A_Rival

Game Music

Rogue Legacy Reborn Arrangement Album Now Available

November 18, 2014 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Rogue Legacy Reborn Arrangement Album Now Available Share this

If you were a fan of the music of Rogue Legacy, you now get to enjoy a second round of the indie rogue-lite’s tunes with Rogue Legacy Reborn.

Risen with a vengeance in the shadow of its forebear, comes an album for the generations: ROGUE LEGACY REBORN! A whole new breed of remixes and covers of all the songs you loved from the original soundtrack by a litter of amazing artists from the gaming world and beyond.

Comprised of 22 tracks, Rogue Legacy Reborn features arrangements of the original soundtrack done by composer “Tettrix” and “A Shell in the Pit” done up by a number of names in the game music arrangement scene, such as Stemage (Metroid Metal), Videri String Quartet, A_Rival and Careless Juja, plus a ton more.

The album is available on Loudr starting at $10, but if you feel so inclined you can throw the artists (and subsequently the original composers) a little extra.

Rogue Legacy Reborn – Loudr
Game Music

MAGFest 12 Concert Line-up Announced

November 16, 2013 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on MAGFest 12 Concert Line-up Announced Share this MAGFest 12 Concert Line-up Announced

Clear your calenders for the first weekend of 2014 and get ready to rock out to some phenomenal videogame music! The twelfth annual Music and Game Festival, also known as MAGFest 12, has released the performance roster for three of its upcoming videogame music concerts. The event will be taking place in National Harbor, Maryland and will run from January 2, 2014 through January 5, 2014. Two of these concerts are chiptune showcases, which will be held on Friday and Saturday afternoon. The Friday night concert will be what is known as an Electronic Dance Music (EDM) Battle concert. A total of six different DJs from the VGM community will be participating to perform their repertoire for this EDM Battle. The line-up for the upcoming concerts include some new acts and a number of returning artists.

The MAGFest 12 performance roster is as follows:

Friday Chiptune Showcase (12 PM – 2 PM)

– Trey Frey
– Chipocrite
– A_Rival
– Danimal Cannon

Friday Night EDM Battle (10 PM – 2 AM)

– bLiNd
– Benjamin Briggs
– DJ Cutman
– Grimecraft
– Totentaz
– Flexstyle

Saturday Chiptune Showcase (12 PM – 2 PM)

– Awesome Force
– Auxide
– Rainbow Dragon Eyes
– Cheap Dinosaurs

More information and updates on MAGFest events, tickets, hotels, special guests, and performers is available on the official MAGFest website at http://www.magfest.org/. A handful of us from Original Sound Version will be attending MAGFest 12 to cover the events and concerts as well. It’s looking like a great line-up for this concert series. Hope to see you there.
Chip Music, Featured, Game Music

GDC 2012: Chip Music Concert Recap & Photos

March 13, 2012 | Kunal Majmudar | 4 Comments Share this

Every year, tens of thousands of game developers from around the globe descend on the Moscone Center in San Francisco to attend the Game Developers Conference (GDC). During the day, the week-long conference has devs attending seminars and discussions on game development. The nights, however, are host to some of the most amazing geek and game-related parties/concerts of the year. This year, that included a total of three chip music shows, and I was lucky to be able to catch some of them during my trip.

Hit the jump for a recap with photos!

(more…)
Game Music

Original SoundCAST: Episode #012 (Bundle-Mania)

March 8, 2012 | Patrick Gann | 1 Comment Share this

Wow, did this ever turn into a mammoth project.

For episode 12, we reached out and interviewed *almost* every artist who appeared on the Indie Game Music Bundle 2. You know, that big awesome one that netted you a bunch of great music? Yeah. We decided to keep interest in the movement alive by talking to all of these guys about their current projects. Interesting note: with the exception of Africa (and technically Antarctica), these interviews have us reaching to every continent on earth. Countries represented include Chile, Canada, Sweden, Russia, Japan, New Zealand, and (of course) the USA. Of course, most of them are probably at GDC right now.

First, though, I have some apologies to make:

1) We wanted to have a special segment with Jake Kaufman in this episode. Due to scheduling, and the fact that this episode is already absurdly long, we’ve decided instead to make that its own episode. So, no Jake interview here, but it will happen, and Jayson will be a part of it.
2) I (Patrick) talk waaaay too much. The saddest thing of all is that this 3+ hour episode would have been nearly 4 hours if I hadn’t made edits to my own rambling. But even with the edits, you’ll notice. And for that, I apologize.
3) During the interview with Module, you will occasionally hear my voice echoing. It’s a feedback loop problem; partially my fault, and partially the fault of our international Skype call.

