Chris

Idle Thumbs 14: Interface with the Animus

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Here it is!

"BioShock 2 lead level designer JP LeBreton joins us for this accidentally retro-filled episode to recount the rich tapestry of game music, talk up the LucasArts classics, and dream of a world where Grand Theft Auto was reimagined as a 1930's Warner Bros. cartoon."

"Games discussed: BioShock, Monkey Island 2, Gravity Hook, Assassin's Creed, Tomb Raider: Underworld"

iTunes: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=293436552

RSS: http://feedproxy.google.com/idle-thumbs

http://www.idlethumbs.net/

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This is a nice surprise, I was expecting another week off from the U.S. cast like the last time we got a U.K. podcast. And coincidentally I'm stuck at home today with nothing to do while I wait out a blizzard, so now I at least have 90 fewer minutes to kill.

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Talking about syncing sound with game events. In Little Big Adventure (or Relentless for the US people), when the main character was in "discrete" mode there were short sound tracks linked to certain movements. For example turning around had a sound, and walking forward. It worked well because the movement was quite slow, but it was exactly like the "Bugs running on a stairs" thing.

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Talking about syncing sound with game events. In Little Big Adventure (or Relentless for the US people), when the main character was in "discrete" mode there were short sound tracks linked to certain movements. For example turning around had a sound, and walking forward. It worked well because the movement was quite slow, but it was exactly like the "Bugs running on a stairs" thing.

Now that you mention it, I remember that they did that, especially in sneaking mode.

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Good episode guys.

Also, n0wak, Lost Planet was awesome!

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Whoa, I remember Smashing Pumpkins into Small Piles of Putrid Debris (music by Burnt A. Christian) back in the early nineties; also, wondering whether "idspispopd" was a nod to this crummy DOS game. (Ends up that, yeah, it kinda is.)

If I remember reading about the whole deal second-hand correctly, SPISPOPD actually started as a joke amongst people waiting for Doom (I think it was a parody of the hype surrounding Doom), then someone took the name and made it into a game, and the cheat code was probably a reference to the joke rather than a game. My main first-hand memory of the affair was being relieved when Doom II changed the code to the much easier "idclip". For some reason I didn't just write the old one down. I was an idiot child who probably shouldn't have been playing those games in the first place.

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Anyways, listening to the podcast in segments, I think JP LeBreton is sort of abrasive in his style but he sure has a lot of information spewing forth at once. I'm loving this sound part. Props to mentioning Access Software's Realsound, which wasn't really practical but an amazing as a novelty.

I'm pretty sure it was only used in Tex Murphy's first game Mean Streets, and a few other early titles, as Martian Memorandum had much more digitized speech but used your Soundblaster and had the standard adlib music for the early 90s PC Game.

Also in Mean Streets, the Realsound stuff was hardly used for all the talking you do in that game. I think only your secretary and maybe two other characters had 3 or 4 standard phrases she would repeat in digitized speech, and maybe there was a few screams and gunshots here and there. It wasn't used for a full talkie game.

And my first exposure to the FM Synth chip on the Genesis was in Sonic 3 on the first miniboss when they yell "Hey COME ON!" during the music. Thanks Michael Jackson!

Also it appears that I'm the only one who thinks Beneath a Steel Sky and other Revolution titles are pretty mediocre.

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I think you had a great guest in JP LeBreton. Lot's of arcane knowledge to share and very enthusiastic.

Talking about a Merry Melodies style game, the 'Steamboat Willie' world in Kingdom Hearts 2 was really standout; especially the little gameplay segments like dousing a house on fire and mock air-raids on a toy city. The 3D props all had that bouncy animation loop.

On the whole, I really enjoyed that game.

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To whoever wrote in about Bomberman:

I made this a few years back, with a few other students at Aalborg University, Copenhagen.

You're going to love this:

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Loved the brief section on IMUSE, and whilst it was obviously great in the adventures, I always felt it really found its home in X-Wing and TIE Fighter; the emergent music in them was bloody perfect, and neatly hit the sweet-spot of computers' inbuilt MIDI soundlibraries being just about good enough to really sell the extensions of John Williams' score. I would have love to have heard it through an AWE32, though.

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Fantastic cast of the pod. It really helps make my work days move more quickly... Though, my only issue with the latest cast was the result of all the retro game soundtrack talk.

As I mentioned in my "Hi I'm New Post" I woke up this morning and spent the first half of the day with the Legend of Zelda Title Theme stuck in my head. And now, I feel an overwhelming urge to dig out my NES, replace the cartridge battery so I can save, and roll through Zelda. :shifty:

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I have it on Wii. It's $5 and the battery will never die.

Great cast. Here are a few things that have occurred to me so far.

First off, why the hell aren't you guys making that cartoon-world game? It sounds, to put it bluntly, fucking amazing. Different worlds are always appealing to me, and that seems like an ideal thing to play through. As mentioned earlier, Kingdom Hearts 2 did it, but that was only one world.

The Bioshock setting also attracted my girlfriend to the game. As I've mentioned before, she gets motion sick with anything 3D, so when games made that jump she stopped playing. Seeing the ads for Bioshock did prompt her to watch me play through a good chunk of the game just to take in the artwork though. It's still one of the only modern games she cares about at all.

Chris, that's my favorite part of MGS3 as well, and instantly what came to mind as soon as you guys got on that subject. If you want to see someone who tried that shit on film and actually got away with it, Godard's 1967 movie Weekend has a 10+ minute tracking shot of a traffic jam solely to fuck with the viewer. This makes it one of my favorite movies.

Finally, back to the dancing scenery and such of that proposed cartoon world, one of the most stand-out parts of New Super Mario Bros on the DS for me was when I noticed that the powerups, baddies, and even certain platforms will dance along with the background music. I can now hear the music from the first world in my head and imagine goombas hopping into the air with the beat. I kinda want to play it again.

Man, I need to replay the Monkey Island series. My last playthrough was in 2004. I think I've actually forgotten a bunch of the puzzles by now. Conditions could hardly be more ideal.

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Chris, that's my favorite part of MGS3 as well, and instantly what came to mind as soon as you guys got on that subject. If you want to see someone who tried that shit on film and actually got away with it, Godard's 1967 movie Weekend has a 10+ minute tracking shot of a traffic jam solely to fuck with the viewer. This makes it one of my favorite movies.

Andy Warhol made a movie that was nothing but am 8-hour continuous shot of the Empire State Building. But then, that movie is intentionally unwatchable, so I don't think it could be said that he got away with it.

Regarding iMuse, how hard could it be to do with live music? Sure, it would take meticulous planning and a great sound editor, but I don't see what technological limitations exist today that would prevent it, other than composers and sound people being reluctant to put in the effort.

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