Are you Afraid of the Game?: Halloween Hack for Earthbound (created by Toby Fox)

Are You Afraid of the Game is a new series I am starting which relies on the spooky, the dark, and the survival horror aspects of Video Games. The first game we are going to start with is a game that was submitted as part of a Halloween event on the website www.starmen.net. It's known as Earthbound Halloween, and it's developed and modded by somebody you all know by now, Toby Fox.
So you're thinking right about now what makes this Mod scary in the least? Well the mod itself uses the Earthbound sprites and tiles, but it brings a new spin on the franchise by making you play a character who is a bounty hunter, aptly named by you. As a bounty hunter you actually kill for money, and you start out the game passed out from a drunken stupor.
From here you find out the manager of the establishment wants to talk to you. Talking to the manager you hear a story about a daughter of a family that states that there was some type of invisible beast that crept through the window and began to tear her mother and father apart eating them whole. The manager wants to hire your skills so that the monster can be hunted down, but there's a catch. You must go through the sewers of Twoson and head to Foggyland.
Now i'm not going to slam you with a wall of text telling you every moment, but I would like to tell you all some moments that would be just a little to spooky for Earthbounds core. One of the huge moments in the game is that you go through the sewers killing small enemies such as a rat, a hippie, and a trashcan poltergeist. Usual Earthbound stuff. However when you get through the sewers you begin to read some text that explains that everything in the sewers is changing and you're moving to evil darkest pit called Foggyland.
The scene is something out of Stephen King novel, and it really sets the course for the horror elements of this mod. The water turns blood red, the walls turn a purple acidic color. You also start to see a change in the enemies, instead of Hippies you get zombies that tear into your flesh with every attack hoping for a piece of meat. You would think with what i'm describing that it can't get worse, well you would be wrong my friend...
As you progress further into the seventh circle of hell, you go through another door into Winters. But this isn't the Winters we all know and love, oh no, the sky is bright red. The grass is black stained with the many deaths of people from Winters. The biggest thing you notice is that instead of your typical Starman or anything of the sort from Earthbound, you get Monsters with gaping maws and melted machines that strangle themselves to death.
Now these are more or less the main points of this game, the really creepy stuff. But I want to bring something to light, and that has to be the last boss battle. Dr. Andonuts is actually a main part of the Earthbound storyline. He created many of the inventions that get you to the very end of the game, but Toby wanted to progress his story further. The way he did that was he made Dr. Andonuts feel regret and strife for the fact he sent four children to there deaths to fight the main bad guy in Earthbound.
Because of this he turns into a monster, a truly frightening monster.

Yes that is a mound of eyes, you're mind is not betraying you. This is the boss at first, yet he is a pushover. But it works well within the storyline. It gets creepier from here though, when the nice doctor goes ape shit on your party, and he turns into this.

At this point, you're going to be royally screwed. This is a very unbalanced boss fight, that leaves you really angry for most of it. Not to mention the fact that it gives me a inescapable chill down my spine. I've never seen something since the original fight with Giygas that just left me creeped out. Just like with Undertale (Toby's other game) there is a lot of fourth wall breaking and great music. Fun fact, this boss battle theme is actually the same boss battle theme that was used for the Sans Battle in Undertale. If you get a chance you should watch both these videos i'm going to link in this post.

Anyway, in conclusion, this mod was a great job and you can really tell that Toby put his heart and soul into the design. The miserable feeling you get while going through a lot of the areas in this game, are so disheartening that at times I felt like I was playing a visual representation of a Edgar Allan Poe poem. It was so bleak, so terrifying, but also with that it personifies what you would want in a Halloween based game. If you get a chance, you should really find a way to get an Earthbound Rom and download this hack it's totally worth it.

Was I Afraid of the Game? Yes,definitely, yes.

Bits of Music: Donkey Kong Country 2

For another Bits of Music I wanted to talk about the soundtrack for Donkey Kong Country 2. Composed by one of the musical aficionados at Rare David Wise. He created Donkey Kong Country 2's album during what he calls an "paris experiment phase", and I believe that many of the tracks do have a melodic almost waltzy side to them. But I wouldn't say they are the sounds of Paris, I would say that a lot of music that originates from Paris is more string based. And I feel with Donkey Kong Country 2 the music is way more piano and bass type rhythms. But by no means am i composer, and I would believe that the core of what David Wise was going for is apparent in this game.

