61 Frames Per Second : street fighter ii

Sheng Long and The Ghost of April Fools' Past

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:07:00 GMT

Guard your funnybone: tomorrow is April Fool's Day. It's the most wonderful time of the year to be a games writer, and the most aggravating time of the year to be a gamer.

I've never actually participated in any kind of April Fool's joke. Despite my twisted, pulsating sense of humour, I've never been a fan of practical jokes. I can't stand crank calls, Punk'd, anything that derives a laugh from someone else's gobsmacked expression and/or explosive anger. Though, I have been the victim of crank calls that I felt stupidly honoured to be a part of (I worked in the grooming salon of a PetSmart a few years back and was asked if we sell unicorns. I told the caller to try Narnia).

It's still a lot of fun to lean back and watch the gaming community try to out-ridiculous each other every April 1st. Even better, the tradition pre-dates the Internet-based fandom considerably: the infamous “Sheng Long” edition of EGM (published April 1992) probably wasn't the first instance of games writers indulging in spring jack-assery, but it was definitely the prank that launched a thousand imitators.

To recap, EGM ran with Ryu's mistranslated victory slogan in Street Fighter II for the SNES--”You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance”--and turned a string of Engrish into a baffling hunt for Ryu and Ken's Master. If Ryu played through the roster without getting hit once (!), and resisted Bison until the timer hit 0 without sustaining damage (!!!), Sheng Long would appear, “toss M Bison away,” and fly at the player with super-fast Hadokens and Spinning Bird Kicks.

Turns out nobody stood a chance against Sheng Long. EGM first lamented that nobody on staff lasted more than a few seconds with the ethereal Master, then confessed it was all a hoax. A well-spread hoax, at that: game magazines around the world re-printed the trick, and fresh howls of torment rose from Street Fighter II fans as they attempted to do the impossible.

Really, though—ten rounds without getting hit once? Dodging Bison like a ballet dancer shot up with speed? Right off the bat, it's a recipe for a broken controller.

Either way, the race has since been on for game magazines and websites to outdo one another. Looks like The Mega Man Network has cast the first stone this year with, “Mega Man X9 Announced a Day Early.” Oh, you almost got me there.

So, any favourite game-related tomfoolery you want to recall in honour of April's premiere?

Related Links:

Where, Specifically, Did The Street Fighter Movie Go Wrong?
Licensing Tragedies: Malibu's Street Fighter Comic
The Five Characters You Won't See in Street Fighter IV

The Five Characters You Won’t See in Street Fighter IV

John Constantine — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Written by Cyriaque Lamar

On February 17th, a numerical Street Fighter sequel will come out in America for the first time in ten years. In an act of unprecedented video game democracy, the good folks at Capcom allowed fans to vote for the characters that would appear in the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions. Their shortlist included such perennial favorites as the panties-flashing Sakura and the leotard-clad M16 agent Cammy. As in the 2008 presidential election, sex appeal commanded the polls.

But what about those fighters who didn’t make the cut? Join me as I take a look at Street Fighter’s lesser-known pugilists and postulate why these lovable losers didn’t earn a silky-smooth 3D sheen.

Rolento

Who?
Rolento debuted as a boss in the 1989 arcade beat-em-up Final Fight. As a boss character, he was entitled to certain amenities players were not, such as a baton, incendiaries, and a subscription to the Ginsu-Of-The-Month Club. When he turned up in 1996’s Street Fighter Alpha 2, he returned with all of his thwacking, exploding, and stabbing habits intact.

Why He Should Have Been in SFIV
Rolento is an absolute hoot to play. For a game full of high-flying karate-men, it’s surprising that the most agile character is the guy with grenades strapped to his pectorals. Rolento’s moves include a wide array of flips, rolls, and the ability to use his baton as a pogo stick. Playing him is like playing a paramilitary spider monkey. Furthermore, his backstory is hilariously bad even by Street Fighter standards. As he puts it, Rolento aims to create a militaristic new world order free of “panty-waist politicking”.

Revolutionary rhetoric.

Why He Isn’t
We suspect his absence has something to do with all those unfair knives, grenades, and super moves involving trip wires and impaling opponents with crane hooks. The moment you bring a goddamn crane to fisticuffs is the moment you’ve left the realm of “street fighting” and gone headlong into “demolition derby” territory.

Sodom

Who?
Another expatriate from Final Fight, Sodom was the boss of the underground wrestling match in Level 2. Despite his menacing shogun attire and dual katanas, Sodom was easily thwarted if the player stood directly below him. He later appeared in 1995’s Street Fighter Alpha. Sodom proved to be a more formidable foe in this game, as players could only walk left and right.

