It seems that every blogger has the inevitable twitter entry.

You know, the one where they talk about how helpful twitter is for their business and marketing strategies! This could be “that” article, but instead I’m going to describe how I utilize twitter in my every day life.

So twitter is a microblogging service with an open API. Effectively, it’s a lot like a facebook status except much simpler. You can follow people, and you’ll get a huge timeline of all their messages. Originally, it was a simple live-blogging mechanism people would use commonly to say what they were doing at that exact moment. “Sitting on the toilet,” “About to cook lasagna”, and stuff like that. There’s still a lot of regular people, CEOs, and celebrities just posting their day-to-day routines. It’s a very slice of life atmosphere even still, for the most part.

However, the twitterverse has grown since those days. The API was made public, and then developers started to make their own programs centered around the basic twitter functions. So you can mass message and reach LOTS of people using twitter. So you’ll see lots of marketers who think they’re getting the word out, by having thousands of automated followers, and all that stuff.

I think it’s  really great way to socialize, meet new people, and get yourself out there. Furthermore, twitter seems like it’s being taken advantage of. Imagine it’s prom night, and your date is a little drunk. You slowly attempt to put your hand up her skirt, and she LETS you. That’s what twitter is becoming.

I want to meet real people on twitter. I don’t go there for people to cop a feel on me. It’s a great service, but I think sometimes it’s a little misguided. I love reading links, hearing about people’s day and all that, but sometimes it just feels like a huge infomercial and all that. I’ve met so many wonderful new people on twitter. How many people have I met on facebook? None. I usually know them before hand. How many people have I met on myspace? Ok, a couple…but that’s because that’s where I market my music. Everyone knows Myspace is a place for friends music.

While twitter is pretty simple, there are some good websites that I find pretty useful to go along with your twitter account. Tweet Manager is pretty good for all sorts of things. Whether you want to mass DM people, link your blog to your twitter, have auto-away messages, or auto-follow people — it’s all there. It’s a really nice tool to help you meet the people you want to meet, and automatically have you blog content posted to your twitter. I also tend to get good use out of Matt, which allows me to post the same message from multiple accounts. I have a few different twitter accounts. One for myself, one for Tokyo-Nights, and one for my now-defunct podcast. It really helps when you have different feeds, and you don’t feel like logging in every single time.

If you do happen to be a marketer of some kind, there are even automated ads you can put up on twitter. It’s called magpie, and it’s actually somewhat controversial. I’ve seen quite a few times when people will stop receiving your updates simply because you allow magpie to send ads through your account. It works just like every other ad service. Except, it’s not really click-based, it’s followers-based. The more followers you have, the more each ad is worth. People pump money into the magpie system to advertise their products, and then people allow those ads to show up as tweets (the twitter messages) on their page. I can understand the frustration. You go there to meet people, not to meet advertisements.

In general, it’s a pretty nice community. There’s lots of cool things going on. Sometimes you can browser search.twitter and find out information about events being gathered in your area, or just find who’s talking about your favorite actor. There’s awesome stuff like tweetbomb which is an organized “bombing” of someone’s twitter page. Tweetbomb chooses one of its followers (who willingly subjects himself to the bombing by adding tweetbomb) and effectively bombs them with several thousand @replys and follows. It’s sort of meant to shower a random individual with an astounding amount of messages and a lot of new followers. It seems to have worked with most people who have been “victims”. There’s also twittitt which is a google custom search webpage designed to have a similar graphical interface to twitter. So while it uses actual google search, it brings the simplicity of the twitter interface to you. There’s also 3 Twitterers of the Day, which is always a nice touch.

So yeah, I think twitter is a good place to reach people. If you want to make friends it’s great. If you need to market a product, it can work for that too (when used correctly). Should it be the only place? No! Of course not! No one website/interface/thing is going to be the true path to your path to social media solutions. But twitter sure helps!

I know there are tons of these all over the vastness that is THE INTERNET.

But.

I made this.

Because I have a hookah, and I like it. So I made this video for people who are new to hookah to see how it all works. It’s not too terribly complicated, but sometimes it’s easier to just see things done.

So I made a little video goofing around with the PS Eye camera, and also making some beats with Korg DS-10. It’s nothing special, but it’s a fun little thing I guess.