Great soundtrack, filled with fun and wit. I would say it's one of the greats.

I've always had a love for David Wise's albums, especially Killer Instinct which I believe is the era of the 90's personified. If you give this album a chance, and add it into your collection I think you'll really enjoy just how fun the tracks are. Stickerbrush Symphony, as well as Bayou Boogie are my favorites, so make sure to listen to those.

As always I hope you all enjoy this post and this amazing soundtrack. I hope it springs forth a warmth of nostalgia to you, and the better times we all had when playing Donkey Kong Country 2 on the SNES. Until next time!

Undertale Changed my Life

Hey everyone, I usually never really cut my heart out and bleed for a video game. I've been able to be a little biased and explain in a heartfelt way how much I truly like a game. But I try as hard as I can to look at all the parts of a game, and then as a whole i judge it whether it really is that good or not.
However, that is not the case with Undertale. As you may all know (some may not) my favorite game of all time is Earthbound. The bliss I get from really sitting down and going through the "My Sanctuary Locations" and beating the living hell of out Giygas. It is truly my favorite thing to do, but when it comes to Undertale I got the same feeling as I have with Earthbound. I can only relate it to the immense fun I had with the mechanics, the story, and the overall experience.
But the reason I am really wanting to explain why the game was really the best thing I have played bar none since Earthbound. Is just how the game made me feel. Many people don't know this, but I've been going through a lot of depressive issues from the onset of 2014 till now. It's been a really hard road that I have put myself on. I've lost friends, I've caused problems with my family, and I've hurt people that are close to me.
As of right now I am going to therapy for all of this, and I am taking chemicals to mend my broken life. The biggest thing I think that hurts me the most with depression and anxiety. Is just the feeling that I get that nobody cares about me, even though I know I am blessed with a great wife and many great friends. Another thing I think gives me turmoil is that I've tried so hard to develop an experience that I can really be proud of. But i'm the person who gets in my own way when I start on a project.
But I don't want to keep rambling on about my problems, I want to explain why Undertale has really changed my life. One of the core philosophies in Undertale is the statement "Stay Determined" it's more or less the rallying cry of the Undertale community, and I can see why. The whole game is about staying determined to defeat the evil that life gives us. It shows to the player that there will always be hardships in life, but if you stay determined through them, then you'll always win and prevail. The game is really dark, and depending on if you commit monster genocide or you decide to be a pacifist and talk your way out of everything. Then the whole game changes, which is amazingly adaptive to the player.
When I experienced Undertale, I thought the humor was through the roof. It was funny when it needed to be, and it was dark where it needed to be as well. But I started to notice something in the game that I didn't see at first. The game is about friendship and figuring out that sometimes determination will you get you through. Other times you need the help of your friends to keep you determined. I'm not sure what Toby Fox (the creator of Undertale) was going through at this time, but when you put your heart and soul into a video game. You realize that you don't have much left, and I believe in a roundabout way, Toby was trying to tell himself that he needed to stay determined to complete his project. He noticed that he needed friends more than anything, not just for the help of the entire game. But he needed them to help him stay determined.
This to me reflects everything I have learned through Earthbound as well. You have to keep your friends with you wherever you go. The strength of your determination, does not come by your own strength. It comes from the strength and determination of others as well. I can't specify enough how much I believe Undertale has taught me. I want to stay determined, I want to keep going. And because of Toby Fox and his amazing game I can do that. This game is neck and neck with Earthbound for my favorite game of all time. They both have their own thing that makes them special to me. I have to say, when you're crafting a game, I believe it's not about just creating a game. It's about creating an experience that will sing to the heart of the people that play it. And I believe Undertale and Earthbound have sang from the mountain peaks for me. Thank you Toby Fox.

