Koo-pa-pa Troop-pa-pa Thats How it Goes?

Koopa Trooper beams are gonna blind me. But I won't feel blue. Like I always do. 'Cause somewhere in the crowd there's you.


I was sick and tired of everything when I called you last night from Glasgow. All I do is eat and sleep and sing. Wishing every show was the last show. (Wishing every show was the last show). So imagine I was glad to hear you're coming. (Glad to hear you're coming). Suddenly I feel all right (and suddenly it's gonna be)and it's gonna be so different. When I'm on the stage tonight.

Tonight the Koopa Trooper lights are gonna find me. Shining like the sun. (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per)Smiling, having fun (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per). Feeling like a number one
Tonight the Koopa Trooper beams are gonna blind me but I won't feel blue (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per). Like I always do (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per). 'Cause somewhere in the crowd there's you.



Tonight the Koopa Trooper lights are gonna find me. Shining like the sun. (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per)Smiling, having fun (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per). Feeling like a number one
Tonight the Koopa Trooper beams are gonna blind me but I won't feel blue (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per). Like I always do (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per). 'Cause somewhere in the crowd there's you.
Facing twenty thousand of your friends. How can anyone be so lonely? Part of a success that never ends. Still I'm thinking about you only(Still I'm thinking about you only). There are moments when I think I'm going crazy (Think I'm going crazy). But it's gonna be alright (You'll soon be changing everything). Everything will be so different. When I'm on the stage tonight



Tonight the Koopa Trooper lights are gonna find me. Shining like the sun. (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per)Smiling, having fun (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per). Feeling like a number one
Tonight the Koopa Trooper beams are gonna blind me but I won't feel blue (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per). Like I always do (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per). 'Cause somewhere in the crowd there's you.
So I'll be there when you arrive. The sight of you will prove to me I'm still alive.
And when you take me in your arms and hold me tight I know it's gonna mean so much tonight.

Tonight the Koopa Trooper lights are gonna find me. Shining like the sun. (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per)Smiling, having fun (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per). Feeling like a number one
Tonight the Koopa Trooper beams are gonna blind me but I won't feel blue (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per). Like I always do (Koop-p-pa Troop-p-per). 'Cause somewhere in the crowd there's you.

Games on Display

Our glorious hobby is now so almost mainstream that it is time to give it up and complain how it was better back in the day before it got popular and spolied. Last week I couldn't sleep so ended up watching people trying to sell a Wii on one of the shopping channels. A year ago I would have smirked and sniggered my way through it as the orange hosts said the names of games wrong or struggled with the controls. Sadly it turns out the presentation was almost flawless and at one point the male orange went on a tangent about Super Star Wars and Metroid. I died a bit inside.

But shopping channels, TV shows, proper adverts aside you know that gamin has made it big when Museums put on exhibitions all about gaming. Museums are the vanguard of culture and no matter how great you thought your latest tweet was in 50 years time if it ain't in the museum then nobody will know about it. In recent years there have been a number of gaming exhibitions. Some good a la Science Museums' Game On, some experimental like the http gallery and some tangential like the Design museum exhibition a few years back.

But with rare exception the exhibitions always seem to boil down to putting consoles, peripherals and game boxes under a glass case with a boring label. A streaming video here and there if you are lucky. It doesn't make sense. You wouldn't go to a painting exhibition to see the brushes, rags and frames that were used in making great paintings and so it seems bizarre to portray the very interactive gaming through displaying a bunch of not very interactive boxes and plastic things. This is largely because these exhibitions are put on by museum people who love games and static displays is what they know. Alternatively, the people on the gaming side of things are so chuffed to be included in a museum that they don't even think to shake up the paradigm.

Game On was a great exhibition in that you could play most of the games but does a five minute hands on with Beneath a Steel Sky really portray why it was so great? How do recapture and communicate the excitement surrounding games if you display them without context next to a bunch of other games. Yes, you may get a sense of progression if you play Wolfenstein, then Medal of Honor then Halo 3 but is that really all we want to communicate?

TGAM don't do museum gaming exhibitions but here's what we would do if we did:

1) Get the Photoshop Phriday guys from Something Awful to do all the artwork both in the exhibition and on all the publicity. The gaming related Phridays really push the boundaries are demanding of the audience and have some laugh out loud in jokes. So what if the mainstream audience won't get it, snobbery is part of culture. Just look at Art galleries.

