cease and desist

• Game Music, Reviews

  King’s Quest Lives! The Silver Lining OST Volume 1 (Review)

  January 31, 2011 | Patrick Gann | 2 Comments Share this King’s Quest Lives! The Silver Lining OST Volume 1 (Review)

  

  Fan projects based on commercial games rarely see the light of day. The mighty “Cease and Desist” letter, with pending threats of litigation, is usually enough to stop a fan project dead in the water.

  But, somehow, the fans of the King’s Quest series beat the odds, making it through the mess of legal red tape. The last official game in this series was King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity (KQ8), released in 1998. For the last decade, a variety of people have formed various teams to develop a fan-based sequel since Sierra (and Vivendi, which absorbed Sierra) seemingly had no intention to continue the series. This “fan” team, Phoenix Online Studios, worked hard to create professional-quality games with basically no budget.

  Having received and resolved two separate cease and desist letters (one from Vivendi, and another from Activision), it’s amazing that this project really happened. But happen it did, with 3 of the 5 episodes in this episodic game already out. For more details on the game, just read this. It’s worth noting that the game was renamed to not include the King’s Quest name anywhere, per their agreement with the rights-holders so that the game could be released.

  We at OSV received a limited edition soundtrack for The Silver Lining. The two disc set was labeled as “volume 1,” and from what we can tell, it covers two of the five episodes. The digital version of this soundtrack is available to download, for free, at this site. For our take on the fan-made music for this fan-made game, you’ll want to keep reading. It all comes after the jump. (more…)

• Doujin, Game Music

  Vinyl Fantasy 7 Released, Cease-and-Desisted, But Still Floating Around

  February 4, 2010 | Patrick Gann | 6 Comments Share this Vinyl Fantasy 7 Released, Cease-and-Desisted, But Still Floating Around

  

  I love Team Teamwork. These guys hit the scene last year with “The Ocarina of Rhyme,” a mash-up project taking hip-hop artists (indie and mainstream) and putting them against The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I even wrote about this album last year, and whined that there was no “Gerudo Valley” track (they’ve since remedied that by adding a bonus track with Busta Rhymes).

  At the end of January, Team Teamwork released their second VGM+rap mash-up: “Vinyl Fantasy 7.” And that’s exactly what it sounds like. Same concept as Ocarina of Rhyme, but using Final Fantasy VII as the source material. Awesome.

  Now, Team Teamwork had an account with the wonderful site Bandcamp, and all their albums were there. As of February 1st, Team Teamwork’s site was going down, then back up. On February 3rd, Team Teamwork received an official cease and desist: from whom, we aren’t sure. Tim Jacques (the man for whom “Team Teamwork” is a moniker) received the cease-and-desist via Bandcamp, who didn’t specify precisely who pointed the finger in the first place. Ultimately, Jacques pulled down his Bandcamp account voluntarily to avoid legal troubles.

  So if you want to find Vinyl Fantasy 7, you’ll have to scour the Internet to see who’s still sharing it. If you’re into mash-ups, you’re going to love this album. MOP’s “Ante Up” put against the standard battle theme, Ghostface Killah’s “Save Me Dear” put against “You Can Hear the Cry of the Planet” (City of the Ancients), all sorts of good stuff. Generally, the technique is to speed up or slow down the FFVII music to fit the tempo of the hip-hop artist. But the added beats alone make these arrangements worth listening to, even if this isn’t the kind of music you’re into. They got JENOVA, Gold Saucer, Mideel, and of course One-Winged Angel. You don’t want to miss this.

  Once you get ahold of this album, tell us what you think of it. What are your favorite tracks? What other FFVII tracks could benefit from becoming looped tracks for hip-hop mash-ups?

  [via Wired]

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