Why He Should Have Been in SFIV
He’s the most meta character in the entire Street Fighter mythos. A white guy with an overweening respect for Japanese culture, Sodom fancies himself a modern samurai. He flaunts fans and writes in pidgin Kanji. Capcom seem to be making fun of American fans’ geekier proclivities. Hey gaijin, see this joker? He’s you. Go do some push-ups with Guile.

Dude, leave E. Honda alone. He’s above your nonsense.

Why He Isn’t
That name is best left in the past, don’t you think?

Oro

Who?
Oro is a Street Fighter III original. A hundred-plus-year-old hermit from the Amazon rain forest, Oro spent decades in solitude until he grew bored and entered the third World Warrior Tournament. Hey, after Rolento’s rationale, that’s as fine an excuse as any.

Why He Should Have Been in SFIV
Along with collecting AARP benefits out the ying-yang, Oro handicaps himself by tying his left arm to his chest. And he’s not fighting one-handed for laughs — Oro’s so tough that he could accidentally kill his opponent if he unloosed his other fist. He can also take a nap mid-fight, which is one of the best flip-offs in fighting game history.

Why He Isn’t
Although there’s nothing like schooling your opponent with a one-armed, half-comatose decagenarian, playing against Oro is a viscerally unsettling experience. Many of Oro’s moves are grapples, so you’ll spend most of the match getting groped by a greasy geriatric wearing nothing but a loincloth. Plus, he’s from Street Fighter III, and clearly SFIV producer Yoshinori Ono hates that game’s characters. Even if they’re awesome.

Twelve

Who?
Twelve is Necro’s nemesis in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. Necro’s special moves unabashedly mimick Blanka’s electricity and Dhalsim’s stretching. His antagonist needed even more novelty powers to be a formidable foe. So, naturally, he’s a crazy advanced version of Necro made by the Illuminati.

Why He Should Have Been in SFIV
Twelve was a Whitman’s Sampler of ridiculous gimmicks. Invisibility? Check. Flight? Check. Ability to become a doppelganger of your foe? Check. Ability to transform into a fighter jet? Double check. It’s like Capcom said, “The arcade industry’s in a freefall and this might be the last Street Fighter game we ever make. Fuck it, let’s pour all of the worst excesses of fighting games into one character and hit the karaoke bar.”

Why He Isn’t
For all his shtick, Twelve is perhaps the least playable character in the SF franchise. He can turn invisible, but the player has no idea where he is onscreen. He can turn his hands into pickaxes, but he’ll do almost no damage. Capcom balanced out Twelve’s bells and whistles by making him terrible. Street Fighter III rule also applies.

T. Hawk

Who?
He’s from Super Street Fighter II and possibly the worst caricature of Native Americans since Iron Eyes Cody. Hell, Capcom Japan wanted to name him “Geronimo” until Capcom USA intervened.

Why He Should Have Been in SFIV
T. Hawk is the only character on our list to make Capcom’s shortlist. So in theory, had anyone actually voted for him, he should have been in Street Fighter IV.

Why He Isn’t
Let’s ignore T. Hawk’s F-Troop routine for a moment to talk about his gameplay. In short, he combined Zangief’s complicated special moves, Sagat’s unwieldiness, and a sleeveless Canadian tuxedo. I have terrible childhood memories of selecting T. Hawk on our Super Nintendo versions of SSFII, only to have 5’5” Cammy knock the wind out of his longhouse.

Memories like that stick with you forever, so let’s hope SFIV’s new challengers don’t disappoint – check back in 10 years to see if we’re griping about “that goddamn Crimson Viper” by the time Street Fighter V hits the Xbox 1080, Zii, and Atari Jaguar 2.

Related links:

Street Fighter IV's Dress Rehearsal
Video Game-Grade Pretension: Not For Street Fighter?
Play Street Fighter in Youtube
Finally: Playing Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter II HD Remix With Seth Killian

Up All Night With Jaleco: Never the Best, But Never Forgotten

John Constantine — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Despite the solid gold righteousness of Barack Obama’s inauguration, this day’s still a little sad. As Joe noted, Jaleco Holdings has sold off their game developer/publisher subsidiary Jaleco to Korean MMO house Game Yarou and taken their leave of gaming for good. Ducking out of the videogame business because of "increasing competition (…) in the videogame market" isn’t an especially surprising move for a c-list – close to d-list really – publisher, but it’s still disconcerting to see a member of the old vanguard get shut down. Joe’s timeline of Jaleco is pretty thorough, but I wanted to make special note of a few other games they brought to the world. Let’s be honest: no Jaleco game, whether it was one they just published or one they created, could be considered one of the all time greats. But many of them were a hell of a lot of fun, and others were just plain freaking weird. All four of the following are perfect Up All Night candidates: they may or may not play that well, but they are trashy as all hell. Here’s to you, Jaleco.