Today we bring you “ENDLESS” which is Say No More Tongues’ first  full album since 2006.

The sound of Endless is far different from anything we have done before. It evokes a grittier sense of style. It’s like the soundtrack to watching a fence rust in stop-motion video. It’s like a whale swallowed you hole, and spit you back out as his tears.

Christa Gates loses the viola and picks up the flute for this album. For the first time ever, SNMT also utlizes the sound of an electric guitar. We’ve dropped the classic Viola and Korg Kaoss Pad for a mixture of Guitars, flutes, spoken word, and kaoss pad allowing for even further experimentation.

A lot of people like to throw around terms like “avant-garde” or “pushing the envelope”. We’re not going to throw those words around. We’re just a couple of people. One who knows nothing about “music theory” and the other who knows it like the back of her hand. Some say it makes for an interesting mix. We just want to try new things. Like a spoiled fat kid after his favorite candy shop gets shut down.

Last.fm has helped provide us with easy access to stream these songs at full-length. However, if you’d like to help support us, you can buy the album at a budget price, made available kindly through amazon.com.  They are in high-quality mp3 format on Amazon. Each song is 89 cents, or you can get the full album for 5.99. So if you like what you hear on last.fm be sure to buy some songs!

Recommended listening: Graveyard | Eyes Melted | Deep White

Buy on Amazon

You can also purchase the previous album “AIR” on Amazon. It’s somewhat of a prequel to Endless. Its sessions were originall intended to be part of Endless, but they strayed too much from the general “idea” we wanted to convey with the album.

I recently read an article about an application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that was similar to Duck Hunt. The game has been taken down due to licensing issues. You know, Nintendo owns the rights to this game. There is another application similar in nature to Duck Hunt still available on the iPod Touch and iPhone platforms.

How does this happen? I assume there some sort of QA to make sure nothing copywritten gets through. It makes sense for it to be taken down, but why was it allowed up in the first place?

This brings me to my next point: GABO

According to another article I read, a simulation game called Gabo was canned by Apple because it was “unpleasant.” Yoot Saito, the developer, makes pretty good games. He is responsible for Seaman! The game is quite possibly one of the most imaginative projects on the Dreamcast system. The concept is that you have to raise this fish-man thing from a tadpole into an amphibian. Along the way, you use your microphone to talk to him and teach him to say things. Gabo is effectively the same thing, except it’s raising a caveman.

Or would’ve been, rather.

This is why I don’t think the iPhone or iPod Touch will ever be viable gaming platforms. They just don’t know what their doing, it seems. You can put up copyright games, but God forbid you attempt to put up a game the features some creativity!

Not to say there aren’t any good games on the iPlatforms. There’s a handful of games I can think of that have some good potential.

There’s something fundamentally wrong here.

We recently had the chance to ask the development team Watermelon about their brand-new Sega Genesis game: Pier Solar.  So I took this opportunity to ask what in the world they were thinking, and also attempt to figure out what makes this game tick.

1) So, this is a brand new game for the Sega Genesis? What brought this on?

Tulio: Yes, this is a brand new game – new story, music, graphics and engine, etc. Four years ago, we decided to create something new for the Sega Genesis for the retro game fans like us. Overtime, other members joined the team and the rest is history.

2) How many people are working on the project?

Tulio: There are 8 of us in the core team; and there are 4 more supporting us. So about 12 people.

3) Seems like a small amount of people to be making a game, does the nature of the hardware make it a little easier?

Tulio: Nope, it’s the opposite. Because of the nature of the hardware, we have a lot of limitations that we would not have had with a newer technology. So actually, it’s quite challenging. But I’m glad to say that we have a great team to work on this game.

Tiido: You can never get enough of GFX artists, but the hardware itself is very easy to manage albeit there are quite a few limitations that force you to be creative

4) About how long have you been working on Pier Solar?

Tulio: I’m on the project since the beginning, so that makes about 4½ years. 2 of those were purely background development on which not much has been seen, like the main engine and the supporting tools. Starting in 2007 we finally started to add content, and that’s when the game became more visible.

Tiido: A little bit over a year now, writing tools and other things to create music and sound effects for MD.

Daniel: We have all been joining the team one by one over the last 5 or so years; in my case I have been around for about 2 years.