Bits of Music: Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy is synonymous with beautiful music. But there is something just enjoyable about Final Fantasy 4's soundtrack. The staple of all of the Final Fantasy soundtracks of course is the Crystal theme. But the opening for Final Fantasy IV really stages just how epic the experience will be. The Red Baron theme is close to what you would expect a marching song would have sounded in the Civil War. Nothing gets me more pumped then hearing this song, it immerses me further in the game, and the great thing is that it gets even better down the line.

Great soundtrack, listen to it while you read this post.

 I have just a bit of information on the composer. Most people know who Nobuo Uetmatsu is. However if you don't know him, he was the main composer for all music that was associated with Final Fantasy. He has his own band called the Black Mages, who actually tour across the US, Japan, and in Europe. His band has done several tours, one being Distant Worlds, which was a beautiful arrangement of each famous song in the Final Fantasy games. He is one of the more famous of Video game composers, and you can really tell from the melodic tones and beautiful arrangements that he has provided to this amazing franchise. 

I'll always enjoy Final Fantasy IV for many reasons, but the soundtrack really governed a lot of my love for the franchise as a whole. And that really about covers it for this Bit of Music. I hope you all enjoyed the tidbit of info I gave about this great soundtrack. And as always, till next time!

Bits of Music: Chrono Trigger

The next game that has beautiful music has to be without a doubt Chrono Trigger. This whole soundtrack brings tears to my eyes, and makes me proud to love Role playing games so much. If you don't have this soundtrack and you like game music, seriously go download or buy it now. I'm not kidding, i'll wait *taps foot*.

You don't get a choice play this soundtrack while reading this Blog.

So did you download it? You didn't? Well I went ahead and placed the video in my post, so you get away with it this time. So just a little bit of background on Chrono Trigger's composer, Yasanori Mitsuda was in his early part of his career when he was given the task by Nobuo Uetmatsu and Squaresoft(Square Enix now) to create a new soundtrack for an entirely new game off of the Final Fantasy series. To show that he had the chops to compose music for video games, he did the entire soundtrack with the help of Nobuo on a couple of tracks. And in my personal opinion, it is one of his best soundtracks. The melodies and the chords in the different tracks are so beautiful that they just glisten with splendor. Plus each track for Chrono Trigger, has the right music for the right scene. If you're in a battle it's more upbeat and rhythmic. However when you're in a sad part of the game it's more string based in it's design. If you're a composer of any music and you haven't heard this soundtrack I can't specify enough how much you'll learn from it.
Chrono Trigger in it's design is an awesome game, but I believe that if it wasn't for the sound design it wouldn't have been as monumental as it is. I hope you enjoy the soundtrack as much as I do. I'll be back with another Bit of Music for you all to chew on. Until next time.

Bits of Music: Banjo Kazooie

Bits of Music is going to be a new project I am starting on that will focus on the finer points of music in Video games. I am a huge fan of video game music as a whole, mostly due to the fact that every single sound has a place in the grand design of the video game. One of the great soundtracks that I love to listen to has to be the soundtrack for Banjo Kazooie.

Make sure to listen to the Soundtrack while you read my review, it's fun. haha

Banjo's soundtrack was composed by one of the greats in Video game music composing, and his name is Grant Kirkhope. 

Grant created many a soundtrack for Rare at the time of the Nintendo 64 and before. His palette includes the Donkey Kong Country soundtracks, Killer Instinct, and Conker's Bad Fur Day. Grant also worked on the sound design for most of Rare's games and he lent a lot of his voice to many characters in Banjo and Conker alike. 

The great thing about Grant's sound design in Banjo Kazooie and other games is that you begin to notice a lot of repetition for most of his music, but it always has something that sets it apart from other tracks in the soundtrack. He also relies heavily on variation for each track to the levels of Banjo Kazooie. For instance, when you go into a cave the main theme may still be playing, but it seems to be much farther off and muffled compared to just walking around in the over world. It takes a great hand when it comes to music to variate each track and bring one core track and make it into many different tracks that better suit the game overall. 

I'm proud to have this soundtrack in my collection, and I believe if you like game music at all it's imperative that you have this soundtrack in your collection as well. 