Tuff E Nuff – SNES

Like Totally Rad, Tuff E Nuff is notable for its totally sweet name alone, but it earns extra points for being a decent one on one fighter in an age lousy with Street Fighter II wannabes. Tuff E Nuff is unassuming at first, revealing its merits slowly. The quality music, the solid character design, and the game’s story mode – which actually includes some character and skill leveling – are all charmers. It's story is suitably absurd and awesome.

Vampire Hunter D and Speed Racer - Playstation

Jaleco didn’t disappear entirely during the 32/64-bit console cycle. They just spent their time publishing games based on peculiar anime licenses. Most every other Japanese company was making PS1, Saturn, and N64 games based on internationally popular 90s anime like Cowboy Bebop and Gundam Wing. Jaleco, meanwhile, was making games out of properties decades past their prime. Vampire Hunter D, an action game in the Resident-Evil-tank-controls mode, and Speed Racer, a meat-and-potatoes racer based on the vintage cartoon, are both a bit crap. But they were still very playable back in 1999 and were, to the young anime nerd, mana from heaven when they came out in the US. VHD is actually still worth picking up if you have a soft spot for PS1 horror games.

Illbleed – Dreamcast

Carrier wasn’t Jaleco’s last hurrah in the States. That honor goes to Illbleed. Illbleed is loud, garish, ugly, and it controls like crap. It’s also hilarious, a gory, inappropriate mess, like the digital equivalent of a Troma movie. It’s technically a survival horror game, as you’re chief goal is to survive while the game tries to scare you, but it switches things up from the usual combat-plus-limited-resources model of the era. Illbleed is most often about identifying traps in the environment, utilizing different sense gauges (sight, hearing, smell, and “sixth sense”) to avoid them. It’s much better in theory than in execution, but still, A for effort.

Related links:

Mourning the End of Jaleco
Up All Night: Blackthorne
Up All Night: Bad Dudes
Up All Night: Nightmare Creatures

10 Games Nadia Played In 2008 Instead Of Working: Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD etc.

Nadia Oxford — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 05:13:00 GMT

If you visit my living room (cookies are available), you will hear “HADOOOKEN, HADOOOKEN, HADOOOKEN” and “'DOKEN 'DOKEN 'DOKEN”* coming from my television box. It might be an alarming string of nonsense to an outsider, but for a Street Fighter II fan, it means all is right in the world.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix has caused me a lot of pain because I've written a lot about it and been forced to type its impossibly long name over and over. Certain aspects about the game also irritate hardcore Street Fighter II scholars and it make me feel inadequate because I really enjoy the game. Am I not the Street Fighter II ninja I once thought I was?

No. No, it's the anal fans who are wrong. I can understand why someone might be upset at the “rebalanced” Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix if they're at all interested in tourney fighting; tweaks and twocks to games as in-depth as Super Street Fighter II Turbo are not taken lightly. They often spur eruptions and it takes some time for the ground to settle and cool again.

In the meantime, the rest of us can sit back and enjoy a great fighting game redone with bitchin' artwork by Udon Studios. I like Udon a lot, but it might be bias because they're based in Toronto and tend to slip little references to the city once in a while. I don't know what the bus driver's reaction was when he picked up every Street Fighter character, but given the general attitude of TTC drivers, he was probably irate to some degree.

*This is Ken.

Related Links:

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix C-C-Combo Makers
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is Too Big For Me
Why I Like Street Fighter Continuity

Why I Like Street Fighter Continuity

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:26:00 GMT

First, you must watch this trailer for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Capcom/Udon probably couldn't have chosen a better licensed song even if God demanded it.

Oh oh, Chun-Li got one of those annoying chain letters. You'd better keep that going, dear, or else great misfortune might fall upon your family. Wait--oops. Shit. Sorry.

Boys and girls, I'm here to talk about your urges to follow Street Fighter continuity. Do you feel a prick of annoyance when people pronounce Ryu's name as "Rye-oo?" Do you like eagerly informing the person sitting next to you on the bus that Ken and Guile are actually brothers-in-law? Do you lament out loud about the tribulations of T Hawk in the middle of conference calls?

It's okay. These urges are natural and normal and all part of being a Street Fighter enthusiast--especially one who's still kind of bad at actually playing the game.

Some smart person once said something about familiarity breeding contempt, but as the years have gone by for Street Fighter, I somehow feel closer to its goofy cast. They're all way out there, but still lovable. Guile's always moody and troubled, Ryu's just moody, Blanka wants his mommy and Cammy's just a basket case with a creaky porch and fifty cats in her future.

Giving the characters families and occasionally visiting those families is a smart move on Capcom's part, too. Not only do we become attached to the characters, we get to know their wives, their children and any bears they might happen to bed with (Zangief). It gives the roster a human touch, but they're hardly boring normal people. None of you have dads who wear skull necklaces, right? If in fact you do and you're in trouble of a measure you can't speak about, just leave "abc" in the comments and I'll try to help.

