Duck Hunt on an LCD TV

My friend just lent me a copy of Duck Hunt for the NES and a Zapper. Unfortunately, the light gun doesn't work on our big LCD HD TV. Apparently this is because refresh rates are handled in a different way on LCD screens. In fact, all NES games looks quite bad on our TV - much like a pixellated JPEG - probably because of some anti-alias nonsense. Here's to CRT TVs.

Floods

Over the last few days you might have heard about the floods in the Yorkshire area of the UK. It's been pretty bad for a lot of people around here. Fortunately, my house has been fine. It's strange that some people are wildly affected just because of where their house is located.

I think the cause of the problem has just been extremely heavy rain, which caused a lot of local rivers to burst and flood low-lying areas. Apparently, the biggest clean-up operation in peacetime Britain is currently under way. Some houses and shops very near to the town centre have been ruined, Meadowhall has had to close and lots of people are saying they can't ever remember anything like this happening before.

It's weird that something like this hasn't really happened in recent times. It's also strange that with all our capabilities we couldn't accurately predict this, and do something about it. Or maybe this was unstoppable, and that's even weirder to think about. And it's summer. I hear there's even more rain to come at the weekend too. I hope it doesn't all get any worse.

Beat 2007

I attended an event at the Crucible theatre yesterday called Beat 2007. It was a drumming exhibition, organised by local drummer Toni Canelli. It was good fun, with a drum corps, drumming competition and clinic from a guy called Pete Biggins. Some of the younger kids who entered the competition were actually better than me, and it reminded me again that I need to start taking lessons sometime soon. But the clinic was amazing. I'd never been to a live clinic before, but this guy put on the best drumming performance I've ever seen. He played a ten minute solo to start off, with some mind-blowing fills and timekeeping, then went on to talk a little about playing with a click track.

Today I'd intended to go to an automobile exhibition in Sheffield. It's not normally my kind of thing, but this one had the actual cars from Back To The Future and the 1989 Batman film, the De Lorean and the Batmobile. Would've been cool, but no-one I knew wanted to go.

The Police

I've recently been listening to The Police a lot. My family has a greatest hits album of Sting and The Police, so I'm used to hearing them, but as my appreciation and understanding of music increases I've been listening to them much more out of choice.

Their songs are incredibly catchy, lyrically and musically, and the band have a unique sound, unparalleled during the 70s, 80s and now. Tracks often have quite a dreamy, soft feel, probably due to the bass and guitar sounds and reggae-influenced playing styles - a good description I've heard used is "soft punk". But this is contrasted with the sharp, energetic drumming of Stewart Copeland.

I remember hearing before that Copeland was one of the world's most recognised drummers, and when I was younger I couldn't really see why (I also remember hearing Roxanne for the first time when I was a kid and thinking the song was really boring). I thought his playing was inconsistent and all over the place, but now I can see why people respect his style so much. Copeland grew up in the Middle East, and this apparently contributed to his unconventional sense of rhythm present in many Police songs. In fact, unusually for a drummer, Copeland formed the band and was an important creative force. From listening to The Police I've tried to implement some of Copeland's flair and emphasis on accents into my own style.

I recently saw the program on stadium rock which the BBC showed as part of their Seven Ages of Rock series. I didn't realise The Police had basically been the biggest band on the planet back in the 80s, something that contributed to their rather sudden break-up. It's no wonder their current reunion tour has sold out all over the place. I hope the band continue to tour together, as I'd like to see them one day.

Further reading: Stewart Copeland Wikipedia article and Seven Ages of Rock page

Podcasts

I've been hosting my podcast, the Gamewave Podcast, for a year now. We released our first episode on the 20th June 2006, although it seems like I've been doing it for longer. We started off recording one show a week then cut it down to two, and now that my co-host Mike is leaving Sheffield I'm starting a new version of the show after the summer. Recently though we recorded a show with our American friends Tim and Tony, who host a podcast called the VGM Megacast. While we play original video game style music on the Gamewave Podcast Tim and Tony play video game covers.

