When I posted the video of Phantasy Star Universe the other day I had to find a dancey track to act as backing, rather than break someone’s copyright I chose to use some music of my own. Since doing that I’ve had one comment on YouTube and one comment by email asking me what the the track was, for the video I used a track called Drift produced on the Sony Playstation using Jester Interactive’s amazing software Music and Music 2000.
You can find all of the tracks from the album I produced on my website at thirtyfootscrew.com, just click on the PSX Music link on the menu tree.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: jester interactive, Music, music 2000, playstation, psx
Making Music on the Sony Playstation
Back when I was at University, instead of being busy going to lectures and tutorials and whatever else a good student ought to be doing, I was playing games. The Playstation had a lot to answer for, it reignited my passion for gaming borne of the 16-Bit era and caused me to spend counless hours playing pure classics such as Tekken 3, Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto, Worms Armageddon and Colin McRae Rally. Alongside these pure gaming gems were a couple of titles which probably took up as much of my time as the rest put together, these two gems were Music and Music 2000.
Published by Codemasters but developed by Jester Interactive, these games allowed you to make complete songs including (in Music 2000) the ability to rip your own samples from CD. The range and depth ofthese titles was almost unimaginable, you could spend tens of hours just building songs using the pre-built riffs but once you began to edit these and build your own a whole new world opened up. The tracks were mainly put together by myself, others are credited by pseudonym, the tracks are tagged with the artist “Uniform Minds” – originally the name we decided upon for our little Playstation Music collective.
The tracks below are a selection of the more complete songs I made using mainly Music 2000 but a couple of original Music tracks are in there somewhere. The license with the game included royalty-free use of their samples provided that credit was given, I don’t have the original packaging but in good faith I offer this page as the credit. As for what became of this amazing series of games, Codemasters decided to dumb-down the game in to increase it’s mass appeal, selected new developers and ruined the whole damned-thing. This whole episode destroyed my faith in Codemasters and game publishers in general. On the other hand, I can heap nothing but praise on Jester Interactive whose marvelous product made the tracks I hope you’re about to enjoy…
In the Right Place at the Wrong Time
Right-Click and Pick “Save Target As…” or “Save Link As…”.
First Eighth
Go Disco
Together Alone
Feeling Fine (feat. GrooveMeister)
Severed Plains
Drift
Steaming Badger
Rubber Duckie
Smelly Pigs (feat. GrooveMeister)
Techno Revolver
Wind Down X-Ten
Enfield 1999
Phatcat
Hatfield Trance (feat. JB)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 License.
written by thirtyfootscrew
Do you listen to podcasts? Are there any you’d recommend?
Inspired by Alex.
I love podcasts, they’re the best thing to happen to broadcast media since the web became popular back in the 90s. On average, I’m quite confident that I spend more hours per week listening to podcasts than I do watching television.
I’m not sure where I come down on the podcast vs netcast debate but I agree that a new name is needed. One thing that I’d love to be more widely known is that you don’t need an iPod to play podcasts!
My favourites are definitely the TWiT netcasts from Leo Laporte and the gang, they’re professional and informative. I love the discussion from the panel of This Week in Tech but I really think that awards should be give to Security Now, that show has taught me so much about IT security that I’m somewhat of an expert amongst my peers (and I do work in IT).
Other favourites are the Video Game Show from the guys at Gamercast Network, it’s informal but the guys really know their stuff and the last episode was so funny I was practically in tears. Another hilarous but informative show is the MeanDawg Top 5, each week the guys pick their Top 5 movies in a given category and debate eachother’s choices.
Oh, and as a final word – you can’t forget Ask a Ninja.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: ask a ninja, gamercast network, leo laporte, netcast, qotd, security now, twit, video game show
I logged on to my Xbox 360 earlier today and as usual thought I’d check Marketplace first, I found Phantasy Star Universe under the Demos category so I thought I’d give it a go. At just under 1GB it took a while to download, but having heard about the Phantasy Star series before and knowing what a cult following they get I thought I’d have to try it. Whilst it was downloading I went about playing Oblivion and chatting to Private Custard over Xbox Live, once we’d both downloaded it we decided to jump in to the demo and explore the game together.
Phantasy Star Universe Dance-Off
Having never tried a MMORPG before I didn’t think the demo would last that long, 8 hours later – I realised I was wrong. The game is pretty accessible, even for a noob like me – the most similar game I’ve played is probably Final Fantasy VII on the original Playstation. The controls are easy enough to pick up and the missions I tried mainly consited of bashing-up monsters, though the combat system here is real-time rather than turn-based. Using real-time combat makes it feel a little like a hack’n'slash as well as an RPG which I prefer as there’s no time waiting around for players/monsters to make a move, I understand this might actually put some die-hard RPG fans off but I think it could also bring in some new players who don’t usually go for RPGs.
Being new to MMORPGs I was very pleased with the whole notion of interaction with others, I liked the way that you could collaborate and trade but not fight (as it would always end up in chaos). Private Custard and I went through a particularly beefy mission which would have caused us some serious gried had it not been for some other players joining our party and sharing the pain we were going through – a great demonstration of how MMOs work.
One neat feature is that the game allows players to perform certain actions to express emotion as opposed to just using keyboard (or voice if in the same party), these include Waving, Laughing, Crying, Bowing, Jumping and Dancing. The most fun part of the whole night was the dance-off that we managed to get going in the main lobby – through the night it involved at least 20 people dancing and up to a hundred or so watching. Personally I think it’s a great thing that people from all over the world can get together online and coordinate to achieve something so completely silly – no guns, no arguments, no fighting, not even any bad language – just silliness. I do however acknowledge that it’s more than a little bit sad.
Please see video above or visit page on YouTube.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: beta, gaming, mmo, mmorpg, phantasy star, rpg, xbox 360
How new are webcams? Not very – I remember them knocking around at least 8-10 years ago but as soon as this product was announced I knew I was going to buy it, now it’s finally arrived and quite frankly I love it.
For those (unlike me) who don’t obsessively follow gaming news I am talking about the Xbox Live Vision Camera, essentially a webcam built specifically for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 games console. As far as I can tell, this is no better or worse than an averagely priced PC webcam, at £34.99 it’s not a steal but I think it’s worth the price given that you get a free game bundled in as well. One criticism is that the bundled game has been around for ages so lots of people have already shelled out for it only to find they could have had it for free, I would have liked to see either a new game or just extra content bundled with the camera.
The camera enables you to do a few things, firstly having a video-chat with your friends over Xbox Live – this is pretty good and the picture quality is good but I was a little disappointed that you can’t be doing other things at the same time (browsing Marketplace, etc). Another neat feature is that you can now take your picture and use it as your personal ‘gamertile’ – this is only visible to your friends (to avoid people using their own backside as their avatar) but is pretty cool nonetheless. My picture at the moment is the logo from Ghostbusters which I took by pointing the camera at a DVD case.
The game that comes with the camera is UNO and is distributed via Xbox Live Arcade, to get this you must, redeem the code that comes in the pack and download the game as no disk comes in the box. The game itself is a simple but higly addictive card game and will need no introduction to most people, I didn’t know it but had played a very similar game before so picked it up really quickly. The graphics are simple but always sharp and clear, the controls are intuitive and the game is really a joy to play – it even got my non-gaming cousin interested in playing.
The video in-game replaces the the part of the screen where your avatar would normally be seen and is quite a fun addition to the gameplay, my friend Private Custard (also see website) and I spent ages just messing around with the camera whilst playing UNO – hilarious but very silly fun!
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: console, gaming, Microsoft, vision camera, webcam, xbox, xbox live