For the record, I think Ken's son, Mel, is adorable. Where do I send gifts?

Related Links:

Street Fighter IV's Fighting Spirit in Painstaking Detail
Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix C-C-Combo Makers
Street Fighter IV In North American Arcades

Finally: Playing Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter II HD Remix With Seth Killian

John Constantine — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

If someone, some mad man or woman, decided one day that they had tired of hunting big game across the world, tired of hunting for basic thrills in defying death, and decided that the only thing left on Earth to hunt was 61FPS bloggers, well, we’d be pretty easy prey. A simple process: set a trap out in the woods, say a leaf-covered pit, and place a small box in the center of the trap as bait. Write the words “street” and “fighter” in conjunction on said box. Not even a full day later, this theoretical hunter would find me sitting in the bottom of the pit, pawing at the box, wondering aloud why I can’t make it do a proper dragon punch. We like Street Fighter here, a lot, and we’ve been waiting very patiently to play both of its latest incarnations. We’ve been thwarted in earlier attempts to get our greasy mitts on Street Fighter IV and were given only a teasing sample of HD Remix back in June. But yesterday, the wait ended with a hearty walkthrough of both, courtesy of Street Fighter guru and Capcom Community Commandant, Seth Killian.

Both HD Remix’s director, Dave Sirlin, and IV’s lead, Yoshinori Ono, have made it clear that both games were made with the express purpose of both renewing Street Fighter as a cultural force and making the fundamental, genre-defining play as accessible as it possible without sacrificing its versatility and depth. This much is clear: they have succeeded. When we sat down with Killian, he immediately began explaining SFIV’s new focus attacks. A variation on Street Fighter III’s parry system that does away with delicate memorization and timing in favor of ease and readability, focus attacks are slow-activating moves unique to each character that allow a brief moment of invincibility before landing a strong and flashy attack. They offer the same opportunity to change a round’s offense/defense dynamic (and come with the same risks) as parries, but can be executed by anyone with hands. Just wait for your opening and press both medium attack buttons, and you’re good to go. Even if the language “medium attack” means nothing to you, all you have to know is to press the two in the middle.

As far as the way the game handles, it’s a little bit different than you might expect. The characters are all significantly larger than they’ve been in the past, and they feel just a touch heavier, but they’re by no means slow. When trying out luchador El Fuerte, one of IV’s new fighters, Killian took the prototype arcade stick to demonstrate Fuerte’s signature moves, the majority of them based around running and wall-jumping. It looked intimidatingly complex and fast as the wrestler bolted about the screen, rushing up to Sakura and placing her in a fluid flying headlock or body slam. But, when I was back in control, the series’ renewed accessibility was on full display; all of the moves demoed were easy to execute but never felt automatic, a perfect balance of effortlessness and skill. That balance is essential to IV’s success, as sacrificing the reward that comes from mastery would ruin the game. Even each strike in the flashy Ultra combos, Killian told us, have hit-specific properties.

Then there’s HD Remix, which is exactly what you think it is: Super Street Fighter II Turbo, but blindingly gorgeous. The extra time spent on making new sprites and backgrounds as beautiful as they are has definitely justified the game’s multiple delays. Most impressive, though, is the simplified controls. Sirlin’s initiative to ease the timing on special move inputs has yielded incredibly positive results. (I wasn’t struggling to pull off dragon punches here.) More than anything else, the game is more adept at interpreting your intent now. Some moves, like Cammy’s hooligan throw, have been completely remapped, making them valid components of strategy rather than a mid-fight accident. I did wonder why they chose to make her breasts noticeably bigger, but I’m also not complaining.

HD Remix is all but done, and should be out in November, followed closely by the Xbox 360 and PS3 edition of IV in early ’09. I’m happy to tell you, they have been worth waiting for.

Related links:

Street Fighter IV’s Fighting Spirit, In Painstaking Detail
The Street Fighter IV Boxart: A Warning of Things to Come
61FPS Q&A: David Lloyd and Larry Oji of OC ReMix on the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack
Street Fighter HD Makes Me Freak Out
Street Fighter IV in NYC and We've Got Proof This Time
Bringing Sexy Back: Street Fighter Dress-Up Party!

The Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack - An Inside Look

Peter Smith — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

In this exclusive follow-up to our interview with Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix soundtrack producers David "djpretzel" Lloyd and Larry "Liontamer" Oji, djpretzel himself gives us a breakdown of four tracks from the game:

E. Honda 'Dosu-Koi'
djpretzel

"This was the track that I set my sights on early in the process. McVaffe has had an excellent mix of this track on OCR for a long while, modeled after Madonna's song 'Music,' but Capcom weren't feeling it for in-game usage, so I decided to take a shot. My initial version was way too aggressive, and got the hundred-hand slapdown itself, but I went back to the drawing board and did something mellower, with more of an emphasis on Asian instrumentation. There's shamisen, koto, shakuhachi, AND taiko in there, so it's got the 'big four' of Japanese instruments (more or less) and is more appropriate to the sumo bath house setting."

