OSV Celebrates 1000 Posts!

I joined Original Sound Version soon after its inception in June of 2008. Jayson Napolitano invited me and I haven’t looked back. On a personal note, it’s been quite a journey. But in many ways, we’ve only just begun. Today, with this post, we reach 1000 posts on our humble nerd-music blog. We’re proud of what we’ve done so far, and we plan on continuing our unique brand of coverage of game/anime music, chiptunes, and other awesome stuff.

After the jump, we chronicle some of our favorite posts of the past two years. We hope you join us!

OSV’s first post was the one that initiated our “Soundtrack of the Month” feature. Jayson wrote about the soundtrack for Nausicaä. Since then, we’ve given much of our energy, particularly for anime music, to the Miyazaki films (all composed by Joe Hisaishi). We covered the Princess Mononoke soundtrack in another SotM feature and guest contributor Crystal did a great write-up on a Joe Hisaishi concert featuring Miyazaki scores. At one point I double-reviewed some Ponyo CDs. And who could forget Ponyo On A Boat?

In August of ’08, we interviewed Osamu Kubota, one of Japan’s best tranny-composers (not really a transvestite, but the lipstick and make-up in the photo is pretty hot). More recently, we spoke with another composer who has worked with Kubota-san on Granado Espada and many Beatmania titles, TaQ.  Good stuff!

I’ll never forget our ill-fated, short-lived “Ask Hibino” segment. Being friends with a composer certainly has its perks. For some reason, Norihiko Hibino (composer for Metal Gear Solid, among other games) decided that he liked us. So we started the Ask Hibino segment, and that lasted only a few rounds before Hibino couldn’t keep up. That’s not the first time Hibino had to back out of something because of other commitments. That said, we did love his sax recordings on The Outer Rim. Some albums we’ve reviewed with Hibino’s work include Commando 3, Ninja Blade, Sekaiju no MeiQ I&II Super Arrange (piano+strings), 7th Dragon piano+strings, Gentle Love and Prescription for Sleep.

Jim Sterling knows how to push my buttons. I mean, he’s famous for pissing people off right? Hilarious dude, one of Destructoid’s most famous editors. He, alongside a few other “greats” in game journalism, have sat down with Gideon Dabi for some good old-fashioned conversation. The Game Music Mishegoss series is certainly due for another update (you hear that Gideon?). We’ll even take recommendations on who to bug next. But if you click that link there you can check out two immensely awesome articles.

LOL, awesome album art there. Seriously though, we love chiptunes. We love them like our own children. Well, in some cases, they are the children of some of our writing staff. But chiptunes have become increasingly popular despite their age. The Chiptuned Rockman album is proof of that.

Sometimes news is slow, and that’s the perfect time to post some YouTube vids. The above video is one of my favorites. But who could forget the “Rainbow Road” song for someone’s dead uncle, or that awesome VGM cover music from FreddeGredde? And I would be an awful human being if I forgot to mention some of our recent posts against the master of game music parody, Hyadain.

If you’ve spent much time at all surfing our little site, you’ll have noticed that we love certain CDs. Chief among them is Metroid Metal’s album Varia Suite. There are lots of great VGM cover bands out there, and we love pretty much all of them. Be it The OneUps, Retro Remix Revue, or even a solo artist like Daniel Brown. There’s a lot of good stuff out there and we’re happy to celebrate with them.

We’ve broken a few news stories in the last two years. For example, while the rumors about Akira Yamaoka leaving Konami had been floating around for awhile, we were able to confirm the story by getting word direct from the mouth of the man. Keeping up on the latest news is a difficult and thankless job. So feel free to send some virtual hugs to the staff members who keep up on the latest news! Okay? Cool.

We’ve done dozens of interviews with composers, many of them being Japanese. A personal favorite of mine from recent months is this interview from contributor Carl Larson, featuring Hideki Sakamoto. 100 Million Ton no Bara Bara was, conceptually, a great idea, and the music matches. Keep your eyes peeled for a forthcoming restructuring of the site that will make it even easier for you to browse our in-depth interviews!

Alright, well that’s all the more I care to recount. Feel free to use the comments section to tell us about some of your favorite OSV stories. Or you can just make fun of me. I can take it, I have thick skin.

(Actually I’d cry like a baby. Please say nice things about me and the site!)