 7-11 I’ve been visiting lately just lost the box last year, recently found it, and are now trying to get rid of the crusty old stock. That “AU 21” best before date very conveniently omits a year.

Getting down to brass tacks, I think I may have been a bit of a whiny baby last year, because I refuse to believe that the 2nd Degree was as hot as the 3rd. If you go back and read that post about the 2nds, you’ll see that I typed that they were so hot that I could not eat them all in a single sitting. When eating the 3rds, I had the same problem! It actually took me three runs at the bag to get them all down this time. I think I’d need to try both again, but at the same time to come to a definitive conclusion.

The other travesty here is that aside from the weclome spiciness challenge, I didn’t really like them all that much. Much like the jalapeno of the 1st Degree, I wasn’t really won over by the habanero flavour. I’d eat them again if they were to be offered as a snack or small gift, but I wouldn’t buy them again. Well, aside from the aforementioned spiciness comparison. For science and all.

If I had to choose one Degree to be the overall winner, I’d have to go with the 2nds. Since it’s been so long since I’ve eaten the two lesser varieties, I’m making an assumption based on anecdotal evidence, which doesn’t seem overly professional. If it’s my own anecdote though, it should be all right though, yes?

In other news, that Slurpee is of a “mystery” flavour (one of those stupid “name the flavour” contests). It’s orange. Orange with a little something mixed in at best. I solved the mystery, gimme the prize.

I Screme, you Screme: Cadbury Screme Eggs

The guy who is way too into spelling in me is going nuts right now. On a short trip away from my desk yesterday to seek out some throat lozenges and lunch, I came across something I’d never seen before: Cadbury Screme Eggs.

I’ve been mostly out of the candy scene for a few years now, only occasionally browsing dollar store candy aisles in hopes of finding something that has some sort of ridiculous quality to it. Barring the Star Wars Mega Egg -which I’d file under “Star Wars” or “Disappointing Garbage” before “candy”- it’s been over three years since my last candy article. And another three years to the one before that. I need to get out of my video game writing rut.

Hey, maybe three years from now I’ll rustle up the will to write another one.

Continue reading I Screme, you Screme: Cadbury Screme Eggs

The story so far

Let’s get this straight right away: I don’t always have the best judgement of when something’s a good idea, and when it not. But neither do you, so shut up.

Over the last couple weeks, Talking Time has been all abuzz about rougelikes. For any that might not know, roguelikes are games that are like a really old game called Rogue. Distilled down to their base elements, they are games that feature randomly-generated dungeons and make you start back from zero every time you’re killed. Most are on the PC, with Nethack being the big fish in that pool, and Chunsoft’s Mystery Dungeon series has carved out a pretty well-renowned name for itself as far as console editions go. Spelunky is a side-scrolling action variant on the normally turn-based RPG nature of the genre.

The kids at TT have always been into roguelikes, because Parish (our fearless leader) told them to. Lately, the mania has resurfaced because of a ROM hack, of all things.

Continue reading The story so far

Pour one out

A delicious, ice-cold Pepsi, that is.

Yesterday, Brickroad’s YouTube account was terminated without cause or warning. This is sad for many, many reasons. The most obvious being that Brick was one of the very few video Let’s Players that I could stand to watch for a whole video*. The other big one being that despite the fact that I own the game, I will probably never see the end of Shantae: Risky’s Revenge now because he hadn’t finished uploading that particular LP series before his account was banned. Now I’m actually going to have to go back and play the game. Who even does that anymore?

It should be noted that his current Shiren The Wanderer LP was pretty damn entertaining too. Made me buy a used copy of the game just so I could get in on the action.

But this is a real shame because Brickroad was good at what he did. He was a font of knowledge about most of the games he played, and I am incredibly envious of just how much he knows about some games. I don’t know nearly as much about any one game as he did about several of the games he had LPs of. I wish that there was just one game I could rattle off trivia about throughout a whole playthrough, or that I knew one game well enough to play through at 150% speed. Of course, even if I had the knowledge or skill for that kind of LP, I still wouldn’t be funny enough to keep people hooked. I think I’ve got the reactive humour down, but I’m not nearly as witty as I’d like to be.

I like to think that Brickroad’s influence shines through fairly obviously in my Let’s Plays. Both in style and substance. Just look at my video descriptions: a total ripoff of the Brickroad three-bullet-point system. I dressed it up a bit, but it’s unmistakable.

I’m still not really into reading or watching LPs in general, but there’s no doubt that I’ll pay attention to any new Brickroad projects. That is, assuming they happen. Hopefully this YouTube debacle doesn’t stop him from playing video games for the amusement of others.

The last thing I want is for this post to double as an eulogy.

*As it turns out, most of the Talking Tyrants who do video LPs are pretty decent too. Better than me, at any rate. You’d do well to check them out.

StartSelect Saga

I’ve somewhat randomly decided to start playing Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga again, partly because I had some strange desire to actually use my Game Boy Micro, and partly because I wanted a bus game. By that, I mean a game which I play exclusively whilst riding the bus. Since I spend at least 80 minutes on the bus each day, it seemed like a pretty good idea.

Only problem here is that I seem to have some kind of mental block when it comes to playing video games on the bus. I have no idea why, but I have a terribly difficult time even pulling a handheld out of my pocket, never mind turning it on and actually playing the stupid thing. Totally inverse of where I was when the first DS debuted, when I’d take any opportunity to whip that baby out and get some portable gaming done. Maybe I’m subconsciously ashamed of being an adult playing video games in public. I blame my location. I generally don’t even get StreetPass tags when I walk around with my 3DS, never mind actually see other people play video games in public. Roughly 50% of the bus riders I see have got their noses in iPads, but not a one has ever been playing a game. Never, have I seen anyone over 10 years of age brandishing a DS or PSP when not at Comic-Con.

I should move to Japan.

But the thing I originally wanted to post about is that Superstar Saga is driving me crazy. And it’s not really the game itself that I have a problem with. No, it’s just as enjoyable as it was (almost) a decade ago. It’s the controls that are getting to me.

You know how every game that’s ever been made by Nintendo uses the Start button (in Wii’s case, the + button) to pause? Not this game. In Superstar Saga, the Select button is the pause/menu button. And Start is the button you use to swap between the Mario bros. There is a lot of swapping required, and because of the silly button reversal, I end up going into the menu every few seconds. It’s so incredibly frustrating that I kind of want to stop playing.

But I won’t, because Superstar Saga still hits all the right notes where buttons aren’t concerned. It’s a fun, breezy romp with a battle system that keeps you engaged. The music is wonderful (but who would expect any less from Yoko Shimomura?) and I still have to stifle my laughter at the often humorous dialogue. If I can get past this silly Start/Select inversion, I’m sure it’ll be a wonderful time for everyone involved.

So me. It’ll be a wonderful time for me.