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Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (8-bit Cover Album)

 

As a kid I didn’t know much about Elton John other than that video he released for “Candle in the Wind.”  For some reason I lumped it together with other songs I really despised at the time no real reason.  I had no idea it was part of an incredible album from 1973, I thought it was just some weird guy who liked to dress like a French aristocrat from the 1700s.  I would later gain appreciation for this song, particularly in the greater context of the album as a whole.

Click above to listen on YouTube  or .  . .

Download “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (8-bit Cover Album) on Google Play 

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The Problem with Research in Pokémon GO

I have been a huge booster of quest and research in Pokémon GO.  It’s the feature I was looking forward to for the longest.  Overall I’m happy with this addition but it doesn’t bring as much to the game as I had been hoping.

The pace with which new features and events have been coming to the game has been crazy over the past couple of months and that’s a very good thing.  At this time last year the game was so boring I was only playing for 5-10 minutes a day.  Now it’s hard to go an hour without checking in on the game to see what is happening.

Research added a great new element to the game.  The quest for Mew was cool but just too easy.  I completed it in a little over a week, doing it at a very leisurely pace.  Others completed it the day it was released.  The reason it was so easy is that for people who have been playing since day one most of the objectives were automatically accomplished.  The other ones, like transferring or evolving a few Pokémon, were incredibly easy.  Catching Ditto was probably the hardest part of the quest and that was more annoying than anything given it didn’t require anything other than dumb luck.

Some parts of in the special research would have been great had this feature existed since day one.  As a daily player for nearly two years it was a little disappointing.  If they make an element of quests be getting a gold Sinnoh medal, or evolving some rare Sinnoh region Pokémon then that will definitely seem like much more of a challenge.

I am currently sitting on 96 Lotad candies, and not a decent Lotad to evolve.  I’m excited any time I see one.  Imagine if I also knew that evolving Lotad would bring me one step closer to completing a special research assignment.

I’m also not sure if laying everything out in 8 segments is the best way to do it either.  Just having a complete checklist seems like it would work much better.  As it stands everyone is worried about evolving anything at this point as that evolution may be necessary to complete the next research project.

Field research has its own problems as well.  Since you can complete field research it’s really easy to just sit on three completed research projects then just use them daily.  Prior to research all we needed to do every day was catch a single Pokémon and spin a Pokémon and our mission for the day was complete.  During those boring days of the game last year a lot of days I’d open the game in the morning, do both of those things and then be done for the day in a matter of a minute.  Now I feel like my morning ritual also includes claiming a reward and that only adds a few seconds.

Including some sort of tracker to measure how many of each task you’d completed and maybe giving additional rewards for doing that task 5, 10, or 100 times would spice things up a bit.

Research is a great addition to the game but in the absence of an ongoing event it just becomes another task to perform to keep a streak alive.

The 7 day reward for Poké Stops is getting an evolution item, something almost completely unnecessary in the game at this point.  These are for Gen 2 evolutions and none of them are particularly useful evolutions at that.  So we’re all sitting on dozens of evolution items that we do not need.

The 7 day reward for research is a legendary encounter.  This sounded really cool at first but so far we have had four straight weeks of Moltres encounters.  This seemed like a really good solution for rural players who have no real options to get legendaries.  Imagine how stoked rural players must have been to have learned of this feature only to find out it would be the same encounter four weeks in a row.  On the one side you get four shots at getting something with decent IVs and you can get at least 12 candies for power ups.  The downside is at this rate you’ll need over a year to complete your legendary Pokédex, and that’s assuming that no additional legendaries are released.

Something about this needs to change.

It would be great if you could voluntarily select quests for the legendary Pokémon you need.  Long, hard quests that would result in a standard level 20 encounter.  There could be varying quest for each one and trainers could do them all simultaneously if they chose.  They could easily make the 7 day reward for research be something else like increasing an attack, defense, or stamina stat by one point, item rewards, or a number of other options.

Overall this has been a great addition and a solid test run of this new system.  Now, some tweaks are needed to add some more challenge to the game for hardcore players, and a little more incentive for rural players to want to continue to participate.

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Pokémon GO’s Kanto Event Starts in a Matter of Hours

It’s official!  After my speculation the Kanto event begins later today, in just a few short hours.  Here’s the official announcement.

