If the start of your week isn’t going as smoothly as you’d like then perhaps this can help. Tune out for a few minutes and wrap your ears around a piece of gaming music remixed with a little modern flair. I know it’s not exactly a new concept and credit must go to those who run similar features (both past and present) – but I thought I’d dip my finger into the pie and see how long I can keep it running.

To get us kicked off I’m going to start with something that isn’t too obscure. If I say the name “Chris Hülsbeck”, you might think of The Great Giana Sisters, Apidya, or possibly R-Type – but for me personally, it’s his soundtracks for the classic run ‘n’ gun Turrican series that I think are the most awesome. Here, then, is Chris’s own Renewal mix of the main theme for Turrican II. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Zolyx’s Game Music Monday #1: Chris Huelsbeck – Turrican II Title (Renewal)

Credit also to ~MrDream from deviantART who created the fantastic artwork. Check out the full version and some of his other work here.

Although I have plenty of tracks to run this with over the coming months, you’re welcome to make suggestions of your own favourite remixes of gaming music – any platform will do as long as it’s reasonably “oldschool”…

Honestly, I feel really bad about this horrendous lack of posts. After blatantly ignoring my own warning about the danger of gaps, it’s only fair that I offer a completely truthful explanation. You deserve nothing less for sticking around. It’s a long story, but what actually happened was this…

I was munching on a very tasty slice of cake whilst playing one of the last Assemblee games in order to piece together TAR part 16 when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a flicker of movement. Glancing in that direction I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Assuming it was just the shadow of a flying pig, I resumed my keyboard wrestling match, but before I’d even had chance to type another word, POW! Something rugby-tackled me off my chair and barged me face-first into a pile of extremely uncomfortable cushions.

Choking and spluttering crumbs of cake everywhere, I was otherwise uninjured, and despite being momentarily stunned, it took mere nanoseconds for my secret ninja agent training to recover my senses. Rolling out of the accursed cushion pile and plucking a feather off my monocle to avoid scratches, I locked gazes with my assailant – a Greater-Speckled Commodore Marmot!

Read more…

Things are still broken, but the blog is back at least…

I would’ve given more notice, but because of the silly terms of service of my ex-host, I wanted to move away as quickly as possible to avoid them removing the site rather than me doing it in my own time. Apparently, hosting any file bigger than 1MB was against their terms… *gasp!* So although the likelihood of them cancelling my account was small (since I’d been running with them smoothly enough for a couple of months), they were still within their rights to do so. I really didn’t want to take any chances.

Obviously I can’t predict the future and it’s still early days with this new host but, well, let’s keep our fingers crossed, eh?

UPDATE: Turns out the Millenipede Leaderboard had been broken since the first host move. Wow. I suck! Seems like it has some scores on it nowadays that are slightly unrealistic! I must get around to revamping it some day…

Inevitability STRIKES!

Okay, so the TARs will still be a regular feature, but there’s no possible way in any existing universe that I’ll finish all of the reviews before the voting period closes as I was first aiming for. Does this matter? I suppose it does and it doesn’t. In the incredibly remote likelihood that you were reading these reviews to decide what games to vote for, then yeah, it’s a bummer. But otherwise there’s no hard feelings, right?

The weekend should see at least a dozen more entries get cross-examined in the virtual witness box, then back to the three or four at a time at various points during the week until they’re all done later in February.

Just a quick note to explain that, with the change in theme, links related to games have also changed slightly. Any time you see a  icon, go ahead and click it to take you to a place relevant to the discussed item. I think it’s neater than [link] having a load of [link] intrusive and boring links [link] that appear in square brackets for no apparent reason [link]. Don’t you agree? Good! We’re going to get along famously!

They said they were out of white emulsion and could I try and prevent myself from using any more?…

Yeah… I think it’s possibly a tiny bit uninspiring around here at the moment. It feels a bit like hospital decor, trying to be cheery in a way that isn’t forced, scary or mind-melting boring. And completely uncontroversial.

I’m wringing every single drop of creative juice from all of my 2.5 brain cells to attempt to remedy this situation! It’ll take some time. Meanwhile, some posts that have interesting content are just around the corner too, I promise.

While you wait, play  Realm of the Mad God from Wild Shadow Studios (and post feedback on the TIGForums), ‘cos it’s fantastic. You may even see me there later when I’ve had enough of tinkering here for the evening…

Do not adjust your set! I think everything is working again…

Took longer than expected, but that was down to my overall cackhandedness at this sort of thing. Oh well!

It’s moving time!

The host switch should happen at some point fairly soon, and this’ll be the last post on the old webspace. I’m fairly confident there won’t be any major disruption – I’d like to keep the Millenipede highscore functionality working throughout, but if you’re deadly serious about getting the world’s best highscore, I suggest you wait a couple of days for the changes to fully take effect…

Anyhow, I’ll keep this post updated as things trundle along.