Video Game Music: Pixel Journeys

Everyone needs some chill video game music to listen to, and that's why I am uploading 3 video game mix-tapes I've put together. They are the Pixel Journeys, and they are pretty chill.

The first one has a bunch of stuff: Sonic, Crono Trigger, Majora's Mask, we got all kinds of chill/trippy music here. Grab it here

 They next mix-tape is definitely more intense, but still plenty chill. We got us some Castlevania, Streets of Rage, and some F-Zero. Grab it here

Last but not anything even resembling least we've got #3. This one is crazy-chill and has got some funky beats. It's got some Mario, Sonic, DK, and of course Toe-Jam and Earl. Grab it here

Look at those high quality covers, Microsoft Paint FTW Haha! Hopefully I'll update the blog more often but probably not. Happy Jamming!

Bored With a Phone: Medieval Castle Defense

We've all been there. Some dude keeps rambling on about something you don't care about.
Or your riding the bus, and you checked facebook 10 minutes ago in class.
Maybe you're at some event and you've got to hang around for 3 more freaking hours and all the people there are weird as hell.

The bottom line is you're bored. And you have a phone on you.
That's why I'm creating the "Bored With a Phone" reviews. It's not really hard to find a game to pass the time if you're an Iphone or Android user, it can be hard to find a game worth playing for more than a few minutes though. Especially if your a broke college student who is no way in hell gonna pay $.99 for a steaming pile of crap app.

So without further ado: Medieval Castle Defense

This game is pretty chill. Basically these little dudes walk toward your castle and try to mess your shit up. You build some cannons that shoot at them as they walk toward you. If you wanna get fancy it's called a tower defense style game. If you survive all 10 waves or so whoopee, your on to the next level. As far as I can tell there's 8 worlds with about 5 levels per world. I've been playing it for a week or so and beat 3 worlds, so it will keep you entertained when stuff is boring for about 2 weeks or so.

 

For a free phone game, its got a pretty good range of little dudes and towers. You get 8 different towers I'm guessing, and they all do different stuff. Some attack a lot of people, some attack one person, some slow people down, and some just striaght fuck with em. You can upgrade the towers to do more damage, hit more people, get better range, etc. The bad peeps will attack with various villagers, soldiers, tanks, weird shaman guys, and WTF how am I supposed to kill that boss peoples.

The levels are fairly straight forward, the people march along a preset path and don't pull any tricky shit. After a while the game throws in multiple roads to mess with you, but it's no biggie. The simpleness makes it hard sometimes though, especially when the game doesn't give you enough money. The only way to get more money is to kill people so if everyone's running up and wailing on your castle things go downhill pretty fast. I've found the best way to go is to put the shotgun-style shoot at everyone towers where the bad dudes spawn, and put the single shot towers down the road.

All in all it's a chill game and its free so that's good too. It's only out on Android right now, but everything gets ported between Iphone and Android in a month or so anyway. Here's a link to it in the marketplace

Retro Recommendation: Fire Emblem

The Basics: Fire Emblem is easily one of the most chill Game Boy Advance games ever, and while that's not exactly saying much, Fire Emblem is still a kick-ass game. You fight through some levels strategy game style using little sprite people to beat the shit out of other sprite people. You get swords, lances, axes, bows, and some little trippy magic books. The game is simple enough to play chilled out of your mind, but challenging enough to piss you off again and again. (Screw you Eliwood) It's a great game for boring road trips too. But enough boring crap, time to play some Fire Emblem.

You start off on some boring plains with only one little sprite person. There's only two people to kill, but its supposed to be a tutorial mission, so just blaze right through it.

One thing you might do is go to options and change the the animation to style 2, which upgrades it from mega-crap to just plain old crap, but it doesn't really change much. Anyway kill that boss-man.

 

The next level you get 2 knight people, Kent and Sain. I recommend gives all of Kent's stuff to Sain, because Kent is a little prick who sucks. Then put Kent at the very back of the level, because you should save him to be a meat-shield on harder levels. Keep moving forward and killing stuff with Lyn and Sain. Keep in mind that if someone dies they're gone for good or you have to restart the level which will be a bitch-and-a-half later in the game.

