Wednesday, June 22, 2011

ONLY SOMEWHAT GAME RELATED

I love penny-arcade. I feel a kinship with my Seattleite elder brothers. Especially when I realize that being a nerd can be a badge of honour, as long as said nerd has an open enough mind to A) See what exists outside of his screens and books and B) can laugh at himself. This comic almost single-handedly defines what me and the boys like to call the "Highschool Resident Evil Psilocybin Experience".



Don't worry parents and employers, I was but seventeen, young and not-clean.

J

GEEK EMOTIONS

First of all, this is a funny theme for my first post in over a year, but hey, what's a guy to do.

I've been hard at work on my graduate thesis project for Game Design at George Brown College. I'm jumping between designing The White Shadow War: Touch Tactics and composing music for it. It all started as a little test to see if I could get the emotion right for the game. I think I may take a stab at the final music myself, or at least hand my compositions off to my highly talented musician friends, but either way, it's a great way to take a break from trying to figure out game mechanics, or write an original story, (or thinking about how the hell I'm going to actually make this thing work without a programmer!). The game itself is highly derivative of classic SRPGs like Final Fantasy tactics or Tactics Ogre: Long Winded Japanese Name Goes Here, but I do feel I will have a unique take on a classic game genre, especially if it does come to fruition on all our brand new, touchy-feely devices. Not only is the game itself obviously "inspired by" but I find that the music is coming out of the woodwork (woodwinds?) as very reminiscent of Nobuo Uematsu or Yatsunori Mitsuda (famed game composers). Having performed and composed Hip Hop for more than a decade now, it becomes incredibly hard to escape those reins when I sit down to make a track, but by studying a completely unique form of music (game music) and by incorporating many different styles and influences, I think in the end I will have something I can be proud of.

This post is not about my game music, though later posts will be. While searching for inspiration, I got on the 'tube (YOUR tube) to hear the sounds of classics like Chrono Trigger's 600AD theme. What I found myself listening to was many a talented young musician offering their own renditions and arrangements. Cover songs are a dime a dozen on YouTube, but there a few gems out there that truly deserve praise. It might be game music, it may have been composed with blips and bleeps, but the emotion is there, the mathematically perfect pitch and composition is there and the sheer beauty is there. It takes me back to some the happiest moments of my childhood. I was by no means an introvert, but holing up with Final Fantasy III (6) for hours on end sparked such wonderment and awe that a bunch of pixels and 8-16 bit audio could choke me up. God, am I ever a geek. Anywho, check these geniuses out and judge for yourself:










If I can get anywhere near that good, I can die a happy old man if kids one day upload interpretations of WSW:Touch Tactics music on FutureTube, or whatever it will be.