Guile 'Combat and Service'
Big Giant Circles, Justin R. Coleman

"Jimmy Hinson, alias Big Giant Circles, put together a really kicking take on Guile's theme, which is definitely one of the classics off the soundtrack. Capcom generally dug what he was doing, but were iffy on the lead synthesizer sound, and wanted something different. Jimmy got Justin to lay down an electric guitar lead that added some rock edge to the more electronic backdrop, achieving a good blend that Capcom gave the green light."

Ken / Online Menu 'Clamato Fever'
AE, Prozax

"While Sixto Sounds did the version of Ken's stage that's actually used in the game, Capcom wanted something special just for the online menus and the title screen, since users spend a good amount of time setting up matches, checking rankings, and tweaking options. Alex Esquivel (AE) and Dan Orosz (Prozax) put together an alternate take on the Ken theme that works perfectly for this context. The first time I fired up the beta and heard it, I just smiled — they nailed it! As an interesting side note, AE learned about the game through other channels and contacted Capcom directly, and was a little surprised to be redirected to Shael, Malcos and I to coordinate his involvement. Everything worked out, though, and I'm glad Alex and Dan were included in the long lineup of OC ReMix artists."

Zangief 'Red Cyclone'
The Grammar Club

"Shael Riley's been mixing humor, VGM, rock, and anything else he cares to throw in for a long time now, and his latest project is The Grammar Club, a band that's been making waves with their album Bremelanotide. The fellows put together a rock arrangement of Zangief's theme that's unique on the soundtrack for being a little less refined and more in-your-face, New York garage style. When I think Zangief, I certainly don't think 'refined,' so this ballsier type of production worked really well."

61FPS Q&A: David Lloyd and Larry Oji of OC ReMix on the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack (Part 2)

Peter Smith — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

What are some of your favorite game soundtracks? Favorite composers?
djpretzel: Yuzo Koshiro, Dave Wise, Yasunori Mitsuda, Tokuhiko Uwabo, and Koji Kondo are all amazing... Super Castlevania IV, Revenge of Shinobi, Lunar (Sega CD version!!), Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Final Fantasy VI , Mega Man II, and Super Mario Galaxy are my favorite game scores at the moment.

Larry Oji: Favorite soundtracks and composers tend to go hand in hand. I'm a big fan of Koji Kondo's work on the Super Mario series, Masato Nakamura's on the Sonic the Hedgehog series (Sonic 3 & Knuckles, though not his, was excellent too), Alph Lyra for the Street Fighter II series, David Wise for Donkey Kong Country and Battletoads, Kazunaka Yamane for the Double Dragon series, and Yuzo Koshiro for the Streets of Rage series. That covers a lot of the games I played as a kid. Since learning more about the history of game music, I love so much stuff now, I can't even rattle it off. But my second-favorite composer, little known in the States, is Yasuhisa "Yack" Watanabe. His stuff is a lot more known in Japan, including as a member of Taito's Zuntata group, but almost no one tries to arrange his material; it's pretty far out there, so I can understand why. Sometimes his stuff doesn't resonate with me, but he's put out some incredible compositions. Then my personal favorite is British composer Tim Follin, whose nearly two-decade career composing for games was unparalleled, as far as what I've personally enjoyed. Check out his compositions for Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Solstice, Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge and Silver Surfer. He always strove for creative techniques and cool textures with his chiptunes. Plus, his modern soundtracks like Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future and Lemmings for the PSP were equally impressive. I've been slowly plugging away at a small OC ReMix album project paying tribute to his work, so before the end of this year, Dirge for the Follin should finally be out there, lamenting the fact that he retired from the industry.

Do you prefer the old-school chiptune style, or are you more into the CD-audio present?
djpretzel: I prefer the melodies and compositional approach of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras coupled with more modern production aesthetics; in other words, I like slick production, but only when it's paired up with a great melody. Which is not to say that game composers of today aren't writing great melodies, just that the limitations of earlier consoles meant that almost every piece needed to survive on compositional strength as opposed to production values.

Larry Oji: I've got no major preference. The only bias I have is that I grew up with chiptunes, so there's going to be some nostalgia pushing me to those. But modern stuff holds up a lot better to active listening. Either way. [pauses] Was that a cop out? ... All right, let's go with modern stuff. I actually prefer the melodies that were written in the chiptune days. But modern music has the potential for great writing as well, combined with higher quality sounds. Some fans feel there's an inherent compositional quality trade-off in newer videogame music compared to the older stuff, but I believe the best of the modern stuff is simply more elusive. Besides, people tend to gloss over the fact that not every chiptune was amazing back then either.