Right-click and “Save As…” to download the episode. Below the link, you’ll find show notes. We didn’t name every individual song used throughout this super-duper megasode; just know that when you hear music below the talking, it’s either by the artist being interviewed or is being referenced by that artist, and music after each interview is always by the artist being interviewed.

Download: Original SoundCAST Episode #012

[0:00:00] Intro: music from Jake “virt” Kaufman (Mighty Switch Force, “Whoa I’m In Space Cuba!”)
[0:00:45] Josh Whelchel re: Game Music Bundle 2, Sharing Is Caring EP, current/upcoming projects
[0:27:15] Francisco Cerda re: Jamestown
[0:40:15] Jim Guthrie re: Sword & Sworcery, Children of the Clone
[0:50:00] Alec Holowka re: Aquaria, Alone In Dreams, other projects
[1:00:50] Kan Gao re: To The Moon
[1:13:43] Intermission re: our inability to schedule time with Tomas “Floex” Dvorak and Jake “virt” Kaufman; also, Pat reads answers from flashygoodness
[1:20:30] Module re: Shatter, Imagineering
[1:36:50] disasterpeace re: Cat Astro Phi, Passcode, Rise of the Obsidian, FEZ, tons of stuff
[1:52:00] David Saulesco re: Eternal Daughter and its 10th anniversary
[2:05:00] A_Rival re: 8-bit Pimp, TMNT EP, plans for 2012
[2:17:00] Inverse Phase re: Shuttle Scuttle, past/current/upcoming projects
[2:37:00] C-jeff re: Preschtale
[2:45:30] Romain Gauthier re: SQUIDS, Edge, life in Japan, and how to pronounce his name (hint: it’s like this Gotye)
[3:02:05] Octopus Project re: Thunderbeam
[3:13:37] Outro: a message from us
Chip Music, Game Music

Turtle Power: A_Rival’s TMNT 2012 EP Hits Bandcamp

January 23, 2012 | Jayson Napolitano | Comments Off on Turtle Power: A_Rival’s TMNT 2012 EP Hits Bandcamp Share this

We’ve already told you how impressed we were with A_Rival’s 3:30 AM performance at MAGFest X earlier this month. He somehow managed to pack a room full of people with his previously-unannounced performance so early in the morning, and by the end of his set he had nearly everyone on stage jumping up and down and pumping their fists with his heavy 8-bit/electro remix of the TMNT theme.

For those who weren’t there (shame on you!), A_Rival has fortunately decided to release the TMNT 2012 EP featuring this excellent remix alongside a short rap about wanting to be a teenage mutant ninja turtle when he grows up. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s available via his Bandcamp page with name your own price. I know I have strong memories from that magical morning, but I still think it’s worth checking out and throwing a few bucks his way.

Let us know what you think of A_Rival’s antics and his TMNT remix.
Chip Music, Game Music

MAGFest X Chiptune Concerts: Too Many To Name!

January 11, 2012 | Jayson Napolitano | Comments Off on MAGFest X Chiptune Concerts: Too Many To Name! Share this

Oh man, I’m still beat from MAGFest X. We’ve written about a ton of music so far, but we still have three days of chiptune concerts to cover! The noon-time chiptune concerts featured three artists apiece with a “secret chiptune concert” (which was blatantly listed on the schedule) that featured even more on the final night. Acts including Disasterpeace, Knife City, virt, and others performed along with special guests at the secret concert.

Patrick and I have double-teamed the coverage of all the performances for your reading pleasure, and of course we have more photos from Emi Spicer.

Hit the jump for more. (more…)
Chip Music, Game Music, Indie Music, Reviews

Good Music for a Good Cause: Songs for the Cure ’11 – Remedy (Review)

April 6, 2011 | Jayson Napolitano | 1 Comment Share this

We’ve seen Songs for the Cure in the past, but never like this. Three separate discs, 40 artists, and a ton of great music. The artist roster this year is mind-blowing, and organizer Josh Whelchel has made the music easier to digest by arranging the tracks into similarly-styled collections, the first of which we’ll be checking out is Remedy.

So, just who’s on Remedy? As Whelchel puts it, “The game people.” While you won’t get Alexander Brandon here (he’s on the vocal album, Esuna), nearly everyone else we mentioned in our news post a few weeks ago is here.

What do we think of the Remedy collection? Find out in our review after the jump. (more…)