Next time i'll be bring back another soundtrack for the Bit's of Music series, and we'll hopefully get to see how ambience clearly works for a darker and more mystifying experience.

Thank you for taking time to listen, and remember to turn up the games. 

Memories with Video Games: The broken PS2

So this memory is a great one  that I reminisce about a lot. I believe it was close to the Christmas of either my 8th grade year or my 7th grade year of school. The context of the memory involves a PlayStation 2 that I got for my birthday on August of that year. I loved my PlayStation 2, I had Final Fantasy 10 and a couple of other great games as well. However later on in that year I started to get the infamous "Disc Read Error" that everyone who had a first generation PlayStation 2 knows about. The problem with the system was that in the CD tray, each PlayStation 2 had what was called the Eye. The eye would displace a laser on the surface of the desk and in doing so it would read the data off of the disc and play the game. Well the problem with first generation PlayStation 2's was the fact that Sony didn't put much money into that one piece of equipment.
So like clockwork every time I would rent a new game and it had maybe two or three scratches on it I would get a "Disc Read Error" message and then I would have to go through the steps to clean the disc to the best of my ability and try again. It would work sometimes, and other times I wouldn't even be able to play the games I wanted to play. Around the time that Grand Theft Auto San Andreas came out for PlayStation 2 I was finally able to rent this awesome game for a short period of time. However my PlayStation 2 would not even let me play it because of the disc not being able to read.
At this point I was completely fed up with the system, so I took a look on google at the time for a tutorial on how to fix the problem. They explained that the best way of fixing the PlayStation 2 was cutting the warranty from the side and unscrewing the bottom to open the PlayStation 2 so you could inevitably open the disc tray and clean the "Eye" with a q-tip with alcohol on it.
I researched as much as I could, and with the help of my Mom we both opened up the PlayStation 2 and cleaned the disc tray, and wouldn't you know it, but it finally fixed the problem..... Or at least for a little while. Come to find out a certain percentage of people who would try this fix would actually cause more harm then good for their PlayStation's. The alcohol or something of the sort clouded the eye from ever working again. Well I just happened to be one of the select few, and of course as a small kid I was absolutely devastated. At least prior to me trying to repair the console, it would work some of the time. Now I had no PlayStation 2, and no way to play any of my existing games. Because of this I kind of just gave up on ever trying to fix the PlayStation 2 and playing any of my games again.
The great thing about this memory however, is that my Mom saw how devastated and how hard I worked on trying to fix this broken system. So she started planning and saving with my dad. Flash forward to Christmas of that year, and I got to go through the sequence of opening presents. As I got to open a bunch of boxes with clothes in it, I finally got down to this rectangular package. At this point I had no clue what this could be, so finally I opened it and saw that it was a PlayStation 2 controller. Of course like any kid I didn't understand, and I was pretty sure my parents were playing a very cruel joke on me. So unintentionally I started to feel incredibly defeated, I worked so hard to try to fix a major part of my gaming life, and looking down at this controller just made all of that flood back. I guess while my parents saw the disdain I had on my face, my dad went into the other room and brought forth another bigger box. I was completely shocked, what could be in this box I thought to myself. So I started tearing into it, and with tears already in my eyes I saw that it was a new PlayStation 2 slim. Now if you've ever played video games during that time, you would realize that the PlayStation 2 slim fixed all of the latter versions of the PlayStation 2's problems.
With sheer happiness I was able to finally get a piece of my gaming life back to me, and the main point of this story is to show to you the reader. Just how important my parents were to me, they worked so hard and put so much effort in getting me this console. Because they saw how much hard work I put into trying to fix my older PlayStation 2. My parents have always been in my corner for everything I have ever choose to do, and I can't thank them enough for how awesome they were during my childhood and into my adult life. Some people don't get to have great parents, who would put their financial stability on the line for a degree that they were pretty sure I wouldn't use. But they believed in me, and I absolutely love them for that. Cherish your parents, even if they're not together or they moved on to more ethereal planes. They sacrificed for you, and as adults now we have to show them that their sacrifice was not in vain. I love you Mom and Dad.