VGM of the Week #48

In case you watched me take on Pokemon Puzzle Challenge: Hard Mode, you might have heard me say how cool the music for the final battle is. Here, that this. Dangerous to go alone joke.

Extra Joy #3 - Kingdom Hearts

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KINGDOM HEARTS.

Let's Try That Again - Metroid: Zero Mission

Ricky is back once again in the role of Samus Aran, saving the galaxy one Metroid at a time. It's been awhile since our Metroid Fusion Let's Play and it's always been one of our favorites so we figured, why not play another Metroid game? We landed on Metroid: Zero Mission for the Gameboy Advance and trust us, there's plenty of laughs, plenty of unrelated conversation and plenty of Ricky getting lost. Just like Metroid Fusion!



Finally got our entire backlog of videos up as of this Let's Try That Again. We now actually have to record things again because there's nothing left to go up! But hey, this was a pretty fun LTTA so go ahead and watch it. You'll enjoy it, promise. We did.

Extra Joy #2 - Wii, You, & Bayonetta too

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This went up on Saturday last week, but I never posted it on here. Here it is now. We follow up with our first podcast and talk about everything that happened with Nintendo Direct and more.

VGM of the Week #47

So hey, as of a few days ago, summer is officially over. At least, the season is. It's still flippin' hot as all hell but hey, my calendar says it's true so it must be. Anyway, as a celebration of the end of summer, I figured I'd go with a song from a game that pretty much screams "summer;" Super Mario Sunshine.

Super Mario Sunshine has one of the finest soundtracks of any game, in my humble opinion, so coming up with just one was a bit hard. But, since it is the end of summer, I decided to go with the Staff Roll that plays as the credits roll. It's basically a more bombastic version of the Deflino Plaza theme but it sure is fun.


Though if I'm being 100% honest with you, the main reason I picked this track in particular is so I could share with you a live orchestrated version of it by the Big Band of Rogues. This group put together a whole CD of orchestrated versions of famous tracks from a bunch of Mario and Zelda games and to close it all out, they did the ending theme of Super Mario Sunshine and let me tell you, it is a piece of work. So hit the jump to take a listen to that because I promise you, you won't regret it.

Villain Analysis: Ganondorf (TP) vs Demise

Oh boy, it's time for a follow-up article! Now, if you've been around long enough, you'll remember I did a little page wherein I compared the right-hands-of-evils of two Legend of Zelda games: Zant of Twilight Princess and Ghirahim of Skyward Sword. That mostly turned into me ranting about all the things I hated about Zant and gushing about Ghirahim since they fill the same roles in the game but the execution of one was vastly superior to the other. Here, I'll bet there's gonna be a bit more neutrality since I like both these bosses, and I just felt like posting more, and a follow-up felt in order, and because I like run-on sentences.

Review - Kirby's Dream Collection: Special Edition

Two years ago, Nintendo celebrated Mario’s 25th anniversary by releasing a special edition of Super Mario All-Stars for the Wii. It was disappointing. All it was was the original Super Mario All-Stars ROM slapped on a Wii disc for 40 dollars and it wasn’t even the version of All-Stars that came with Super Mario World! The original Mario games are great but Nintendo could have put way more effort into celebrating their biggest character’s birthday.

Thankfully, HAL Labs and Nintendo have decided to do just that to celebrate the Kirby franchises 20th anniversary. Kirby’s Dream Collection is everything a fan of the series could want in a compilation. It has great games, great menus and some really cool bonus features. It’s everything Super Mario All-Stars wasn’t.

For your pleasure

Let's Try That Again - Sesame Street Countdown

On the night of the sad death of Jerry Nelson, we decided to play a game honoring him, a game Ricky remembers from childhood; Sesame Street Countdown staring The Count. It's a simple game designing for three-year-olds but good ol' Adamant Ditto finds a way to make it entertaining anyway. Also, Matt sucks at everything so it's fun to watch him screw up in a preschool game.




Jerry Nelson was a very talented man, one of my personal favorites, and I wanted to do something to honor him. So why not play a game made for four year olds staring his most famous character? So hopefully you enjoy this. It's really short so you can get through it quickly.

NiGHTs Into Dreams... And Sonic Adventure 2 HD Dropping in October

I posted a story earlier this year about NiGHTS into Dreams... being announced as a HD remake being released later this year so I figured I should follow up on that because the release date has been announced! Yes, you can finally relive your fond memories of NiGHTS in glorious HD on October 2nd for the PSN and October 5th for the X-Box Live Arcade. That's less than a month away! It gives you just enough time to finish playing the recently released Jet Set Radio HD.

But wait, there's more! Sega also announced that the "HD" rerelease of Sonic Adventure 2 will also be released on the same day as NiGHTS into Dreams... So you can relive two classic Sega games on the same day! Both games are set to retail for 9.99 USD, which isn't too bad for a game you likely haven't played and one you likely enjoy enough to drop some cash on again. *But maybe not...*

As an added bonus, NiGHTS into Dreams... comes complete with everything from the rare Christmas NiGHTS expansion pack for free. That disc is pretty hard to come by these days so I'm sure a lot of Sega fans out there are pretty happy to final experience it. Sonic Adventure 2 will also have some optional DLC featuring all the battle mode features from Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for the Gamecube. This DLC is 3.00 USD and includes all the battle mode stages and characters as well as Chao Karate. Why this isn't included for free, I don't know but whatever. It's there if you want it.