Zebbe: I’ve been working on Pier Solar for about a year. I got the request to join the team because the tools for making maps where done then, and the other team members needed their precious time for other parts of the game. Fonzie taught me on how to use the tools and we cooperated well to make maps that fit the game.

5) What are some of your influences for Pier Solar?

Tulio: A lot of things, I must say. Everyone in the team are big fans of RPGs, so our work has a lot of inspirations from great RPGs such as Phantasy Star IV, Shining Force II and Chrono Trigger. At the same time, creativity is the core values of our team. So the story, graphics and music are all brand new creations of the team.

Zebbe: 16-bit RPGs, mostly. My favourite game is Phantasy Star IV, and its influence on my early works didn’t suit Fonzie too well because he imagined the Pier Solar world as more chaotic, unstructured and unplanned. Phantasy Star IV had maps that are pretty much the opposite of that. But as work progressed, our cooperation went smoothly and thanks to lots of brainstorming and planning Pier Solar now has very varied, fun and good looking maps inspired by other game genres and movies, even.

6) What kind of things does Pier Solar have that I can’t find in any other RPG?

Tulio: First of all is the fact it was made by the people from the retrogaming community. But technically we tried to bring innovative content and playability, also we’re trying to avoid many of the RPGs clichés and bring new ideas to the battle mechanics.

7) Being that this is a music site, I’m kinda curious about the music. I’ve heard that if you have a Sega CD, it will play the music from the game?

Tulio: Yes, that’s correct. We were able to detect and use the Sega CD hardware if present. That’s why we’re shipping the game with a enhanced soundtrack CD. If you have the Sega CD attached you just have to place this CD in the drive and you’ll have streamed PCM music playing from the Sega CD instead of the traditional FM from Genesis/Mega Drive.

8 ) Was it hard to find a bunch of people interested in creating a full-scale game like this?

Tulio: Yes, it was. It is hard to have a team with the skill sets necessary to complete Pier Solar, especially when they’re all volunteers. I have to be honest – it is quite an extensive game. Although we need a complete team to create Pier Solar, we’ve been trying to recruit people since the beginning but almost nobody had interest on the game since we didn’t have much to show on the first 2 years… But still, people started showing up and joined the team out of passion for RPGs and now we have a really hardworking and talented team for this game.

Daniel: Actually, it was. We have been searching help for ages, but only very few people ever volunteered to help out; but that is okay. After all, it is quite a lot of work, and it would be worse if people offered to help, but did not deliver in the end.

9) Do you plan on selling lots and lots of copies, are you aiming at a particular audience?

Tulio: Well, you can say we are aiming for the RPGs fans and retro gamers, but honestly I have no specific audience targeted. Our goal is to revive the passion for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games and to bring something new for the gamers to play and enjoy. Genny was our platform of choice because the project was born for Sega CD following the steps of Lunar, but our game is here for anyone who wants a new game to play! Who knows some day it will make to a modern console?

Zebbe: The first aim is to give all fans of the Mega Drive, Sega and retro gaming a great new game incomparable to anything since the era its console was supported. But the more copies that are sold, the better, because that will surely inspire more people to follow the way this team has walked and do something similar. That would be wonderful.

10) What kind of modern games do you enjoy?

Tulio: I like games with deep story that get you hooked into. I’ve been playing Naruto for PS3 and XBox lately, and I’ve been playing Zelda Twilight Princess for Wii. I really enjoy Wii a lot, especially Wii Sports. Guitar Hero/Rock Band also provides lots of fun. I enjoyed the remake of

Tiido: Mainly single player first person shooters. Games were better 5…15 years ago

Daniel: I play mainly RPGs; some action or fighting games are welcome too. As opposed to Tiido, I believe that games have constantly been improving since Pong to this very day. So for me, games are generally better than ever. However, the late trend of Wii and Nintendo DS, focusing gameplay more on gimmicks like motion-control, touchscreen and mic is not my kind of thing personally.

Zebbe: None. The PlayStation 2 was the last new console I got, but I didn’t have as much fun with it as the original one or the 2D era consoles, maybe because I don’t enjoy 3D graphics very much. I’m all into retro gaming and development now.

11) What makes this game worth it? There’s a lot of retro gaming going on these days with emulators, and the Wii’s Virtual Console. You can pick up a Sega Genesis for pretty cheap these days, but what makes this game worth owning?