What do you think of the recent trend towards contextual music? In old Zelda, you'd just have a melody looping for the whole time you were in a dungeon. Now, you often just have ambient effects and then an "action" motif when you approach an enemy.
djpretzel: Well, I think most good game music, even very old stuff, is still contextual on some level — it still makes sense for the environment. But more recently the focus/buzz has been on making that contextuality of a more real-time, responsive nature, as opposed to the loops you mention. In essence, this makes the experience more cinematic, with the score reacting to players' actions just like a well-cued Hollywood soundtrack would. For FMV sequences in games, obviously, this is nothing new and has been the standard for years. The challenge is in maintaining that very polished interactivity once a user's actions become unpredictable. There are different ways of accomplishing this, including triggered motifs like you mention. I think it's all very interesting and exciting, but I also think we need to take a step back once in awhile and remember that games are a different medium from movies, and that emulating them is an option, but not the only option. Who's to say that looped melodies a la Zelda and older 8-bit titles don't make complete sense for certain games or genres? Game creators are creating interactive worlds... those worlds can resemble a film experience, and if that's the goal, then responsive, interactive scores are perfect. But the true art of game creation, to me, is remembering that there aren't any limits, that conventions of all other mediums can and should be bent or broken, and thus I think too much emphasis on targeting a cinematic experience could be dangerous. In essence, I think this trend is very positive, so long as it expands the arsenal of approaches to music in games, rather than narrows it.

How about the shift from short melodies to more expanded or moodier compositions? The difference between, y'know, Zelda II's Palace theme and Ocarina of Time's Forest Temple theme?
djpretzel: This is totally natural; audio and music have progressed alongside graphics and other technical aspects of console hardware and gaming, and more ornate and varied compositions flow from those progressions. With Ocarina, you've no longer got a limited palette of bright colors on screen, you've got a fully 3D world, and it'd be odd if the music didn't match. This sometimes means the number of "hummable" tracks on a game soundtrack is reduced in favor of more ambient, atmospheric fare, but it's usually right for the game, and composers like Koji Kondo in particular can almost always hit a balance between "song" or theme tracks and more environmental, BGM stuff.

How did you meet up with Capcom on Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix?
djpretzel: OCR is mostly about individual mixes, but every once in awhile we release album projects, where artists get together and focus on a specific game, composer, etc. We've released albums for Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country and most notably Final Fantasy VII with our Voices of the Lifestream album in 2007. Shael Riley and Stephen Malcom-Howell (a.k.a. Malcos), two veteran OC ReMixers, put together an album of Super Street Fighter II Turbo mixes called Blood on the Asphalt back in 2006. Capcom found the album online and contacted Shael, who in turn referred them to me. At first we were actually suspicious of being Punk'd or something, since it was such an amazing opportunity, but once we confirmed it was legit, we obviously jumped at the chance.

The HD Remix soundtrack is based on Blood on the Asphalt, but it's not exactly the same. What are some of the changes?
Larry Oji: Firstly, I definitely need to stress that the remixers didn't do any mere drag-and-drop jobs on these. A lot of the pre-existing arrangements selected for inclusion on HD Remix were full-on, four-to-five-minute arrangements with original sections, solos and so forth, which doesn't fly in Street Fighter II. So everything's been edited down to a more standard sixty-to-ninety seconds and looped, focusing on the core of each theme to work like the old-school themes did. Dave had to handle relaying all of the desired modifications handed down by Capcom to the artists and got a variety of requests. This is where he gets music-nerdy!

djpretzel: In addition to length and formatting requirements, Capcom had some very specific feedback, and some comments that were more general in nature. In certain instances they wanted individual instruments changed out, tempo increased by a few beats per minute, or other modifications to production that were very easy for artists to implement. Other times, they were looking more for a different feel, or more subjective changes to texture, which were more challenging. We were blessed with a pretty long development cycle, so we had a lot of time to present different versions/permutations of each track and go through an iterative process.

Where are you getting the themes that aren't originally from the album? Are these all new remixes?
Larry Oji: Along with eight edits of mixes from Blood on the Asphalt, three of the seventeen character themes are modified versions of other OC ReMixes. That left six themes with all-new takes, as well as nearly all new material for the fast versions of all the character themes, character endings and other assorted themes, with everything provided by our crew of remixers. Gotta give props to José E. Felix (a.k.a. José the Bronx Rican) for coming through in a big way with nearly every ending theme besides providing both the Dee Jay and Vega themes!

