Videogames

Experimental, Featured, Game Music

Audio-Visual Game Panoramical Gets an Official Release

September 10, 2015 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on Audio-Visual Game Panoramical Gets an Official Release Share this

Back in 2012, game designer Fernando Ramallo and composer David Kanaga created a game prototype that focused on altering 3D landscapes and having the music warp and change with the environment. What eventually resulted in this collaboration was an audio-visual experience called Panoramical. Over the past few years the game has been shown off at multiple events, festivals, and even a few museums. Next week the game will finally be receiving a commercial release.

The game will include fifteen unique environments, each with their own range of tones, aesthetics, and music elements. By manipulating various “dimensional controls” players will be able to alter the landscapes around them and the music along with it. Panoramical will be released digitally for Mac and PC on Steam, Humble, and itch.io on September 17th. You can check out more information about Panoramical on the official website.
Featured, Software

PAX East Preview: Thumper

March 26, 2015 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on PAX East Preview: Thumper Share this PAX East Preview: Thumper

Every PAX East features a wide array of companies and developers showing off their upcoming or recently released games. Here at Original Sound Version, we like to highlight some of the music related games that we come across during the event. These often end up being rhythm games, but this can also include other game genres where music is a vital element. A good example of this would be the FRACT OSC game that we previewed at last year’s PAX East. This year we will be highlighting two upcoming games that were on display at the PAX East Expo floor.

Our first preview is an action rhythm game called Thumper. This was one of the many titles featured at the PAX East Indie Megabooth. The game is currently being developed by Marc Flury and Brian Gibson, who have both worked on rhythm game titles at Harmonix. Flury acts as the lead programmer, with Gibson providing his music and art talents for the look and sound of the game. (more…)
Chip Music, Featured, Game Music, Indie Music

New MAGFest 8.5 Event is Launching This September

July 8, 2014 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on New MAGFest 8.5 Event is Launching This September Share this

The creators of MAGFest, the Music and Gaming Festival, have launched another event that will take place from September 12-14 at the Hilton Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia. Unlike the regular MAGFest event, which takes place in National Harbor, Maryland every January, this event is taking place at the original MAGFest venue this fall. A few years ago, the main MAGFest event was moved to the National Harbor location, when the festival got bigger and required a larger venue. This new event aims to bring back the vibe of the early MAGFest days to current day festival attendees. Essentially a smaller and more intimate setting for game and music fans. MAGFest 8.5 will be happening in addition to MAGFest 13, the latter of which is set for late January.

For those of you not familiar with MAGFest, it’s a festival, as the name implies, dedicated to games and music. The event features tons of concerts from videogame cover/remix bands and guest appearances by some of the top videogame composers in the world. Past composer guests have included Nobuo Uematsu, Yuzo Koshiro, Chris Huelsbeck, and Tommy Tallarico.

Because of the smaller venue size for MAGFest 8.5, the tickets are going to be limited to only 2000 attendees. If you’re interested in getting out to this event, grab tickets and hotel reservations while you still can. Guests and music performers have yet to be announced. Information on hotels and tickets can be found at the MAGFest 8.5 website.
Featured, Game Music, Music Production

Check Out This 17 Minute Tribute to the History of Videogame Music

June 2, 2014 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on Check Out This 17 Minute Tribute to the History of Videogame Music Share this

If you frequently explore YouTube for videogame music covers, chances are that you’ve encountered the videogame rock arrangements by Jules Conroy, aka FamilyJules7X. If you haven’t, then today you are in for a treat. For the past three years Jules has been arranging and performing music from videogames and uploading videos of these arrangements to his YouTube channel. He’s covered games including Donkey Kong, Pokemon, Binding of Isaac, Final Fantasy, and Elder Scrolls to name just a few.

This year, to celebrate the three year anniversary of his videogame cover projects, Jules put together a seventeen minute long medley of game music. As the title suggests, “Replay: A Metal Tribute to the History of Video Games” is a guitar cover tribute to videogame music and covers the medium’s more than thirty year history. The medley starts off at the year 1972 with the original Pong, works it’s way through classic Nintendo and Sega games, and proceeds to go through every year up to 2014.

