Sorry guys for the lack of updates, but I'll be gone for a few days more. So I spent like 10 minutes on the bib until I realized I started the 2nd yoshi off center. It's bugging me, should I restart it? I'm so lazy I think I'll just continue, what do you think?
Got something pretty awesome today by Noriko Matsueda which is widely known for his great compositions in the Square Enix (Squaresoft) games. I thought I'd take a step away from old classic video game systems and give you a piece from Final Fantasy XI called "Dolphin".
This is probably the most well known song for any FFXI players since it greeted you everytime you would login. Despite how much I hate HATE HATE Playonline for its stupid convulted account services, I find this song puts me at ease...while I smash my keyboard against a wall. Hope you enjoy this song and be glad you probably never dealt with Playonline.
Been busy lately, but I made some good progress on the bib. I'm extremely happy about how this turned out. I've only ever worked on 18 count fabric so I was very skeptical about working on 14 count cloth. The bigger pixels meant it would have much more noticeable gaps in between each stitch but the good side is that smaller art will be about 25% larger than it would be on 18 count cloth and this works wonderfully in my favor at the moment. So here's 1/3 of the bib! I ditched the old crying Yoshi because who wants a depressing baby bib!? Bad idea so I just swapped for a more cheerful pose.
I used a very dark grey around his eyes and mouth for shadows but quickly switched to a light grey for the body curve shadow. It also looks like he has a squashed bug on the bottom of his shoe but that's just because my stitches are not as consistant as I'd like them to be. I like how the sprites have double layered outlines. I wasn't sure if I wanted to make the outline thinner but I did it in Paint.net and it made Yoshi look shallow. It still bugs me now with the thick outline, but the thin outline would've bugged me much more.
I LOVE how this is going so far. Don't worry, I'll update sooner this time since I'm on a roll for stitching.
Once upon a time in the early times of the internet where AOL reigned supreme and NetZero was a respectable 56k ISP dial-up provider the MMORPG genre was just getting it's first legs and growing. Long before anyone thought that Blizzard would make monstrous game behemoths (World of Warcraft duh) there were studios that were paving the way into what would be the modern MMO games of today. There are a few worthy of mention: Everquest, Never Winter Nights, Nexus: The Kingdom, MUDS, and Neopets (haha). But one really took to a whole new level...and that was....
ULTIMA ONLINE!
*cue music*
(Nifty Song, eh? All noble and shit!)
Ah yes, back before when "Player Versus Player" actually meant killing someone that looked funny at you rather than killing someone for some abitrary point system, where thieves weren't preying on those stupid enough to give their passwords but were ACTUALLY stealing within the game's mechanics. Where Murderers roamed outside the city limits for the purpose of being a dick. Where players pirates roammed the sea and openly attacked Fisherman and stole all their treasure. In Ultima Online the world was ruthless and with a real sense of loss on the line whenever you played, you grew attached to your character and goods. I've revisited Ultima Online thanks to the In Por Ylem Shard that recently opened. And letme sum up my experience in one picture:
If you're not really into MMORPGs, I hope you appreciate how "noble and shit" this song was.
I've been hooked on old MMO games and I totally should not be spending so much time with them. They're just horrible horrible time sinks. I'll go into depth with Ultima Online and Final Fantasy XI sometime when I have a clear head but just know I have a good reason I'm playing these versus other recent games such as World of Warcraft or Rift or Lord of the Rings Online or ....etc.
Today I've got THE GODDAMN BATMAN! I will admit that I've never even beaten one level of this game, but I have played level 1 many times! This music is the sole reason I picked it up and tried it out. The stage 1 music just builds up so nicely with a nice drum intro, works into a catchy melody, starts to get intense as the song closes, and finishes up with great energy! It really added a great atmosphere for me as I feel like THE GODDAMN BATMAN punching flame thrower dudes, floor cleaning robots, and random dude that runs into you! And oh man the jumping controls are spot on with it's great wall jumps. I'm completely reminded of how well Super Meat Boy did its wall jumps and Batman is definitely one of those games that has awesome wall jumping experience unlike SOME games *coughMetroidcough*.
Today I went to attend Amy's Wedding! She got married today at around 1:00pm PST! Congratulations and I hope you and your husband will have many happy years together! If you want to congratulate her, head on over to her blog and just wish her a happy future. She'd really appreciate a sudden surge to her blog as well since she's relatively new! I don't want to post pictures until she approves, so just believe me! I was there, she's married, go congratulate her!
I'm STUNNED at the low casualty numbers for Japan's 8.9 earthquake. News sources say that their ultra strict building standards probably saved many lives. Haiti's 7.0 quake killed (I think) 220,000 to put that in perspective and Japan will be predicted to have lost just over 1,000 with its' 8.9 earthquake. Friggin' engineers and building policy writers definitely deserve from praise for preemptively saving a TON of people. If you haven't heard of all this, I've been keeping tabs on Aljazeera livestream news for updates and information.