Both games drop on October 2nd for PSN and October 5th for X-Box Live Arcade for 9.99 USD. As far as I know, Steam versions for both games are in the works but they weren't included in the announcement. I look forward to experiencing NiGHTS for the first time. I'm still on the fence about Sonic Adventure 2, though. But hey, I figured I'd mention it.

VGM of the #46

Hi, I'm late. Busy. School. Podcast. Friends. I'm the god damn Batman.

 

This track plays on the jaw-dropping title screen. It's really rare that somebody would say that about any title screen but Arkham City is just so slick. It does a good job of sounding like it could be from the Nolan films where Hans Zimmer would have produced it. I'm not afraid to admit that sometimes I leave the TV on with the game on the main menu just so I can listen to it playing in the background of my room. It makes me feel like the hero we deserve.

I'm Batman.

Extra Joy #1 - Wii U Expectations

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We recorded this last week so all of the stuff we say has been made practically obsolete as they have announced pretty much every thing there is to announce about the Wii U's release and lineup just yesterday. We know Nintendo tore a rift through the internet with the announcement of Bayonetta 2 as an exclusive so don't jump down our throats about it. We felt like we still said some interesting stuff so we decided to put it up.

If you guys have any suggestions for topics to talk about. Let us know with a comment below!

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Today's Forecast

Wii U Launch Details

So, for those of you who pay attention to us over the fine folks at Gamespot, or IGN, or even whoever the lowest common denominator for Video Game News, Nintendo had an itty-bitty conference where they announced the launch date of their next system, the Wii U. I'm basically just gonna relay the info I'm gatting from Gamespot, so to cover my ass, you can read their news post here.

Review - Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 - Revisited

So I already reviewed Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 forever ago. But I decided to review it again for my whole Sonic project thing because my opinion has changed a bit after playing over 30 Sonic games in the course of the year. I still like it but it's not as good as I thought it was at first. Oh well!


Oh. I also never properly made updates about our Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Pokémon Puzzle Challenge let's plays. I should probably do that but for now, you can find the playlists in the Let's Try That Again section up top or just by clicking those links there.

Happy 13th Birthday Dreamcast

May you rest in peace. 13 years ago today, Sega released the tragic Dreamcast on 9/9/99. Sure, the disc reader was loud as hell, the VMUs were a novelty, the hard plastic joystick and sharp corners of the crummy D-Pad will shred the skin of your thumb like the N64 controller does, but it still remains one of my favorite consoles ever. The graphics were state of the art. You could go on the internet which lets you do all kinds of cool stuff before they took down the service. Most important of all, the games were fantastic. Here are some of my favorites off the top of my head.

• Shenmue
• Marvel Vs. Capcom 2
• Power Stone 2
• Sonic Adventure
• Sonic Adventure 2
• Jet Set Radio
• Soul Calibur 

And there's plenty more great games that aren't necessarily my favorites or I just haven't played them like Chu Chu Rocket, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, Seaman, Ooga Booga, Shenmue II, Typing of the Dead, Rez, Grandia II, Skies of Arcadia, Samba de Amigo, and Phantasy Star Online. There's a lot to list! The Dreamcast had a lot of good ports of arcade games because it ran on just about the same hardware as the arcade did. I want to say that the Dreamcast had the definitive versions of other games like Toy Story 2 and Rayman 2 as well, being the technical powerhouse it was at the time... before the PS2 came out.

So here's to you, Dreamcast. You've left a spiral shaped mark in hearts of gamers everywhere. The soul still burns.

VGM of the Week #45

As you may or may not be aware, I'm a sucker for a Boss Fight tune. Final Boss tunes are even better in my eyes. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is no different!



This music sound like it comes straight from Kingdom Hearts...I have no idea if I only think this because I'm currently replaying Dream Drop Distance, but this really feels like it should be used in Kingdom Hearts...Regardless of where it's from, it's a pretty awesome tune!

Review: Sleeping Dogs

I was going to do a full-on review for this game but I never got around to fleshing out my points into a cohesive and well written and structured article. However, I did list out the key points I wanted to talk about and I figure I might as well post that. I've cleaned it up with proper grammar, punctuation, and more details. This is actually longer than some of the reviews on our blog even if I had not put it in bullet form but I suppose you can consider this a mini-review!

VGM of the Week #44

Me again!

So I've been playing Metroid: Zero Mission lately, in preparation for a little something special...

And every time I turned it on to continue, I was just struck by how pretty this little title theme is.



Unlike the traditional Metroid title screen theme, which is bleak and creepy, this one starts out gentle and full of hope. I don't quite know why, but I find that really appropriate for this game; in a remake of the original Metroid, Samus' first adventure, it makes sense that she'd be a little more optimistic and not quite so world-weary, since she hasn't seen most of the worst horrors in the series yet.

What I find quite interesting is that the original Metroid title theme is still nestled in there, but sandwiched as it is between these little nuggets of hope, it never feels quite as dismal as in Super Metroid or Fusion. In the original Metroid, it was the other way around; the hopeful part was sandwiched between the more dismal part. I just find that really interesting.

Just a really nice little piece of music. Hope you enjoy it like I have.