BGM Select Episode 4: Space Western Melancholy

mrtoffee — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 10:53:33 +0000

Holiday and other obligations kept me from finishing this episode three weeks ago. Better late than never, I suppose. I think I’ll just turn BGM Select into a monthly thing from now on. Having said all that, I’m especially proud of the music selection here. Hope you like!

Music On This Week’s Podcast:

Track: Terran 03

Artist: Glenn Stafford, Derek Duke, Russell Brower, Neal Acree

Get Album From: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Collector’s Edition (Music CD Inside)

Track: Stage 1, Stage 4

Artist: T’s Music

Get Album From: N/A

Track: Pass Through The Forest
Artist: Junya Nakano

Get Album From: Amazon.com

Track: Rare Respite

Artist: Pat Burns

Get Album From: dkc2.ocremix.org

Track: Colony 9

Artist: Yoko Shimomura

Get Album From: Play-Asia.com

Track: Far Away

Artist: Jose Gonzalez

Get Album From: Amazon.com (US$5 Offer Limited)

BGM Select Episode 3 – Ragtime Hornet Bloodlines

mrtoffee — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 16:51:50 +0000

What the title said. Episode 3. Videogame music podcast. Super Mario World remix. Xenogears. Hope you like!

BGM Select Ep 3_Ragtime Hornet Bloodlines

Music On This Week’s Podcast:

Track: Welcome Theme, Main Theme, Theme Ragtime, Course Clear!

Artist: Jason “xoc” Cox

Get Album At: xocmusic.com

Track: Hornet Dance

Artist: III

Get Album At: play-asia.com

Track: Cogs In Motion

Artist: Jared Emerson-Johnson

Get Album At: Telltale Games Store

Track: Hamalayi

Artist: Phil Vachey

Get Album At: N/A

Track: Theme of Simon

Artist: Michiru Yamane

Get Album At: Amazon.co.jp (bundled under Dracula X: Chi No Rondo OST)

Track: Spring Lullaby

Artist: Yasunori Mitsuda, Millenial Fair

Get Album At: Amazon.com or eBay

…..And Here’s Episode 2!

mrtoffee — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 16:48:14 +0000

So yeah, For Great Justice will be the new home for BGM Select. Bonus: I’m much livelier here.

BGM Select Episode 2 (download link)

Show notes are as follows:

Welcome to another new episode of BGM Select. Figured I’d add in more Western composers in the mix. I think I’ve covered a lot of styles for this one, from baroque-like symphonies to orchestra-level leit motifs you find in Hollywood movies. Audio for my voice is steadfastingly improving, though I’ll need to record in a studio-like environment if I hope to keep this up.

Music played in podcast:

1. Nate’s Theme 2.0, The City’s Secret – Uncharted 2 OST

2. Speed of Light, Go! – Mr. Driller: Driller Land

3. You Won’t Get With Me Tonight – Weezer – The 8-Bit Album (get the whole album for free at ptesquad.com)

4. Sailing On The Wind – Flower OST

5. Stickerbush Symphony – Donkey Kong Country 2 OST

6. Late Goodbye (Instrumental) – Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

Lastly, all music is copyrighted by their respective composers and owners. Once again, hope you enjoy this first of many episodes and do give your constructive feedback on what songs to add for future episodes, the overall podcast format, and whatnot. Come back next week for another new episode.

Email (for praises/damnations/requests)- jonleo.65@gmail.com

Twitter (for praises/damnations/requests)- MrToffee

A Brand New Post, Introducing BGM Select Episode 1!

mrtoffee — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 16:20:13 +0000

Here we are, after a shitload of months. I’m back, and ready to show off something:

BGM Select Ep 01_Redone (download link)

Show notes after the break.

Welcome to BGM Select, where I compile the best of videogame music, new and old, for all to listen in a handy-dandy podcast. From the most popular and current of scores to even the most obscure retro-crafted composition, this podcast aims to give listeners some culture and something nice to listen to on their music-playing device of choice.

Here’s the music played in the podcast:

1. Sagat Theme – Street Fighter Tribute Album

2. Low Pursuit – Double Dragon II: The Revenge Arranged NES Soundtrack

3. Change – The Last Blade Arrange Soundtrack

4. Fighting In The Street - Streets of Rage

5. Snake Eater – Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater OST/Super Smash Bros. Brawl OST

How To Start A Hit Blog In Five Easy Steps

mrtoffee — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:17:48 +0000

So, I bet you’re wondering, “Gee, I wonder how I can earn money from posting my witty ramblings about a certain subject matter most dear to me?” Why, you start an online blog, of course. With WordPress and Blogspot taking in up-and-coming writing starlets like how a toilet takes a business of a guy who finished wolfing down five fast food cheeseburgers with a side of Ex-Lax, anyone can start a blog and clog up the internet with their many words of wisdom that no one really asked for.