The Ninja Gaiden series of games is pure evil. The level designers of these games must have been masochists to design such sadistic set pieces. Each enemy, platform, pitfall, and obstacle were precariously placed to ensure maximum frustration. This was an era where you got your $50 money's worth from mastering a handful of ridiculously hard levels and Ninja Gaiden was the king of such level designs back in 1990. If you were a souless robot, you could beat such a difficult game in about 15 minutes but of course it took normal humans many many more hours to master it. Many controllers were probably broken by pure rage form this game but those than persevered through the game were treated to entire animated cutscenes and a involving plotline which was an amazing feat. It was one of the first games to involve ANY story on the NES! Most NES games were as simple as "you are this guy, you want to kill this guy, GO!". In Ninja Gaiden it was "You are Ryu Hayabusa, you want Ashtar dead, GO!" but with supporting characters, a love interest, sacrifices, and plot twists! Sure it's no novel, but it was a novel idea for a video game at the time.
The point is this was a difficult but rewarding game that featured a ROCKING soundtrack. The only problem with the music is that it rocks SO hard it messes up my playstyle. If you want any possibility of beating this game you need patience, but it's so hard to stand around to survey situations with such bumping tunes! I had a hard time picking a track from Ninja Gaiden II specifically...that is until I found out about The Nintendo Drummer's Youtube page. He did an amazing job covering the drums that I felt no need to include the original NES version of the song as his drums take nothing away from the original song but add new life to it. I encourage you to check out his youtube page. He's done 16 drum covers for NES games and I'll definitely bring him back into my blog again! Enjoy Ninja Gaiden 2's music taken from Act 2 Scene 2 covered by The Nintendo Drummer!
I'd hate to impose more of my chiptune music on you, but I really love it. Rushjet1's best works are on par with Anamanaguchi's pieces, but Rushjet opts to go fully digital. Rushjet was one of my first dives into chiptunes (not including video game music itself). Though he has not arranged any albums since 2008, he still has an active youtube account where you can find his various scraps of experimentation. Give a listen and tell me if it grinds you gears or tickles your pickle!
My next project will be a fairly simple one. The only problem I have now is finding time to stitch it. I kinda got hooked on Civilization 5, Rift, and FFXI all at once so I have more meaningless timesinks than I would like...But here's the idea.
First of all I'd like to thank Riot Patch of Pixels blog for giving me the idea for stitching on a bib! Thanks. You're much more talented at this stuff than I am! So here's a tiny preview of the subject of this stitch:
I plan to have a few baby yoshi's stitch on a baby bib for a friend's future bouncing baby! I'm pretty excited for her! I just wish I didn't have to buy the bib pre-made, it kinda makes me feel crappy since I might've been able to make a small bib myself, but I'm not comfortable doing so.
I'm the master of old content, so today I have you a mashup of Starcraft and Justin Bieber! It's like hot chocolate and fresh sewage, like a pair of snug slippers and foot fungus, like Jack Daniels and Vicodin! They go so well together! Okay I lie, but I still love this song. If you don't understand Justin Bieber OR Starcraft, you might want to pass on the video.
I'm not sure why I started on stitchin Lyn; I have no real connection to Fire Emblem, so I kinda just suddenly stopped. I'll finish her someday. I know it's lame especially since I only have like 30 stitches left haha, I just don't want to dig through my colors just to mess up her skin color. Anyway, Here's the last image of her stitch before I put her away for a while along with a video of her animation in action. It looks so sleek!
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Youtube does NOT do this game justice. It does not capture all 60 Frames per second, so some of the very fast animation frames are not shown here. If you look closely at 0:11, you'll see the frame I captured in the stitch though.
To be honest Donkey Kong Country series was not my cup of tea. It was a straightforward platforming game released as one of the first SNES games and it featured some crazy (for the time) pre-rendered photo realistic graphics. It was enough to make it an awesome game, but it has not aged too well gameplay wise. It's just really simple; a bit too simple for me. I think it's partly because I never got to play SNES games until I found out about emulation and by that time I was spoiled by more modern games like PS1 and N64 stuff. TLDR: I don't quite hold DKC series on such high pedastals as others might, but I love the one song from the series in particular..
Stickerbrush Symphony.
And the readers that follow me and played DKC2 will all go "OMG YES, THAT SONG" in unison because it is that powerful of a song. DKC2 has some good songs, but this definitely takes the gold medal hands down. It is relaxing, soothing, and it has a mysterious tone to it. I really hope you give this a listen if you're having a bad day as it might make the rest of your day pretty mellow.
Mike Tyson's Punch Out on NES was a fun game. It was a huge smash hit for me, but it was a great game for its time. It required fast reflexes, observations of (sometimes) subtle clues, and an iron will to truly beat in one sitting. The game allowed you to block, dodge to two sides, punch in two directions, and super punch. The controls were simple but to beat the game took some skill. Aside from how tough the game can, it was a great game! Today I'd like to give you three versions of the Punch-Out music:
The Original NES!
And the Nintendo Wii Remake!
I definitely love the remade version so much more. I have a soft spot for strong trumpets which explains my weird binges of Ska music. Anyway, I'm out for today. Tell me which version you like most, Original or Remade.
P.S. Yes, there was a SNES "Super Punch Out" Game. Quite frankly the game was mediocre and the music was not as iconic as the original NES music.
P.P.S. How did they not remake the training song for the wii game?! HOW? It must be in the Wii game, it MUST BE...my google-fu is not strong enough. 20 virgins to the first person to give me this Wii remade music!
