Frets on Fire

If you'd like to play something like Guitar Hero on the PC and for free take a look at Frets on Fire.

It's a Guitar Hero clone and the songs are created by the users (yes, you can find all the songs of the original Guitar Hero titles all over the place) and it's highly customizable. There are even MacOS X and Linux versions and a version you don't even need to install.

If you think it is not possible to enjoy the full awesomeness of Guitar Hero without having the guitar controller, then look at this!

I am hooked on this game yet again, though not being as geeky as it's supposed to be because you cannot hold a laptop's keyboard like that. It's really addictive because it's one of those games in which you know you can do it better than the last time and obviously you try again.

...and again.


....and then you notice it's 4:00 AM and you need to get up early on the next day.
(not that it happened to be of course!)

Scenemusic

A while ago I wrote a post about videogame music. It was not the only important kind of music in that period of my life. Another important presence and fuel was scenemusic. As it name kind of indicates it is music produced in the Demoscene subculture and it deserves a good listen. As demos, it's free.

Some of these musicians are really good at what they do and even though I don't know them all I leave you the links of my favorite ones.

Podcasts:
Surprise!Podcast This rocks so hard. The best podcast I know.
Hardread Podcast Also good but I haven't explored it much.

Musicians:
Little Bitchard I was a fan of a bunch of demoscene musicians. After looking at a list of this guy's aliases it turns out I am only a big fan of one!
Jeroen Tel Awesome 8bit sounds.

Collections:
Demovibes 80 minute compilations of the best scenemusic ready for burning on CDs. It's really good for people who are out of the scene.

Netlabel:
Enough Records Netlabel from fellow demoscener ps.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Videogame Music

One of the things that brought the joy of gaming to me was listening to old videogame tunes. I thought my fate was sealed and it had little to do with videogames. They brought me back. I was studying animation away from home, everyone thought I was happy, even myself. My goal was to be in an independent videogame team and help them develop games while I was there. Finish my degree with a few games to show, or at least some art that could be used in videogames.

I love videogames and after the first semester without playing due to the hard work and parallel projects, I snapped. I had to play and I had to be informed about what was going on. I got a second hand Nintendo DS and a few games. I figured out it was the only way to make the most of my waking hours. It was awesome for a while, then the second semester began.

Every shred of free time was snatched from my hands and I could do nothing to stop it. If you know me you already know that when I make something I give it my best. I wanted to finish my degree and be on a different level. I wanted to shine and I wanted to prove my parents I had made a wise choice on the degree. All my time was sucked into the degree.

No free time and soon my sleeping hours began to disappear. Just too much work. The only way I could contact with games was to do it while I was working and also in some of the most practical classes. Music was my way to fix that. I knew podcasts were a vehicle of it, so I searched around. They helped me to work and they helped me to rest.

They helped me.

They helped me to make a choice. Nintendo and videogame music helped me to better understand myself. Demoscene was quite important too, but that will be the subject of a few posts to come.

For Videogame music check these, they might just trigger something in you:
http://www.ocremix.org/
http://www.vgdj.net/
http://www.eightecs.com/infinitegamemusic/