Tulio: First of all it’s because it’s a new game. You can have much fun re-playing your favorite classic RPG but it will not be the same as when you played it for the first time. With Pier Solar that feeling is back, a new RPG which was made inspired on all those classics all of us love so much. I also think that this is the first step to get more people developing and releasing serious commercial grade games for retro platforms. Ten years ago we got people making technical demos now it’s time to have this knowledge put to work. That’s what we’re doing with Pier Solar and we hope that much more will come after we finish this project.

Daniel: I hope it is a game of an overall quality that RPG-players on the Genesis have always been missing; the Genny and Sega CD both had a comparably small and visually unimpressive library of Japanese style RPGs in it´s original lifetime, especially when compared to the best the SNES had to offer; Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Star Ocean, and quite a few more. Visuals are a big part of that; even the most popular JRPGs on the system like Phantasy Star or the Lunar-games do not make full use of what the hardware can do. We are trying hard to get the most out of the system; five characters in the party at once, fully animated monsters, huge magic effects….and we even have scenes that break the Genesis´ limit of 64 colors at once. The limit is our own skills. And using the Sega CD as optional sound playback enables us to make up for the Genesis inferior sound capabilities. As for gameplay and story….we just hope that having played many RPGs from the 8-bit-generation until today gives us a good idea of what a great RPG should be like. This game is worth owning because it is the Genesis-RPG players have been waiting for since 1988.

12) When do you expect this to be finished? Where can people pick it up at?

Tulio: The project is very near to completion and will be released up to spring of this year. Anyone can check the game at http://www.piersolar.com. There’s a beta for download and pre-ordering is available.

Back in the day, I used to run a radio show at my college Middle Tennessee State University’s radio station 88.3 WMTS. I’d mostly play Asian music because that’s what I was heavily into at the time. I have a diverse taste, and attempted to bring every style of Asian music into the show.

I had heard about this game called Electroplankton by my friends who owned a Nintendo DS. It’s essentially a “music toy” with a little over half a dozen functions. You select a different “plankton” and each one has its own sort of musical scenario where you manipulate the way sound is produced by using the stylus. I finally got around to buying a Nintendo DS sometime Summer 2007. I’ve been an avid music maker for a while now, and the concept a neat little toy like that on the Nintendo DS seemed enthralling.

Here’s the a stock photo of the one I bought:

Even though it’s all in Japanese, the only thing I can’t read is the instruction manual. There’s really no Japanese words in the game except for names of the plankton characters on the menu. Oh, and the manual of course! It’s a pretty cool software. I’ve used it for some of my Say No More Tongues releases like AIR and Hand in the Pink. [Hand in the Pink can be found at the end of the post]

So I had the idea one day to use my radio show as an outlet to broadcast a performance of Electroplankton. You don’t really need a “band” for that kind of thing. Just have a few friends with Nintendo DS systems. So that’s what we did. I brought two of my friends into the studio, and they put their systems close to the microphones, and we just jammed. There was a total of three instances of Electroplankton running with each person doing their own thing.

For an idea of what the game actually feels like, take a look at this vid I made.

Discuss on the forum

 Live Electroplankton Performance (Soundwave Tsunami Radio Show): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 Say No More Tongues - Hand in the Pink: Download (37)

So there’s this company called Sega WOW. Which is part Overworks, who is responible for epic tales such as Phantasy Star, Sakura Taisen, and the epic Skies of Arcadia. The other part makes House of the Dead. Both are pretty cool games, but you can tell it was mostly the Overworks staff that made Valkyria Chronicles. Not only because it’s an RPG, but because there’s no zombies. Anyways, here’s a picture. Then I’ll rant about how I’m mad this game isn’t selling as well as it should.

So, Sega hasn’t been known to make really great games here lately. However, they made one excellent game called Valkyria Chronicles. I must admit I was very hesitant about trying this game. At first, I was gung-ho about playing it, because it was an RPG on the Playstation 3 system. Then, as I saw more trailers, I felt disconnected from the whole thing. I’m a fan of fantasy, not war. There are plenty of games that simulate war.