The next level starts out with some doosh called Glass bitching about some sword. Put Kent at the back as usual and then use the people who don't suck to push forward and smash through the wall. Then use a lance to mess Glass up and take the sword. By now Lyn and Sain should be around level 4.

On next level you get a flying horse person and an archer. The horse person sucks, but the archer will eventually become one of the best people in the game, even though they just forgot one of the "L's" in "Will". Bastards. Just keep killing stuff, buy some weapons and then move up to the boss. If you want just stand 2 squares away and shoot arrows at him. Simple.

This level can be easy or a midly difficult. If you hole up in the fort and wait the bandit people out it's a cakewalk. If you run out and try to kill everything it might be a little hard. You also get Dorass but he really sucks, unless your using him as a meat-shield then's hes not too bad.

Next up the game introduces magic into the game. You get a dude who can shoot little fireballs and you get a healer. They are both pretty good, but the healer can't attack and there are better magic users. Use em if you want, and kill the boss with arrows or fireballs. You can also grab some long range weapons from the armory if you want.

The next stage starts off with some child molester looking guy running up and trying to do a bad thing. Then some horse guy runs up and shoots his ass. Boom-skees

You get two more new people, Rath and Matthew. Rath is a Nomad and if your not using Wil I would use him. Matthew is a thief and he can open doors and steal crap. Matthew can become one of the best people in the game, but he's weak initially. Move through the level and you will find a fancy robe thing, which will add 7 hp to any unit. I would use it on Lyn, Erk or Matthew. Anyway step on the little blue squares and try not to get run through by the boss. Kill him with the Mani-Kati, the armor-slayer, or magic.

Then you end up saving some guys castle, and then he acts like a little bitch and makes you fight your way to the capital instead of escorting you there. Then Rath leaves and comes with you. This is only about 5%-10% of the game, and I don't have the time or the patience to do the whole thing. And why your people seem crappy now, they will eventually change into better classes. Here's some of them:

Bottom line: Fire Emblem is a pretty chill game and it takes a while to beat. Good for passing time and you can play it on an Android phone, PC, or an old Gameboy. Download it here.

Chill Concept: Video Game Music

One of my favorite things to do when I'm chilling out or even (gasp) working is to listen to some classic video game music. If I'm chilling the music allows to just relax because the music is simple and upbeat. If I'm working the music keeps me entertained enough to work for hours, and the simpleness of it keeps me from getting distracted from my work. And one of the best parts is video game soundtracks are available for free almost anywhere on the web. Once again, its technically illegal to download these tracks, so download at your own risk. Of course, nobody really gives a damn about video game soundtracks, especially if it's from an older game. Here are some resources to get you started, happy jamming!

http://vgtunes.blogspot.com/ Rating: ***** This is a great go to site, it has music for almost any major game you could think of. Downloads are hosted at megaupload and mediafire.

http://www.google.com/  Rating **** Seriously just put in (nameofgame) + OST or soundtrack download, and you will probably find what your looking for.

http://ocremix.org/ Rating **** You won't find any actually soundtracks per se, but it is full of albums created by fans that recreate classic songs to sound like actual music. Great if your a legal prick or if you can't stand computer-ish sounding music.

http://www.emuparadise.org/ Rating ** A great site for anything semi-illegal relating to video games, but sketchy as hell. If you don't have a script blocker installed or don't know what a script blocker is, stay away.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit for Xbox 360

This game isn't very "chill", but it's fun as hell. Basically you either play as the racers or as the cops. The racers get to haul ass throughout several different modes such as 43 mile races and intense duels. However the game really shines in the hot pursuit mode, where you get spike strips, emp cannons, jammers and a turbo that will blow your freaking mind. You will need all of them though, as the cops get the spike strips as well as emp cannons, plus they get roadblocks and aerial support.

 Seriously, just try not to crash

 As always the Need for Speed team imports the best cars ever. The cars were laser-scanned so they are perfectly accurate. If your racing get to drive some of the best cars in the world, including the 2012 McLaren mp4-12c, a brand new car that is challenging Ferrari and Lamborghini for the best sports car in the world.

