Thursday, January 27, 2011

Mario Paint Composer Music is Swell

Okay, I found these videos a while back, and I'd thought I'd share the finally tuned love. I have never tried Mario Paint Composer, but even if I had, I don't think I could ever redo Zelda songs, or any other for that matter. Kudos to all who have!

Note: For fun, watch these two videos and see if you can guess the song names and which game the music is from. (Personally, I did better on the Zelda one.)


                               Can you name each Zelda song?


                 Have you played each game featured in this video?

Friday, January 21, 2011

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective - First Impressions

Image taken from GameSpot

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective arrived faithfully at my door a day ago, and since then my fingers have been feeling rather wane and cramped, from the hurt of extended button poking and stylus holding. Or maybe it’s ‘cause outside it’s -30°C and I need to wear a parka in my house to stay warm.

I have to say right off the bat, that there may be a bit of bias in my love of Ghost Trick, as the Ace Attorney series is one of my favourites (both games created by Shu Takumi). But having gone through preliminaries, I can see how someone can like Ace Attorney and not Ghost Trick or vice versa. Game play is very different between the two games, Ghost Trick relying on physics, object manipulation, and mapping out a series of events in a short amount of time – while Ace Attorney is all about detective work, interrogations, and courtroom drama. But the fundamentals that made Ace Attorney so well liked such as hilarious dialogue, off-beat characters, and winding plot twists, haven’t missed a mark in Ghost Trick.

Suit-dude, Lynne, Sissel, and Kamila. You wish you had their hair.

Ghost Trick follows a man named Sissel, who recently died, and his journey to unravel the mystery behind his death. On his quest for truth, Sissel learns that he can interact with the dead and go back four minutes in time to try and stop their usually humorous and tragic deaths. He does this by going between the Land of the Living and the Ghost World, where time stands still and he can manipulate inanimate objects, and prevent unfortunate demises.

I haven’t finished the game yet, but from what I’ve played, the game has been excellent. The puzzles that you have to solve go from easy hard, but never brain-exploding hard. There is also a wonderful rewind feature in the game that lets Sissel replay a puzzle as many times as he has to until he solves the puzzle – with no penalties (that I know of so far).

As of right now, I’d totally recommend people checking this game out, especially adventure and puzzle game fans. So go forth and buy people! And while you’re at it, can you buy me a heater?

Friday, January 14, 2011

Manga Mad - Video/Short Documentary

Sorry that my blog has been dead as of lately all. During winter break I went into hibernation and it has been hard to get back into the blogging sphere. I hope to write up something on Hotel Dusk: Room 215 soon... and since those words have now been etched into blog-stone, I have to hold myself to it!

Meanwhile, here is a short and interesting documentary called Manga Mad, which is about manga in Japan, and its impact on Japanese culture. Some of the subtitles made me go :/ but overall it was a fascinating video that I would recommend people to watch - especially manga beginners (and it's free to watch on YouTube. Which makes everyone happy in this age). And if you're an offical manga guru/otaku, it’s worth watching for the images of Japan alone.

If you ever wanted to know what manga is, but didn't have a clue where to start, check this out. You'll learn something.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Pseudo-Events - Flash Mobs - A Time to Sing Cheer

Pseudo-events are publicity stunts organized to get people to talk about said organization or person. One of the more popular and larger based pseudo-events is a flash mob. Flash mobs are when a group of people get together and organize a large-scale event that will surprise other people who are not involved. Many flash mobs take place in a mall for promotion, ergo to impress mall-goers.

If you've been living in Canada for even nary a year, you'll have heard of the Christmas Food Court Flash Mob that took place in Ontario. The flash mob was created for promotion of Alphabet Photography (a store in The Welland Seaway Mall), as well as a video card to clients. The idea came from its owner Jennifer Blakeley. She contacted Chorus Niagara to help with her idea, and with support from Seaway mall president Mike Belcastro, set the mob in motion.

On November 13, 2010 Chorus Niagara broke out singing Hallelujah in the mall's food court to the surprise and wonderment of its shoppers. Alphabet Photography uploaded the video days later and it has become and instant YouTube success with close to 30 million views.

With millions of people viewing the video, I can guess that business for Seaway mall and Alphabet Photography has gone up. Having the video released for Christmas was a genius idea as that's when families get together and want to share sweet and interesting holiday videos with each other - a cluster of people singing Hallelujah in a mall filling that void. The video going viral was also helped by news stations like CBC or the BBC picking up the story, the video spreading like wildfire throughout Canada, the US, and some places in Europe.

Alphabet Photography successfully achieved great PR and created a pseudo-event that will be remembered through continuous viral footage and word of mouth.



For more flash mobs, check out Top 7 Flash Mobs Of All Time, where businesses like T-Mobile get on the bandwagon and flash dance to a compilation of songs.