But this WAS fantasy. Although it was wartime stuff, which I usually don’t get into much, I found myself enjoying it. I was like the nervous kid at the swimming pool, who could only put his toes in without running back to mommy in fear of the cold cold waters beneath.

My employment at the time allowed for free rentals of movies and videogames. So I had nothing to lose. That’s when I fell in love with the game. I was impressed by its ability to imbue one title with so many variations of gameplay. It’s a strange mixture of Action RPG with RTS.

You get to control a Squad in this fantasy war that takes place in a fictional continent called “Europa” which is essentially a fantasy version of Europe with fantasy countries fighting over it. The initial plot device is a substance called “ragnite” for which two regions are fighting over. The story takes place in Gallia, which is usually a neutral nation, but they have a large supply of ragnite.

Sound familiar? I’m sure it does.

Apparently, this game isn’t selling so well, and I can see why. RPGs are a niche market, and strategy rpgs are even further a niche market. I’m astounded though. This game takes some really cool concepts to make a very well-rounded game. This game is one of those “classic” games that will stand the test of time. Stuff like Grand Theft Auto IV may get 10/10, but I doubt people will be talking about it in 10 years like they do other Overwork’s games.

I’m not sure where I want this post to go. I don’t really want it be a pity post. In my opinion, Sega hasn’t really published much lately that’s been top-notch save the Yakuza series. This game hasn’t sold very well here in the states. If I say, “you should buy it!!!!!” it may be misconstrued as some fanboy trying to propagate his favorite underappreciated game. However, I assure you this is not the case. I genuinely feel that this game is top-notch and worthy of not only recognition, but of a possible purchase as well. The only reason I say that, is because nothing speaks louder than your check book, and I’d sure as hell like to see more quality games like these from Sega. While you’re at it, pick Yakuza 2 while you’re out.

There’s also an anime coming out. That’s something I’m going to be keeping an eye on: http://www.valkyria-anime.com/

Detroit Metal City is a gag series about music. Similar in nature to Metalocalypse. There are a whole slew of adaptations for this show, so I’ll only focus on the 12 episode animation that was animated by the lovely Studio 4°C.

Rising death metal band Detroit Metal City is getting popular day by day. However, country-boy lead singer didn’t exactly come to Tokyo to sing about being a demon, murdering his parents, or rape. No, instead he would really rather create songs about love, bread, and melons. The main character really isn’t a metalhead, and that’s what the gag is in this series. He’s split between being the lord of darkness, and also being a coy country boy who used to write cheeky love songs.

This show is pretty extreme compared to the likes of Metalocalypse. I don’t want to keep comparing it to that, but it’s all I have. This show has seemingly less amounts of slapstick comedy, and features more aggressive lyrics. It seems to have more of a storyline, or more of a point to it. Both are quite good though, don’t get me wrong.

There are a handful of metal references, but there’s also non-metal references that may require some knowledge of Japanese music. For the most part, the show is pretty realistic. They are treated like real people instead of just characters to be joked around with. Regardless, I laughed a lot more at the “brutal” moments in this show than any other. It does a really good job at portraying the metal in a satirical fashion. It goes over the top, and isn’t afraid to take names.

So it’s basically Metalocalypse with a little more substance, and a little more laughs. It’s pretty damn hilarious. Here’s the intro with subtitles. You’ll see what I mean:

There’s this “Video Game System” called the Mattel Hyperscan. It’s basically this video system that Mattel marketed as a toy, for young teenagers who were too old for Yugioh, but too young to be trusted with expensive video game systems of the day. It was a relatively low-spec system, and Mattel discontinued it about a year or so after it was released. The system had no copy-protection, so there was some interest from the homebrew community, but so far not much has come to fruition.

Personally, I feel this is a very bad system. However, like a lot of bad systems, they all have their unique charm. This one had a pretty decent controller, and a cool card-based saving system. Each game came packaged with cards that had an RFID in them. Let’s say I’m playing Spiderman, and I want to load a bonus for spiderman for a certain level, I just scan the card and I have extra health! Yippee! Other games would require you to have them, in order to load scenarios, characters, and all that. In some instances, if you scanned a character card, you would scan it after you were done and it would save the character’s progress.

If you care to watch, I also made a video that shows you what the system looks like, and how it all works. I can’t do gameplay footage though. There’s other youtube videos for that though!