We recorded the show over Skype and as we listen to each others' podcasts it was great to talk to each other and do a show together. We played both video game covers and original VG music and had a great time talking, mainly about US and UK culture. Check out the show at the VGM Megacast site or Betamod Radio.

Reaction to more recent Super Smash Bros. Brawl updates

Recently over at the Super Smash Bros. Brawl blog we discovered that you'll be able to play SSBB in four different ways - with the Wii Remote, Wii Remote and Nunchuk, Wii Classic controller or GameCube controller. This is a great idea and I think I'll prefer using a more traditional joypad rather than the Wii Remote for this game.

Fox McCloud has a cool new outfit (I really hope that they include Falco as a playable character again), there's a cool piece of Metroid music and the Yoshi's Island stage looks really cool too. The stage is in the style of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island for the SNES and changes, cycling through the four seasons. It'd be cool if the cycle matched that of the real world.

By the time this game is done it's going to be so embellished with cool stuff to make such an awesome Nintendo experience.

Recording

My band, Spheres of Chaos, have just started the recording of our next release. Well, we set up the drums today with mics and recording will commence tomorrow. This is the third time my band have recorded ourselves, and I'm sure there'll be a great end product by the time summer has finished.

終わりです

I had my last exam of the academic year yesterday, and I think it's just about hit me that I've finished university for a few months now. After the exam there was a barbecue, and it was good to see my friends (and teachers) before the summer break starts. It's a shame that everyone goes home for the summer, arguably the best part of the year. And as I live in the same city where I go to university, I just stay here. I need this break though, as this year has been fairly taxing. Saying that, I will still need to practice Japanese over the holidays, especially the kanji, as I find it can all fall out of your brain so easily.

And I can't rest just yet - starting next week my band are recording our next release, and I'm also recording drums for another project I'm involved in. When all that's done I hope to get back into video games this summer. Whilst I still have quite an active interest in video games I haven't actually had time to play them much this past year. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up some good titles for my DS, and I'm also planning to (finally!) get a Wii and a ton of games some time soon. Hopefully I won't end up getting bored this summer.

Reaction to recent Super Smash Bros. Brawl updates

The guys developing Super Smash Bros. Brawl have stayed true to their word. They've been posting constant updates regarding details within the upcoming game over at the SSBB website (mentioned in this post). Doing this raises awareness and anticipation of the game, but for a fan like me it's really interesting to see all these new levels, items and music from the game revealed.

The Final Smash item looks like it will add a whole new important gameplay concept to the game. Before, battles have mainly been about pummelling your opponent over and over until their damage is high enough to kick them off the screen. This new idea could change the whole way the game is played, hopefully in a positive way.

I'm pleased to see Delfino Plaza chosen as a level, and the fact that you fly down towards the town square whilst fighting makes it even cooler. We owned Super Mario Sunshine for the Gamecube a few years back. Though I never completed it I really enjoyed the game, one of the main reasons being the whole tropical setting and feel, so this stage should be fun.

There's also a nice little excerpt from a piece entitled Yoshi's Story: Ending. It's been produced by Kazumi Totaka, the composer who wrote the actual music for Yoshi's Story on the Nintendo 64. Although that game didn't go down as a Nintendo classic, it was a fun experience, at least when I was a kid. I was into Yoshi back then and I remember the game being really easy.

Up until the release of the game I might post reactions like this fairly often.

Exams

I had my first end of year exam yesterday. It was my East Asian Cinema exam, and it went OK. I'm sure I've passed, but the quality of my writing wasn't great. It's hard to articulate yourself well when you have minimal time and you're used to using a keyboard which allows for mistakes to be corrected. I only have one more exam left on Japanese language. It's much different to taking somewhere nearer 10 exams like at school.

Unfortunately this past week I've had to decide upon not going to Japan this summer. I'd been looking forward to going for quite a while, but when it came down to booking flights I just didn't have enough spare cash. I did plan all the finance out a while back, but for some reason it turned out that I'd have had to borrow quite a bit and then survive on not very much for a while. Oh well, I'm sure I can still enjoy summer over here.