2) Okay so getting people to play through FFVII isn't going to happen in a gallery and streaming a video is even worse. I'd organise a series of events where you watch someone play through a game live. Could be boring but if you made it competitive or had the game makers on hand for a live commentary then I would go and see that shit and hopeful will have learned something too.

3) Bring in the critics. Some of the top Art critics are recluse semi-legends whose words appear only in the glossiest magazines. Gamings best critics all write freely available on the internet and out of love. I'd get them all in and do a series of events around them and their stories about games. With no thought at all we've got desert island games, my first game, the game that blew me away and who wouldn't want to see Wright, Gillen or Bartle wax lyrical in front of an audience?

4) If you are going to have boxart around I'd get the best people to interpret it.

5) Never ever display a peripheral without having one that people can have a go with.

6) Probably at the end of the exhibition we'd have a thing about how we as a people aren't preserving gaming heritage at all. Related to 1) most of the people responsible for gaming as a thing are still alive today. We have a unique opportunity to get almost 100% historical evidence and coverage of gaming yet how many of these people's stories have been recorded or written? We need to fight for our gaming heritage.

7) The Art of Games or some such, bring back the guys responsible for the most iconic images and memories of gaming. That Megaman box art, that Tetris tune, that little yellow circle who ate the smaller circles. Bring in some people who know about media to talk about why gaming in the mass consciousness still = plinky plonky chips tunes and laser zapping despite modern gaming rivalling film in terms of depicting and exploring hyper realism through to abstractness.

8) Get someone to ape this image:

By filling a real room with recognizable items from gaming past and present. We all love those images where you have to spot all the game references so by making a museum of imaginary objects real. Well we are doing something special I just don't know what it is.

So there we have it. Just a few ideas from TGAM. If you are thinking about putting on a gaming exhibition please don't do the tried and tested styles of display because that is lazy and misses the point.

P.S We're free for some free consultancy work and anything else actually at the moment.

Agatha Christie's And then there were none..

For the Wii.Thoughts in roughly chronological order:

I love Agatha Christie. She was genius, I hope Nintendo release a 100 Agatha Christie books on the DS. That would be sweet.
Oh shit man murder mystery.
Who is gonna die first?
Sailor Boys indeed.
It's the Butler.
Cheese? What do I do with cheese?
I hope nobody notices I am stealing everything from this house.
It's Vera.
Vera is hot.
Glad I didn't miss that.
It's Emily.
Blore sounds like 'Boner'
It's Boner.
Stupid Wiimote safe cracking.
GODDAM STUPID WIIMOTE SAFE CRACKING.
Oh, wrong code.
Goddam AWE and your crashes. Everygame.
And again.
And again.
I should save more.
It's the Judge!
WHY WON'T EARRING MIX WITH CHEESE?
Goats.
Goats like cheese?
Goats like apples?
Goats like honey?
Goats like buckets?
Goats like cocktail shakers?
Goats like books about bird watching?
What do goats like?
GODDAM AWE GLITCHES SHOULD SAVE MORE OFTEN.
Not a glitch actually.
It's the Doctor.
Goats like walking sticks?
Four little 'sailor' boys.
Gross dead bodies.
Not gonna use GameFaqs.
The Goats are hiding Bellman's Universal Embrocation?
Bellman's Universal Embrocation in a bathroom?
Is cheese used to make Bellman's Universal Embrocation?
I've fixed the radio, is Bellman's Universal Embrocation inside?
Used GameFaqs BY THE APIARY OF COURSE ON THE GRASS FOR NO REASON.
Where is everybody?
There's only four of us left why does everyone run off?
Now there is two.
The goats did it?
I love point and click adventures.
Oooh secret ending!
What was I supposed to do with the cheese?
Must read Agatha Christie books.
I miss point and click adventures.
8/10

XBL: Total Rip-off

Woah now, so last night saw the launch of some DLC (due for today, but we wont persecute MS's timekeeping). This DLC included the much anticipated additional Katamari content... with a hefty price tag. Each "new" zone to create a Katamari in was either 200 or 300 MS points, couple this with the new cousins and accessories. Each of the new zones is 384kb, for the non technologically savvy, there is no way that 384kb can be new content, it is simply a wee file that unlocks content that already exists on the disk. All in all this "new" content will set you back over 2000 MS Points (Nearly £20). Shocking.