 

Its around 750k cheaper than McLaren's last car, but it's still one of the best cars in the world.

You also get to play as the cops, smashing racers off the road and causing untold amounts of damage, but I prefer the racers because that turbo is crazy awesome. Also the cops have a lot more BS missions in my opinion, like rapid response where you lose precious time by hitting stuff. Bah.

 Bad boys, whatcha want, watcha want, whatcha gonna do?

Bottom Line: It's definitely not a "chill" game, but these cars are wild and exotic so you really can't hold it against the game. In fact, you gain free turbo by driving crazy (Drifting, near misses, slip streaming, and wrecking cops to name a few things) so driving chill is 100% not recommended.

Mixtape Madness: Mac Miller - The Best Day Ever

Ok, so everyone needs some chill music to enjoy with their chill games, yes? Well here is a great mixtape that's chill as a cucumber. Mac Miller is an up and coming rapper from Pittsburgh, and he's pretty good. He's only 19 at the moment and he already has 4 mix-tapes and is signed with Rostrum Record. Grab it here.

Retro Recommendation: Sonic 3 & Knuckles

This is possibly one of the most chill games ever, in fact it's actually two amazing games in one. Back in the old days, the game cartridges for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic and Knuckles could "lock" together, which allowed you to play through both games continuously. (Kinda like Goku and Vegeta in DBZ)

Not quite as awesome, but you get the idea

This game is crazy fun and crazy simple. No sappy dialog, no freaking tutorial mission, and no bullshit objective. All you gotta do is keep moving and breaking stuff, and as long as you have at least one ring, you can get hit as much as you want. The 13 unique zones are as beautiful as it gets with 16-bit graphics and the music is upbeat and catchy. Each zone is fairly lengthy, consisting of two levels as well as a mid-boss and a final boss. Every zone also acts as a auto-save, so when you run out of lives you can continue without restarting the whole freaking game.

You get 3 characters to choose from, as well as the option to play as Sonic with a computer controlled Tails.(Or you can have a friend play as tails, but it really sucks because the the camera only follows Sonic and the game is way to fast to do anything really, however it can be helpful for a tough boss.)

Sonic is the blue guy, and he gets the power to run really fast as well as a shield that last for about half a second if you hit A in the air.

Tails is the yellow one, and he can fly/swim if you keep mashing A in the air. Personally I hate tails, dunno why.

Knuckles is pinky, and he has an offensive glide if you hold down A in the air, and you can use this to smash into enemies. Knuckles can also climb almost any wall by gliding into it.

Like I said before, gameplay is fairly simple: keep holding right, keep grabbing rings, and smash anything in your way. However the levels are anything but simple, you will have to deal with loop-de-loops, massive jumps, spirals, and many other obstacles that can only be traversed at high speeds. Or you could be a little punk and fly over everything as Tails.

 The above screenshot shows Knuckles running around Hydrocity, the second zone as well as the dreaded water level. You will have to either collect water bubbles for air (bottom-left) or find yourself a water shield that will give you an infinite supply of air and deflect basic projectiles (bottem-right).

 The next zone is the Marble Garden zone, which features tall mountains and blue skies. You can find these really cool little running platforms (bottom-right), that will allow anyone to fly across the level. Also the bad guy, Dr. Eggman, will show up and start a huge earthquake.

 This is the 8th zone, which is one huge flying battleship. You will have to navigate the giant engine rooms as well as make some pretty precarious jumps as it's pretty dang far back to the ground.

This shows the typical boss battle. Basically you find Eggman, break whatever crazy toy he's got, then free all the little animals. Simple, yet watching all the little animals dance around after you free them always feels good.

There are many ways to play this game, but the cheapest is to just download a genesis emulator and play it right on your PC. Simple, easy, and doesn't cost you dime. It's also technically illegal, but no one really cares. Another great way to emulate the game is via an android phone, just search for "Genesis Emulator" in the marketplace. Here is a link to the rom.