Substance TV

As a lover of chiptune music combining itself with other genres that make very little sense, I was really excited when I found out about The Depreciation Guild. I was then immediately saddened when I found out that they had disbanded early last year, with their second album having come out mid-2010. The Depreciation Guild started out as a chiptune shoegaze band, mixing elements of My Bloody Valentine texture with the chirps and beeps of a Game Boy. By the time their second album was released, the chiptune element had been reduced to some melodies here and there, mostly for texture to blend with the My Bloody Valentine-style guitar.

For the uninformed, shoegaze is a musical genre built around the idea of using fuzzy guitars as texture. Vocals are often a bit lower in the mix, and the result is usually a wall of noise that you can just get lost inside of. Truthfully, it’s usually a love-it-or-hate-it kind of genre, and for that I can understand people not being into it. That being said, The Depreciation Guild was a band that sounded like Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine and Bobby Wratten of The Field Mice / Trembling Blue Stars got together to play video games. If that means anything to you, you’re in for a treat. If you love spacey guitar and 8-bit bleep bloops, you’re also in for something special.

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If you have ever put any time into a Nintendo title the name Koji Kondo is one I am sure you are familiar with. As Nintendo’s star composor he has helped score some of the most prolific titles Nintendo has ever created including nearly all of the Mario and Zelda titles. His style is very identifiable and upon hearing any of his more popular songs instantly creates nostalgia.

Today, however, we are going to talk about my favorite Nintendo Composer; the ever-talented Kazumi Totaka. While the name may not immediately ring a bell you have probably found yourself bobbing along with some of his awesome soundtracks.

His compositions are very unique featuring a more diverse and unconventional set of instruments. His sound also has an almost elevator music quality which is probably why they got him to do many of the themes for the Wii and 3DS menus as well.

The more interesting story of Totaka lies in his signature in nearly all of his games. Hiding somewhere, sometimes deep within his games, is a 19 note song known as “Kazumi Totaka’s Song”. Usually after waiting a predetermined amount of time during a specific song the music will fade and the little jingle will start. We will now take a moment to highlight some of the more common occurrences of the song. First up is Mario Paint.

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Living in an age of crappy movie remakes is enough to make anyone nervous. So when they announced a reimagining of the 90′s cyber punk hit Total Recall, I was certainly one of the first in a long line of skeptics. Last week saw the release of an all new trailer that has actually received positive reception, and while I find it entirely too soon to remake this franchise, even I found trailer to be pretty dang cool.

The Total Recall story follows the story of Douglas Quaid(Collin Farrel),  a blue collar worker looking for a little excitement. When he discovers the company Rekall has developed a method of artificially implanting memories, he visits them with hopes of spicing up his life. After what appears to be a horribly botched job, Douglas finds himself rapped up in an incredible story all the while trying to piece together what is real and what is not.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA-18LuLDEQ[/youtube]

Tell us how you feel about the new trailer, or remakes in general in the comments below!

-ChuckyB

Total Recall starring Collin Farrel, Jessica Biel, Kate Beckinsale, and Bryan Cranston is set to release August 3 2012

We start this issue off with a little news of our own. Substance TV is proud to welcome Shawn Murphy and Brandon Dickerson to the crew and we answer your questions about these fine lads.

In our main topic we address the dark side of video game reviews. From accusations of reviewers being fired for not giving a game a positive score, publishers bribing reviewers to give better scores, or developer’s pay determined by Metacritic scores, we look at what happens when video game reviews go bad.

Reviewers and gamers alike are complaining about the awkward controls of Nintendo’s newest 3DS title Kid Icarus Uprising. We get to the bottom of all this fuss and take an in depth look at the control options available for Kid Icarus Uprising. No stone is left unturned in the quest to find out the truth behind the drama. While the controls are certainly not perfect, the robust controls options allow for a level of customization rarely seen in video games today. Watch the video and see for yourself!

Eight bit chiptune music can usually broken down into two categories: The kind that is exclusively built around the limits of eight bit gaming hardware, and the kind that uses it as a starting point. Protodome firmly falls into the latter, using the limited hardware of the Nintendo Game Boy as a jumping off point for his own mix of piano jazz and chiptune pop music. Being a fan of all of these things, I love to see them combined into one cohesive unit. With a name like Protodome, I initially expected something dark and dreary, similar to its gaming heritage from which it drew its name, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that wasn’t the case.

Many of the songs build around an electric piano having a “dialogue” with the bleeps and bloops of a Game Boy, with an occasional saxophone added in to liven things up. It works in a way very similar to a traditional four piece jazz ensemble.  The result is a chirpy mix of sounds that best reminds me of some of the cheerier musical numbers by Shoji Meguro of Shin Megami Tensei / Persona fame. Protodome does a great job of mixing all of these sounds, and you can’t help but feel a little happier after listening to it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sR-uXXBtUo[/youtube]

Protodome currently has two albums for download on his Bandcamp page, available on a “pay what you want” basis. His newest album, BLUESCREEN, came out in December of 2011, and I can’t recommend it enough.

- Brandon