Also on XBL last nigh the Muse Guitar Pack was up, costing 500 MS Points for a meaty 60mb download including 3 muse tracks. Much better.

Luv n' Hugs,

Richie X

For your Mrs.

Well she's got to do something whilst you amass over 25000 gamerpoints....

A Worthy Entry

But Dacav still has the title for best Tetris remix yet. This one is good, the vocals mix it up a bit but as with a lot of Electrance the repetitiveness kicks in. And your talking about Tetris in the first instance which isn't amazingly varied. It needed a bigger ramp up to. Possibly, the B game theme could have flitted in as a bonus for those able to mark subtle auditory mix ups.

Musing on Music

Video Game Music. The music of video games. Some of it is epic, some of it is very evocative and some of it is nausiating in the extreme. There are a lot of very active video game music "rearrangers", remixers and performers from the grand Video Games Lives concert, hit and miss OCremix, very raw soundclick to TGAM favourite Diversion (check the show every Thursday).

From the weaboist of obscure JRPG music to the new tunes of Portal a vast swathe of it is shit. It is, don't pretend otherwise. Do you remember in the 90s where every game had an American "ROCK" soundtrack? Instantly forgotten by the next loading screen.
And if video game music is mostly bad the remixes are even worse. The world does not need tinny electric guitar "rock" versions of the three notes in the chorus of the Hyrulian Field theme. There also seems to be a race to remix the dullest least memorable theme from the most obscure Japanese RPG. For god's sake just remix One Winged Angel, get it out of your system and move on fanboy.

What the world does need is more Tetris remixes. There are already a gazillion and they are all great. I have listened to most of them, happy hard core, flute versions, jumpstyle, techno, trance and combinations of all of those styles are available to the discerning listener. I have consumed them all but I am hungry for more.
Yesterday on a routine sweep of the internet for Tetris remixes I discovered the greatest version yet. This is a big claim, perhaps the biggest claim I ever made, perhaps this is my purpose, my destiny. This is why I was put here to find the greatest rearrangment of an old game. I don't know how it can be bettered though. Destiny fulfilled methinks!

So here it is, Tetris by DaCaV found over at Soundclick.

Click this to listen dacav+tetrisbydacav5.mp3

REVIEW It is great because it combines the music of Tetris with words! Some of those words are bottom and D-Cups. It also doesn't bother with trying to combine the Music A and Music B themes which others do. Don't get me wrong I like the B Music but the A music can stand on it's own two feet. C Music can fuck off. This song is also great because the lyrics talk about 'connecting like Tetris' the song then goes on about boobs and bums bouncing which this author wants from her Tetris remixes. 9.5/10

No Stairway?

Hey Kids,

I have been working on a little project, And its fucking Mental/Amazing! There's a little known site out there called Score Hero and well on the front i would guess it is a place for people out there to measure peoples scores/penis' against one and other create leagues against one and other generally, i suppose, it is just one of those "Online Community" sites. However this site hides a great and wondrous secret. In the forums section there is a sub-section called "Homebrew Projects" Now the tag line for this section is "Discussion about Guitar Mods, Wireless Projects". Where some of this may be true, Its not the golden Holy grail of this section,.Personally I am not bothered by some Stupid-faced loser defacing his limited edition 1972 Fender Expensocaster signed by Elvis and Modding it to be a guitar hero controller. No, the real Holy Grail is a forum sticky called "Idiot Proof Guide to playing custom made songs in GH2."

That's right in this Forum, there is a whole section devoted to getting other songs to be played in guitar hero! Yeah, and by "Other Songs" I don't mean your own, I mean honest to God, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Muse etc in Fucking guitar hero! And you know what, It fucking works! It fucking works. Admittedly you have to own a Modded PS2 (Modded with a Chip which allows Burned games, not Modded as in Some Stupid-faced loser who has added Neon lights and a cooling system to his PS2) but it fucking works. Check it out! It involves Some programs being installed, and also, someone out there who has been kind enough to create a file which contains all the info on where to hit the right notes for the songs, and a copy of the original track you want to put into Guitar hero.

It works! Comfortably Numb, Stairway to heaven, Knights of Cydonia!

Proper fucking Rock n' Roll!

Love and Hugs,

Richie