What've your production duties been like on the soundtrack?
Larry Oji: I'm a detail-oriented person, more behind the scenes. Dave functioned as the lead producer and director for the soundtrack, serving as the point of contact with game producer Rey Jimenez and Capcom to keep things streamlined on the communications side. He handled the legal stuff, as well as ensuring Capcom had all of the remixers' latest work as things progressed. I handled contacting remixers that were difficult to get a hold of in order to secure some pre-existing tracks, recruited and provided critique for some of the new music, and helped keep track of smaller details with all of our personnel. Even stuff like preparing our credits list for the game and getting new track titles for all of the remixed themes, I enjoy making sure the finer things are in place at the ground level, while Dave works with the big picture. If you had told me back when I played Street Fighter II in my friend's basement that I'd be in the credits of a game in the series nearly two decades later, I wouldn't believe it. It's an honor to help coordinate something that will always be a part of a historic franchise, especially Street Fighter, the one that truly pulled me into game music beyond being a casual fan.

djpretzel: Working with Capcom was truly awesome. We brought our fandom — the way we express ourselves through mixing/arrangement — full circle, right back to a commercial product that is itself a remix of an absolutely classic game... it's very meta, when you think about it. I think it's something that could only have happened in a post-internet environment, with a company that was groovy enough to realize their fans could play a meaningful role. Mods, user-generated content, etc. have been around awhile, but I think there's often an artificial wall — "this is the official content, this is the fan stuff" — that segregates things. This project tears down that wall, at least for game music, and integrates the two, without emphasizing the distinction. I think that's a fantastic precedent to be setting, and I'm proud OverClocked ReMix was involved!

Click here for Part 1! And check back tomorrow for a detailed look at the four all-new themes on the SSF2THD soundtrack!

61FPS Q&A: David Lloyd and Larry Oji of OC ReMix on the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack (Part 1)

Peter Smith — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Here at 61FPS, we couldn't be more excited about the upcoming Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. So it's with great pleasure that we present our in-depth Q&A with David "djpretzel" Lloyd and Larry "Liontamer" Oji, of the definitive game-music remix site, OC ReMix. In a deliciously fan-friendly turn of events, OC ReMix was tapped to produce the music for SSF2THD — and we've got the inside scoop on this glorious reimagining of one of the greatest game soundtracks ever. We also took the opportunity to chat with these gurus on a wide range of game-music-related topics. Enjoy!

David, can you tell us about founding OC ReMix?
David W. Lloyd (djpretzel): Way back in 1999, I was making a 3D comic strip dedicated to the emulation scene called "OverClocked" — a few episodes were actually pretty funny, and it played a part in popularizing the whole "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" craze, but it was also a way for me to get better at Photoshop and 3D Studio MAX. I wanted something I could work on for music as well, to get better at composing, arranging and producing; I had this idea to do videogame arrangements of my own, but also to open it up to others. At the time, there were sites which were specific to Commodore 64 games, and which focused on techno mixes, but nothing that was more open-ended. I wanted a website that encouraged jazz, classical, rap, rock and anything else, in addition to electronica genres, and which allowed arrangements from computer games, console games, handheld games and arcade games alike. There was nothing like that in existence, so I figured I'd start something myself. "OverClocked ReMix" started as a side-project to "OverClocked" the comic strip, but eventually became a hundred times bigger. In the early days, I was like a door-to-door salesman, emailing people asking for their permission to post their mixes on the site, but once it grew large enough, people started sending us stuff. Eventually there were so many submissions that we needed to create a judges panel and more official guidelines/standards, which really helped clarify what we're all about — interpretive arrangements, not just the original with drum loops on top. The rest, as they say, is history!

Larry, how did you get involved with the OC ReMix community?
Larry Oji (Liontamer): I love hearing stories on how people have found the site, and I share mine when I can in order to encourage people to check out everything OCR has. I did college radio at Emory University 's WMRE in Atlanta, where I loved playing video game music on my shows alongside mainstream music, mostly Britpop stuff. A friend of mind as well as a casual gamer and fellow DJ, Matt Kertz, saw that I played videogame music and recommended that I check out what was then remix.overclocked.org in early 2002. That was my first exposure to the site. The site was only two years old at the time and had more than 500 mixes by that point; I downloaded about thirty, sticking only with the few games I grew up with, and was extremely happy. But I didn't follow the site closely or try anything from games I had no history with, which was a huge mistake.

Luckily for me, I told my best friend Joe Mauri about the site and he downloaded everything OC ReMix had. If he hadn't done that, I wouldn't be where I am today. That summer, I sat down at his computer, listened to all the free remixes one by one over three days, and was simply amazed at how creative everything was. Even the games I wasn't familiar with had some amazing themes that were being remixed, and I ended up doing the research and downloading chiptunes of the original tracks to better understand what inspired the remixes. So it was a great crash course in the history of videogame music, and from that point on I was hooked. I shifted my radio show's format to videogame music exclusively, and volunteered for the site by filling in the database with info on remixers, composers and songs. I also grew as a music critic to the point where I was invited to join the site's judges panel in July 2004, where I help evaluate submitted material. Listening to music and spreading the word on OCR is one of the most enjoyable jobs I can think of.