Trainers,

The appearance of the Mythical Pokémon Mew has attracted Pokémon that were originally discovered in the Kanto region. These classic Pokémon will be seen more frequently starting April 10 at 1 P.M. PDT, so you’ll have the perfect opportunity to earn a gold Kanto medal and even complete your Kanto Pokédex!

What’s more, certain Pokémon such as Aerodactyl and Snorlax will be featured in Raid Battles across the world. Keep an eye out for one you haven’t encountered yet!

As you encounter and catch more Pokémon originally discovered in the Kanto region, all actions will be rewarded with double Candy. So, not only will you be able to catch Pokémon you might not frequently see, but you may also get the chance to register their evolved forms in your Pokédex as well.

During this event, there will also be special boxes containing Raid Passes! These boxes will give you an opportunity to challenge many powerful Pokémon originally discovered in the Kanto region.

This special celebration ends on April 17, so get out there and make some more discoveries. If all goes well, you may be able to finish your first Special Research request and encounter Mew!

—The Pokémon GO team

It’s not quite the shiny extravaganza everyone was hoping for but the double candy will be enough to get me to transfer several hundred rare Pokémon and clear out some slots for Sunday’s Community Day Event.  I may also be rewarded with double candy if I’m fortunate enough to catch Mewtwo on Saturday.

We may still get surprised with shinies.  An interesting theory I’ve seen is that they’ve released all the shiny sprites just so they can surprise people instead of everyone always being able to predict what’s coming next.

Honestly I’d be happy to finally find a shiny Magikarp at this point.  Shinies are rare enough that I have a lot more hunting to do before I even collect half of the currently available ones in the game.

Who knows?  Shiny Pidgey may be mere hours away.

 

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Catching Mew in Pokémon GO

Now that we’ve had a little over a week to fully explore research in Pokémon GO, I am pretty happy with the update.  The only thing that has me feeling a little let down is the fact that now that I’ve completed the quest for Mew and there’s no event going on it doesn’t feel like there’s anything to do in the game at present.

I stumbled upon a shiny Murkrow, the April Fool’s joke that they added to the came last week.  I hadn’t tapped on a Murkrow since I was trying to get my gold Delinquent medal.  I’m happy to not have to tap on any Murkrow again moving forward barring any necessary field research assignments.

Niantic also announced a cool Earth Day Cleanup event which I thought sounded like it could be fun.

Upon perusing the North American map of event locations my excitement faded pretty quickly.  I’m all for the premise but I don’t know that I can travel 1200 miles to clean up a beach.

I was able to complete my week of field research which unlocked the first field research reward.

It’s a really great additional that they’re adding legendary Pokémon through the research rewards but the surprise was spoiled by hundreds of people on Twitter who live in time zones ahead of mine.  Still, it’s a great addition to the game.

I completed the more difficult task for the Mew quest and that lead me to the final stage which, quite honestly, was supremely easy.  Catching a Ditto was the only difficult part of the entire quest which I was able to do at the very leisurely pace of about a week.  Honestly, for the final stage catching Pokémon with berries was very easy and did it mostly from my house by just opening the app once or twice and hour.  It was a little tedious but not really that challenging.  I made the single excellent throw on my first throw after the research was assigned and I got the gold Kanto medal about eighteen months ago.

When the quest was complete it was extremely confusing as to what was going on as I didn’t realize I’d be forced to catch Mew in AR mode with no choice of balls or berries.  After a few tosses I picked him up pretty easily.

The whole thing was a little anti-climactic as my Mew ended up having almost the worst IVs possible from a Mew catch.  I think the lowest possible IVs are around 73%.  I would have been pretty happy with at least 80% but since I’m probably not going to end up actually doing anything with this other than holding it as a trophy I guess it doesn’t really matter.

The more exciting news of the day was later that earlier that afternoon I finally got my first ever EX Raid pass.  What’s even more exciting is that it is at a time I was not scheduled to work or previously engaged.  Finally, I will get a shot at attempting to catch Mewtwo, something that most of the people I raid with have already done multiple times.

