11/30/2008 - I'm a YouTube Junkie

Here's a recommendation/request from a fellow YouTube addict who has put the whole obsession into song. Having it be in a country/blues motif may seem like an odd choice, but it works. Actually, my YouTube addiction has somewhat subsided as gaming has taken over my life once again, but I still cruise the Popular Videos section for videos for me to blog about. But I do take suggestions, too! So e-mail or message me through YouTube or this blog.

11/29/2008 - SSF2THDR ROUND 1 Trailer

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix finally arrived on Tuesday and it was worth the wait! I'll give my review of the game in a later blog post, but I wanted to highlight the trailer Capcom released just prior to the game's release. As we all know, Capcom enlisted the artists at Udon to redraw the sprites and backgrounds of the game in the style of their popular anime-inspired comic book series. That art is on full display in this trailer, and as a fan of the anime movie, I can say that it is gorgeous. But we knew that would be the case with this HD version of SF2. Besides showing off the gameplay in a well-choreographed tournament style presentation, Capcom did something very special in this trailer that would prompt me to write this blog entry about it.

Yes, that would be the music in the trailer. The use of "You're the Best Around" by Joe Esposito is truly inspired. Before I knew of it's actual history from the Karate Kid movie, I heard it in a ScrewAttack Top 10 video that played it as a tribute to their fans who submitted their favorite video gaming music. Whoever made that video is probably a fan of cheesy 80's music and this song in particular is really cheesy, but really good! It wasn't until I found my King of Kong DVD that I learned that they had included the song in the classic gaming documentary as well. In fact, this is where ScrewAttack probably got the idea to feature the song, as it was included in the King of Kong soundtrack. So would this cheesy 80's song be some kind of anthem for classic videogames?

The answer would be cemented in this trailer for SSF2THDR. When I first heard it in the trailer, I said "No Way", and then I laughed with glee. I'm not sure if Capcom themselves knew of the links to videogaming this song has recently had, or if they just wanted to feature a retro song from a movie about martial arts, but everything just works in context. So much so that I had to download the MP3 to this song and am seriously considering renting the Karate Kid movie even though it looks so bad. I just have to say that Capcom "is the best arooouuuund!"

11/27/2008 - SMule: Ocarina for iPhone

One of the annoying things about owning an iPod Touch instead of an iPhone is that I can't use any of the applications that require a microphone for input. For example, the latest version of the Google application uses voice recognition to decipher what you are searching for but just speaking your query. Also, I would love to try out those apps that recognize any song you're feeding into the microphone. But this app might just trump them all.

The ocarina may not be the most popular wind instrument in the world, but it has gained fame amongst gamers for being the title instrument in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. In the game, Link uses the Ocarina to cast spells that range from teleportation to changing the weather to time travel. As the game exploded in popularity, so did the ocarina. I remember them selling ocarinas within the pages of Nintendo Power.

It took some real ingenuity to design an application for the iPhone that mimics the functionality of the ocarina. This can only be done because the microphone can pick up sounds such as blowing, and because the screen is multitouch. Of course if you are going to demonstrate an ocarina application, you must play a Legend of Zelda song:

11/26/2008 - Resident Evil 4 - Playing As Link

What happens when you combine two of the most successful games on the GameCube (Resident Evil 4 and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess)? You have Link wielding a gun:

11/24/2008 - Gears of War 2 Executions Montage

After Mortal Kombat, I didn't think that video games could get more violent. Boy was I wrong. With high-definition graphics in all the new games, blood splatter would of course get a lot more realistic than the now cartoony gore found in the 2-D Mortal Kombat games. Perhaps no game is a better example of this than Gears of War and its sequel on the XBox 360. When you have a chainsaw attached to your gun, you know you're in for some alien blood letting -- and lots of it! There are videos of Mortal Kombat fatalities, so there has to be a video of a montage of executions from Gears of War 2:



Watch in high quality for the full effect!

11/22/2008 - Mario vs. Air Man

Having a working Super Mario Bros./Mega Man 2 mashup is impressive enough, but there are a couple of things that makes this one so impressive. First, the play mechanics did not change from Super Mario Bros. The programmers could have easily just put a Mario sprite in place of Mega Man and people wouldn't think the less of them. But Mario is all about stomping, and unless you have the Fire Flower, that's the only way to kill the enemies; thus making this game particularly difficult compared to a Mega Man game where you have an arm cannon. But what tickles my fancy about this video is that it has an 8-bit rendition of the song from one of my previous Mega Man favorite videos (http://youtubeaddict.blogspot.com/2007/07/7152007.html), the one where Air Man is supposedly impossible to beat. I hope the programmers continue to make more levels, or maybe even other mashups.

11/20/2008 - Spittin' Narcissism

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is finally coming out next week and I couldn't be more excited. No, seriously, I have been looking forward to this for over a year now and it was my primary reason for getting a Playstation 3. To celebrate, we have a music video staring Street Fighter's most conceited fighter, Vega (or Balrog in Japan). The sprite animation in this video is simply amazing, and the music isn't half bad either. This should herald a new genre of music: Street Fighter Rap!