On the subject of Harry Potter... in spite of the mediocre prose, i don't think it's absurd to look at it on more than a purely "page-turning" level. If nothing else, the characterization and world-building are excellent, but i think there is thematic depth as well - perhaps more obvious than that of the literary canon, but i feel that makes sense for a children's novel. In short i think it deserves to be considered a children's classic... but definitely not on the grounds of its prose.

Out of interest, what do you think of The Fellowship of the Ring? I loved The Hobbit, thought it was extremely well written and immersive. For some reason though I felt like getting to the end of each sentence in FotR was like trying to break through a brick wall. Not sure what it was exactly. Maybe over description? The Tom Bombadil chapter jumps to mind.

Huh. Honestly, i would pick out The Lord of the Rings as containing probably the finest descriptive prose of any novel i've ever read. There's no denying that the book has reams of it, though, so if you couldn't get into it i can see that being a problem. i think he has quite a way of building atmosphere with impressionistic phrases, though.

Re: story: I know the story in Zelda was never good or interesting but in the previous games it was pretty much just a side thing to add more flavor to the game, this time it's much more central (but not necessarily better). Don't care about the "timeline."

i kind of disagree on this point. Majora's Mask not only has a story that is pretty central to the whole venture, but the story is quite good and interesting in my opinion. In fact, i'd say that Majora's Mask is, at its heart, about characters, and setting, to a lesser extent, not about dungeons or puzzles or any other typical Zelda stuff.

yeah, that's perfectly fine. I don't know if you were planning on adapting any other tracks, but the module files are here if you want to look at them.

That's pretty awesome. I didn't know TI84s could even make sound.

Just my opinion of course, but i think that even in the absence of channel limitations (as someone who sequences on a computer, i don't have those unless they are self-imposed), they have a distinctive sound which is nice in some contexts. They are a significant element of the 8-bit sound and i think that criticizing them makes no sense, unless you're going to criticize tremolo picking in metal, or finger picking in folk, or ride cymbal triplets in jazz, or... whatever comparison makes you happy. Don't hate the tool, hate the abuse.

i agree that there are some awful uses of it, but i think they all tend to happen in the context of very stereotypical blip-blop type music. In which case the problem is the music and not the arpeggios.

Also, i'm gonna defend the technically clever use of chips and the wanky guitar solo, just to be different. Wanky guitar solos are not interesting to the casual listener, but they are interesting to guitarists - just as clever use of a chip is (i imagine, anyway) probably interesting as a sort of proof of concept for people who might go on to use the technical ideas in ways that are perhaps more artistically valuable.

If you're into any of the bands on/distributed by Relapse Records, they're having a pretty great 21st anniversary sale right now. CDs (excluding new releases) are all 50% off. I got things by Titan, Horseback, Repulsion, Baroness and Mastodon. They're also selling a different album each day for the next couple of weeks for only 21 cents, so you might keep an eye on that.

Arpeggios: The first sign of bad chiptunes.

Yeah, this strikes me as quite an overgeneralization... the equivalent of saying "breakbeats: the first sign of bad electronic music". Arpeggios are a tool which can be used for good or for evil.

Of course, i say this as someone who indulges in more than a few arpeggios...

Google Music is US only for now. Being Spotify a small company I understand that they need time to expand to other countries, but Google? Fuck them.

my guess is it has more to do with legal issues than a conscious desire to inconvenience anyone in particular.

yeah, i miss the singing too, but the songs on the EP are still great.

there's a free EP out by Gonjasufi, the, um... psychedelic mystic sing-rapper?

anyway, it's worth your time.

Personally, the presence of unkillable characters is the only thing i've learned about Skyrim so far that has made me think i might not like it. That kind of thing can ruin games for me. If you're going to give your video game a complex system of rules, you should apply them consistently. Emergent behavior is a good thing.

Officer Dick

I'm going to go ahead and post all the un-"cool" choices that everyone probably already knows, because this thread needs those. Also, they are genuinely my favorites.

note: i should give credit to cly5m for introducing me to some of these things and getting me interested in chip music in general.



- never played this game, but who even cares


- very creepy game with a really brilliant soundtrack by an anonymous composer.
Metroid - my personal favorite. One of the most brilliant yet uses of a chip... its minimalism is perfect. It uses the limitations of the medium to its advantage, and that makes it great.
The Legend of Zelda - lacks the subtleties of the Metroid soundtrack but has great tunes nonetheless.
Super Metroid - the best music that ever happened for the SNES. Atmospheric as anything ever.
Donkey Kong Country games - not atmospherically on the same level as Super Metroid, but in terms of composition i think they are some of the best tunes to ever be in a game.
The N64 Legend of Zelda games - no explanation needed
Planescape: Torment - a great atmospheric soundtrack. Fallout is also really good, and done by the same person.
Morrowind - i'm not fond of orchestral scores in general but i think that Jeremy Soule usually does a praiseworthy job. It helps that he tends to score the kinds of games that i'm into.

my favorite independent game scores:
Knytt - i guess i like atmosphere.
Within a Deep Forest - actually probably contains two of my favorite video game tracks ever. That was one. Here's the other.
Clean Asia! - John Marwin kills. The music in Cactus' games is pretty much always well-chosen though.
Garden of Coloured Lights - mainly the second level, which starts at about 5:20.
An Untitled Story - the only good MIDI soundtrack there ever was. It's weird and undisciplined and meandering but that's precisely why it works, in my opinion.

Random loose ends... Cave Story is pretty good but everyone knows that. Kirby games tend to have really overbearing, excessively cheerful music that i can't help admiring. Soldexus is a really good Castlevania clone whose music i love but can't find anywhere. The Cleaner is a really good platform action game whose music i love but can't find anywhere. Space Funeral and Seiklus have fantastic music but none of it is original.

If the file format was the only problem with PXTone... it's pretty easy to record the output of your sound card (into Audacity or a similar program), so if you want to export in an ordinary (by which i mean WAV, MP3, OGG or something like that) format, you can do that.

Trackers are not necessarily good for beginners (they're a bit complex), but you might give one a try. Skale Tracker is the one i use; it's missing some features but i'm used to it. I've heard good things about Milky Tracker and it's more widely used, so you might give that one a shot too. FamiTracker is pretty easy to use, i think, but it emulates the NES chip, which may or may not be what you want.

http://milkytracker.org/
http://www.skale.org/
http://famitracker.shoodot.net/

i will love this song forever.

i'd never seen this music video before... it makes me happy.





also, got Melissa by Mercyful Fate because it seemed like a Halloween-y thing to do.

T Dream's later albums might be more accessible, but I think this is their masterpiece. Total psychedelic synth drone immersion. The new remaster sounds really good, but it's a shame it's mastered at such a low level. This music deserves to be listened to LOUD

Zeit is great, but i stand by Phaedra forever.

here is another track:

https://8bc.org/music/Brother+Android/Things+Get+out+of+Hand/

Flash and the Pan - St. Peter

Thanks to Jared for showing me this song. <3

I'm glad it's a good song because Flash and the Pan is a great band name.

Also, Johnny Cash was a great man.

I think the reason I listen to my own music is that I make what I would want to hear. The inspiration for like 80% of the music I've ever made was "wouldn't it be cool if THIS existed?" so I guess it makes sense from that point of view.

I think this must be true of a lot of musicians. Personally i enjoy listening to my music, but i am more critical of it than of other music, and i don't listen to it nearly as much as i listen to some other people's.

Speaking of other people's music, Ornette Coleman's Shape of Jazz to Come is making me happy lately.