As if the size and scope of this medley alone wasn’t impressive enough, Jules completed this project, start to finish, in just eight days and during the same week as his college finals. According to his video description, he only had four days to record the guitars, one day to do the arranging, one day for the drums, one day to mix and master the music, and only one day to edit all of the video footage. He set it up as a challenge for himself and the results are quite amazing. It’s an impressive feat to get all of that done in such a limited time frame. If you’ve never seen or heard his arrangements before, definitely give the FamilyJules7X channel a look. Metal fans and videogame enthusiasts will not be disappointed.
Featured, Game Music, Indie Music, Software

PAX East Preview: Crypt of the NecroDancer

April 16, 2014 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on PAX East Preview: Crypt of the NecroDancer Share this

While there were many games presented on the PAX East 2014 show floor, there were only a handful that featured music as their central gameplay mechanic. Since OSV is a site which focuses on game music, we thought it would be nice to give some previews of games that featured music as their core element. The first of these is a game titled Crypt of the NecroDancer.

For those of you have not heard of it, Crypt of the NecroDancer is a roguelike dungeon crawler, created by Brace Yourself Games, that requires you to time your movements and attacks to the game’s soundtrack. Your movement, attacks, and other abilities are all triggered with the four direction buttons. In order to successfully move, attack, or use an ability, you need to enter the command on the beat. A beat meter on the bottom of the screen helps indicate when you can take action. When I spoke with the developers at the show, they emphasized that they wanted to make a rogelike that relied a little more heavily on player skill, rather than luck of what the dungeon will throw at you on a particular run. Theoretically, if you have good rhythm and timing, you can make it through most situations in one piece. (more…)
Game Music, Software

DLC for Guitar, DJ, and Band Hero is Being Discontinued

March 20, 2014 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on DLC for Guitar, DJ, and Band Hero is Being Discontinued Share this

Guitar Hero announced Tuesday, on its FB page, that the DLC (Downloadable Content) for the Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, and Band Hero games will not be available after March 31st. The Guitar Hero mobile games are also being discontinued. However, the servers for the games will stay online, so any of the current or past purchases will not be negatively affected.

It’s not all bad news. From now until the end of the month, the DLC will be discounted up to 50% for the XBox 360, Wii, and Playstation 3. So for those of you who haven’t bothered to grab some of the DLC that you wanted, now is your last chance. If you ever plan on bringing out the plastic controllers for a party, it may be worth checking out some of this vanishing repertoire.
Game Music, Reviews

Broken Age: Act 1 OST (Review)

January 29, 2014 | Michael Hoffmann | 1 Comment Share this Broken Age: Act 1 OST (Review)

Like many people, I was excited about the Double Fine kickstarter. The potential for creators like Tim Schafer to help revive the point-and-click adventure game genre was something I could get behind. After a few years of waiting, the Double Fine game titled Broken Age has had its first half released. As a backer I was able to play through an early copy and listen to the game’s soundtrack. For this game, Double Fine brought in game composer Peter McConnell. McConnell has previously worked with Tim Schafer on games like Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, and Brutal Legend. Since this is only Act 1 of Broken Age, this is technically only the first half of the soundtrack. When Act 2 comes out later this year, there will undoubtedly be more music and a second soundtrack.

Now because the main appeal to games like Broken Age are the story and the areas you explore, I feel a minor spoiler warning is due. With most of the soundtracks that I review, I like to take into account how the music relates and works within the game. The music can certainly stand alone and be critiqued for its own merits, but its interaction with the game is still an important aspect. Because of this, I will end up discussing certain sections of the game and that may spoil minor plot points or reveal parts of what you will experience in the game. I promise that this review will not contain any major plot spoilers or solutions to puzzles. However, there are inevitably things that may give hints or details about portions of the game. The very names of the album’s tracks can even give things away. So following the jump after this paragraph, I will be going into potential spoiler territory. Read on if you dare. (more…)