Overall the Mew Quest was pretty fun but my main gripe would be that this feature should have been available to the game from launch.  I remember how long it took me to evolve my first Gyarados which I powered up to be my first Pokémon over 2000 CP.  I remember how long it seemed to take to hit level 25 and how long it took me to register 100 Kanto region Pokémon in my Pokédex.  All of these things were instantly checked off my lists.  How much more exciting would it have been to have been working towards the greater goal of catching Mew while I was doing all that.  Evolving my fifth Gyarados, which I didn’t need, sitting on 2300 Magikarp candies wasn’t quite as exciting.  Actually I was a little annoyed because I didn’t need it and was hoarding the candies.  Catching my 98th Ditto wasn’t quite as exciting as it was catching my first.  Generally I’m annoyed when I ever see Ditto these days.

It was nice to have things to shoot for though.  I could have easily knocked this quest out in a day or two (you know, if I didn’t have a family or a job) but I took my time with it and it made the game more interesting.  I’m hoping future quests will have some slightly more challenging elements to them.

Even with how quick this quest could be knocked out I saw plenty of players on Twitter tweeting coordinates to Gastly nests so that people could spoof to the location and catch ten ghost Pokémon within minutes.  I can’t even imagine how that could fun for anyone, knocking this quest out in hours rather than enjoying it.  I was disappointed that I was able to catch my ghost Pokémon in one morning of casual play.

In the never-ending onslaught of recent developments in the game has been that there’s rumor of an event starting on April 10, this coming Tuesday.  The only information is that the event will focus on the Pokémon of the Kanto region.  However, recently, shiny sprites for over 100 Pokémon have been detected which means that the quest for shinies may be about to get crazy this week.

This event is likely to be announced tomorrow so we’ll see shortly what it’s all about.  One thing I’m eager for is another double candy event as I have over 200 Bulbasur and Dratini to transfer.

Even with nothing else my week will end with a Mewtwo raid and the Community Day Event.  It’s going to be very exciting to see what other surprise gets thrown into the mix.

 

 

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Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” (8-bit Cover Album)

 

Written between 1935 and 1936, Carmina Burana is a scenic cantata based on a book of medieval poetry.  This was a hugely important piece of music to me growing up.  I’d like to say that it wasn’t Ozzy Osbourne using O Fortuna as his entry music while playing live that got me interested in this piece of work, however, I would be lying if I said that.

Later in life I would see this performed live at the Lincoln Center in New York City which would rekindle my interest in this piece of music and allow me to explore the other two works of this musical trilogy: Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite.

Working with large orchestral works tends to make the sounds of the NES resemble the sound of organs.  Layering all the tracks over one another is often reminiscent of a work heavy with synths.  I tried to keep these as 8-bit as possible but there’s so much going on with the layering and the dynamics that either I am desensitized to the 8-bit sounds or it loses a little of that NES feel to it.

Click above to listen on YouTube or .  . .

Download “Carmina Burana” (8-bit Cover Album) on Google Play

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The Last “Fortnite” in Pokémon GO Reviewed

Now that’s a headline full just brimming with SEO juice.

I can’t say that I remember a week of news like the one we’ve just had in Pokémon GO.  It seems like after nearly two years that Niantic has finally hit their stride with this game.  It’s almost as if it’s finally coming out of beta.  At this time last year I was so bored with the game that I created a second account just to do something different.  I’m not sure why I figured having two accounts would make it more interesting but I really love the game and I wanted to have something to do!

Let’s take a quick moment to review and grade what’s happened in the past couple of weeks.

1.) Shiny Lugia

When we heard that Lugia was coming back for another stint in raids a lot of players (myself included) breathed as sigh of relief.  Finally, I thought, I can take a break from raiding to catch the latest and greatest Legendary.  It was then discovered that there’d be a small chance that Lugia would be shiny which meant that no such rest would be coming.  Luckily for me I caught a shiny on my second attempt and was able to take a much needed raid vacation after that.

I’m not looking forward to subsequent legendary re-releases as I’m sure my lucky will not be quite as good in the future.  I think Niantic has very carefully done this in order to extend the interest in raids and, of course, purchase of raid passes.  I very rarely raid enough to even use a premium raid pass so generally my raids are from my daily raid passes.  Raids are pretty stale at this point and, unfortunately, have gone from being great fun to feeling a bit like a chore.

Still, I’m glad I got my shiny Lugia.