But you have ambition. You want to transcend beyond a mere peon just spouting inane verses and poems that would make even Anne Rice wince in pain. Luckily, as a fellow writer who posts regularly on GameAxis.com because lord knows I have nothing better to do in the office, I’m here to offer whatever vestigial knowledge I have gathered throughout my experience:

i) Learn to write well and be funny: And by writing well and being funny, I don’t mean the less-important stuff like spellchecking, grammar, telling a humorous real-life anecdote and setting it up into a good punchline, or just being honest and true to yourself and your readers.

No sirree bob, I’m talking about using internet lingo and catchphrases from memes and pop culture items. Using strings of said words without any form of context or setup instantly makes you relate to your audience. Take whatever meme is hot right now and drill it hard until it’s worn out like how Peter North would to his co-stars in his videos.

While you’re at it, why not disguise your lack of creative writing by inserting purposeless alliterations and puns. Yes, that’s sure to get everyone’s attention, especially if you announce on the front of your blog that you intend to use puns as your default writing style. Also, writing in such a way that you might come off as portraying a stereotype of your audience helps. Case in point: if you happen to be a blogger in Singapore, throw in Singlish slangs such as “lor”, “pai sei”, “sabo”, and other such nonsensical words so that you come off as relating to your target readers. Sure, you might come off as patronizing and demeaning to a few people, but they’re not the imbeciles you’re catering to, are they?

ii) Use pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. If you somehow lack the brain cells and wit to form a cohesive sentence, use pictures to either show off trivial events of your life and the food you just ordered under bad lighting conditions, the pointless material objects that you spent at an exorbitant price, or one of your vacation trips of you and your friends as you mimic stances from Asianposes.com .

Don’t bother getting lessons from any professional photographer and just snap away with whatever consumer-level camera you have. Ignore silly little conventions like rule of thirds or knowing how to tweak your shutter speed and apertures correctly and just snap away. Yes, many people will buy the fact that all your blurry and misplaced angle shots are just done purpose.

Better yet, start putting captions and sprinkly Hello Kitty pink stars and fairy dust on your Kodak moments. Make sure it’s totally loaded on the “kawaii” factor on a nauseating level so that it hides the fact that your words aren’t worth squat. Also, when you’re at a public place where at least one person among the crowd is willing to take a few seconds of his or her time to take a photo of you and a friend of yours, do refrain from doing so and stretch out your hand to take that photo yourself, MySpace/Facebook/whatever-social-contact-application-you’re-using-right-now-style.

iii) Pick the right topic and act like you know it all. You can’t have a blog unless you pick a template for your blog. What do you wish to talk about, even though you have no idea what you’re dealing with or know how to express it? Well, here’s a few popular templates you can follow:

Food & Tech/Gaming: The most common one. Suppose you play games a lot and have an affinity for tech, and also have a passion to write, but somehow don’t bother to improve your skills to the point that you get numerous rejections from respected publishing houses because you believe that the difference between “its” and “it’s” isn’t important and you also insist on writing long and detailed reviews when clearly the magazine you’re trying to apply for has a word cap. Let’s say you also have that same passion with food, except your culinary tastes don’t go far beyond spending more than S$10 and categorizing middle-class Japanese restaurants with $10-20 dollar set meals as “fine dining”. Then by all means, use the commonly-used Food & Gaming template.

Seriously, who needs actual food connoisseurs, professional chefs, and videogame critics and reviewers when people who have nothing better to do while toiling in their dull day job can look to you for advice on food and your enthusiasm on games? No need to take interesting spins on a food/gaming blog like Insanewich.com or Bitmob.com; just type and spout away. Bonus points for also placing yourself in the shoes of a PR/marketing person and do a top ten/twenty list on how they should do their job when clearly you don’t actually know how it works.

Fashion: You happen to shop a lot and wish to show off all the branded goods and trinkets you bought off in a sale to the whole world. Yet at the same time, you can’t complete writing a sentence without adding in slang and weird fragments that would make an English Major professor gag and choke on his own vomit. The Fashion template is perfect for you: upload as many god-forsaken pictures of your Prada bags and necklaces in different positions and list down the few reasons why you like it and how you would bring it along outside everyday and showing it off because the copious amount of material possessions you own and show off is what help you compensate for your lack of personality.

Your Own Life, And The Clubs You Frequent: Unfortunately, this template only applies to those people with Aryan-esque physique; sorry, fat and/or ugly bloggers. Take pictures of your beautiful self, and if you don’t happen to be rated above a 7 out of 10 among random commenters and peers in terms of looks, take those pics with your uglier friend(s) to help boost your hits. Don’t be too surprised if any picture-heavy post involving you dressed up in something that would make a nun and/or priest forsake her/his vow of chastity get the most hits, or somehow end up as a proxy pic for an adult online dating service ad.

iv) Pimp your blog. You won’t get far if you act on your accord. Even the most talentless of hackjobs can get away with recycling press releases and inserting their own two cents like they mean anything if they have the right advertisers. Every marketing and PR schlub is looking for a piece of that blogging pie to promote their wares, and what better way for them to do it and hire you for the low, low cost of nothing? Technically, they’ll be handing out their wares for the unwritten exchange of positive feedback and plastering your blog with ads showing off your unshakable allegiance to the brand, but in this day and age, no one turns down free stuff.