Let's talk about game music in general. What got you into game music?
djpretzel: My earliest VGM memory would be the happy little tunes in Smurfs for the Colecovision and Dream House for the C64. The use of the Peter Gunn theme in Spy Hunter, also for the C64, was pretty classic as well. But it was really the Sega Master System that got me hooked — I loved the music from Alex Kidd, Shinobi and Space Harrier so much that I recorded the output of the console to tape and, sadly, did my own lame seven-year-old's version of DJing between tracks. To the best of my knowledge, those tapes are long gone, which I'm more than okay with from a human-dignity perspective, but they nevertheless represented my first steps into actually interacting with VGM.

Larry Oji: My earliest days of gaming were with the NES with a tiny bit of Master System. The SNES and Sega Genesis came a little later, so all of those systems planted the seeds. I didn't own too many titles, but I loved a lot of the soundtracks I heard. Super Mario Bros. 3 was the epitome of an excellent game and Koji Kondo's music from it was no exception. The first Donkey Kong Country on the SNES was amazing to me as well, and I loved the Streets of Rage and Sonic the Hedgehog series on the Genesis side. I can't forget Street Fighter II either. That was first in a long line of Street Fighter games that stuck with me, even when I didn't realize how immersed in game music I'd be down the line. It goes without saying, but the best games truly have a synergy going on between the gameplay and soundtrack that provides the total package.

What do you love about game music?
Larry Oji: The music from the games I grew up with had some of the best melodies and hooks imaginable. And the tunes had such range in terms of genres. As a kid, I obviously didn't think about it on a scholarly level, but I subconsciously latched onto the depth that videogame music possessed. Think about the range when you compare the soundtracks of Super Mario Bros. to Double Dragon to Road Rash. The 16-bit era, especially the SNES, was a big step up in realizing game music's potential, thanks to the wider array of sounds and more complex textures. The best composers really didn't put those extra resources to waste. The thing I love most is that game music is a medium and not a genre; game music can, and often does, involve any and all genres, so you get a flavor for all sorts of styles if you keep your ears and mind open. The fact that many game themes are malleable and can be reinterpreted makes me love game music that much more. Every time I hear an OC ReMixer take a theme and transform it into something fresh that I wouldn't expect, it validates being a fan of the medium.

djpretzel: ...what he said. It's worth mentioning that I'm a big fan of soundtracks in general — film, television, anime, etc. — and that contextual music that's part of a larger work always has a certain appeal for me. With almost all other mediums, though, it's a linear, non-interactive experience, so you only hear certain themes once or twice. With game music, because it's interactive, and because you can end up hearing the same piece ad infinitum, I think there's a much stronger mental association between the music and what it represents. A classic example for me would be the first town theme from Lunar for the Sega CD — every time I hear it, I can envision the town layout in great detail and feel like I'm there. You can get that type of strong association with film scores and even non-soundtrack material, sure, but I find it happens more often with VGM. This of course requires that you've actually played the game the music is from, though, which isn't necessary at all just to enjoy the music at face value!

Click here for Part 2!

Soul Calibur IV: An Exercise in Brand Dilution

Cole Stryker — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Dear Namco, and developers of fighting games et al,

After viewing the recently leaked cover for Soul Calibur IV, I feel it's time we had a little talk. This "everything but the kitchen sink" approach is why I haven't been really, truly interested in a conventional fighter in over a decade. There are more egregious offenders (Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 boasted 42 playable characters), but really, Darth and Yoda?

This begs two questions:

1. Grasping at straws, are we?
2. Why aren't those lightsabers slicing through the swords?

Throwing crossover characters into the mix is nothing new, especially in this genre. Soul Calibur II caused a stir by including Nintendo's Link, Todd McFarland's Spawn, and Tekken's Heihachi for console exclusives. Fanboys love crossovers, as evidenced by the collective squeals resulting from Solid Snake's inclusion in Super Smash Bros Brawl. It's a marketing ploy, one that probably yields short term gains. But what about long-term brand loyalty? The anticipation for Soul Calibur II was huge, not so much with Soul Calibur IV. Brawl has blown the franchise's load, so to speak. Will the next Smash Bros game sell if it features Homer Simpson and Krang? Game mechanics matter in the long term, gimmicks don't.

You could say the same about every fighting game that has relied on constant expansion of breadth but little of depth -- and that's why I'll probably be playing Street Fighter II on the Virtual Console this July instead.