You should make it a habit at turning your nose away from trivial principles like editorial integrity or have aspirations to write in a respected publication because, according to you, “these so-called writers don’t get it”. Why concern yourself with that when you have free lunches/dinners, products, and other benefits that end up giving you that sense of obligation to make you write nothing but good things about the company giving them to you?

v) Spam like no tomorrow. I can’t stress how important this is. Use whatever social network feeds you have to acknowledge the existence of your up-and-coming blog. Friends, families, forums, people you don’t know, anything to make sure that you’re relevant. The best way is to make a habit of posting feeds of whatever unnecessary bit of news you have to share every minute of the day, whether it’s relevant to your blog or not.

Don’t be obliged to take a day off for fear of making people who follow your newsfeed unsubscribe from your social network page because you have no common decency and are very obnoxious with your feeds. Persistence is key in coming off on top of the blogverse; like how the cockroach survived from the Prehistoric Era until today.

Now that you have all those five steps mastered, you can now take your blog to new heights and proceed to throw it out into the trash along with whatever’s left of the dry well you call your creativity, you witless, miserable fuck. Leave the real writing to those who actually worked day and night for it.

It’s Been 2 Months…

mrtoffee — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:35:00 +0000

…since an update. I guess it’s true that Twitter makes us lazier blog posters. As technology improves, conversely our will to bring out updates and news also speeds up dramatically.

Anyway, follow me here. http://twitter.com/MrToffee

- On the bright side, there’s a Rocket Knight remake in the works in 2010, Borderlands making its way next week, and my wallet running dry soon thanks to Brutal Legend, Uncharted 2, and even Bayonetta (Japanese version; US version’s next year). Oh yeah, nothing like a librarian chick with weapons formed from her hair to put the awesomeness and sensuality in videogames.

- Why isn’t (500) Days of Summer and Away We Go not showing here? Still, that’s what livestreaming on the net is for.

The Wonderful Thing About Gamers Here….

mrtoffee — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:24:34 +0000

…is that they don’t seem appreciative of the local media. Even with my peeps slogging their butts off at Blizzcon and Gamescon, and with me doing coverage on this year’s E3, there’s no real mention of us on our local forums.

I guess part of the fault lies at us not plugging our content hard enough, but c’mon: we’re trying damn hard here! We’re not 1up/gamepro/any other really big gaming website media hub; we can’t get stuff a few weeks in advance unless it’s something from a big publisher in the local firm. If you happen to be one of those who start mocking us because we sit on our asses all day and give hand-out reviews or “sell-out” or some nonsense like that, then I guess Emoboy is right calling you all out with his “Why Singapore Stinks” write-up here.

Having said that; for those who at least come up to us and say “hi” while we’re doing work or just mucking about pretending to do work, we appreciate it a lot. Thanks! See, I’m all not just about bottled-up angst.

- I’ll have to get the Summer Games feature thing wrapped up on GameAxis soon enough. In the meantime, have some Batman retro-talking.

- I found a new stray around the neighborhood. He/she is black-colored with patches of white on its underside. I shall name it Heaven & Hell. Symbolistic naming at its finest!

- Movie-night followed by Brewerkz on Saturday was fun. Note to self: bring radio to tune in to these outdoor viewings next time.

- Games on tap: Shadow Complex (finished), Arkham Asylum (finished, now on Hard), Tales of Monkey Island Episode 2 (still in progress due to lab computer borking), Prof. Layton & The Diabolical Box (gonna continue at work tomorrow).

Batman: Arkham Asylum……….

mrtoffee — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:19:33 +0000

….. all I can say is that I’m loving it. Great comic feel, great graphics, and great representation of how a Batman game should be like.

Also, the Marble Slab is in Singapore. I haven’t been to that particular outlet, but my love of slab-created ice cream started from the Marble Slab in Vancouver. If you wish to get your sugar overload, I’d suggest going there; the one in Singapore’s located at Iluma.

Who Knew…

mrtoffee — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:32:05 +0000

…that there’s a comic that kinda speaks to me?

http://www.drearyweary.com/TheResidentTourist/index.php?showimage=48

In this case, replace “Galaga 88″ with “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Arcade Game”, and that’s pretty much a recreation of my past in black and white format.

For Those Who Attended The KOF XII Thingy Last Thursday….

mrtoffee — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 07:58:58 +0000

..you guys are most awesomest! No, that’s not a real word, but you know what I mean. Thanks for coming and putting up with my nonchalant emceeing abilities (or lack thereof). And playing the game too.