Grade: B

2.)  Eggstravaganza Event

This is a bit of a rehash of last year’s similar event.  The added excitement this year is that the Pokémon Togepi, Magby, and Wynaut have a possibility of hatching as shiny versions.  Additionally all Pokémon are hatching from 2k eggs.  While this is pretty nice and I’ve hatched a few rare tier Pokémon it also means that I’m going through incubators pretty quickly.  There’s an advantage to the player but Niantic is the real winner being able to sell a lot more incubators

Grade: C

3.) Gym Leader Wardrobe Items

It was announced that if you win the gym leader badge you would unlock new apparel for your avatar.   This was pretty underwhelming news that only got worse when it was revealed that you still had to buy the new apparel.  You were merely unlocking the option to buy something in the store.  This didn’t feel like much of a reward.

Grade: D-

4.) March 25th Community Day (Bulbasaur)

The March 25th event was pretty gun, though not quite as exciting as the shiny Dratin event a month earlier.  I can’t tell if that’s because Dratini is a more relevant and rare Pokémon or if it’s because the difference between regular Bulbasaur and shiny Bulbasaur is barely perceptible.  It may be a little of each.

At any rate the improved charge move and 3x XP made the event a lot of fun.  I’m looking forward to seeing how they develop this event moving forward.  By my calculations if they continue to release shiny Pokémon during these community events and do nothing else to release that will carry this gimmick for approximately thirty more years.

Even so, I can’t imagine ever getting excited about the release of a shiny Venonat.

Grade: B

5.) Official Research (Quests) Announcement

This is not only the biggest and best news of the past two weeks but quite possibly since the game’s release.  The fact that this new research feature will allow Mew to show up is exciting but far more than that is just having these ongoing challenges.  The game has desperately been missing this since day one and I feel like this genuinely completes the first version of the game.  They can call it 1.0 now as far as I’m concerned.  If done correctly this is going to be incredible.

This is another boon for rural players as well as there seems to be indication that research will allow you to finally catch Legendary Pokémon without participating in raids.  It’s unclear which ones exactly or if Mewtwo may be included.

As it’s scheduled to be released on Friday I am just hoping it is earlier in the day than the normal 1PM PST release we tend to see.

Grade: A+

6.) April 15th Community Day Announcement (Mareep)

The release of Mareep is pretty exciting for me, being one of my favorite Pokémon.  The only disappointing thing is that, along with Pikachu, it’s the least relevant Community Day release yet.  I’ll be excited to encounter tons in the wild and catch a few shinies, but I’m hoping the special move will allow Ampharos (one of the rarest and hardest to get Pokémon in the game) to be a useful attacker in gym battles.

There was a bit of disappointment in that many people were suspecting Charmander would be the release for next month but I’m pretty psyched about this one.  No doubt, many players who have yet to get an Ampharos will be equally excited.

Grade: B-

The end of March has been incredible and I’m really looking forward to April being a sort of rebirth for the game.  There have been some very frustrating and very boring stretches with this game.  There is no indication that we’ll be bored with the game at all as we enter into spring with the information we now have.

Now, can we please talk about EX Raids?

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The Latest Pokémon GO Community Day and Something Mew!

Yesterday’s most recent Pokémon GO Community Day was another hit, at least in my area.  There were hundreds of people that turned out downtown to try to find shiny Bulbasaur.  I will admit that I didn’t hunt the entire time as I got a good number of shinies fairly quickly and the cold temperatures were taking a toll on my fingers.

Community Day has been pretty fun now that we are getting ample warning about when they will occur.  I must admit that I’m looking forward to April’s Community Day as the chances of weather being more favorable in my part of the world is much higher.

Bulbasaur wasn’t quite as exciting as Dratini as it’s not as relevant or rare a Pokémon but it was still a lot of fun.

The main issue was that in the bright sunlight I caught multiple shiny Bulbasaur without even being aware they were shiny.  In the light I couldn’t see the sparkles and the difference between shiny and normal Bulbasaur is almost imperceptible without a frame of reference (the shiny one is on the right).

I had intended to write a simple recap of Community Day before the biggest news in a long time dropped this morning.  Quests are coming to Pokémon GO!  This is something I’ve been wanting for a long, long time and it looks like in a week’s time they will finally be here.  Better yet, this first quest (or research) looks like it will be revealing one of the few holes in my Gen 1 Pokédex, Mew.

After not having seen Professor Oak since the first day I played the game he will apparently be making a return to tell us what we need to do to help him in his research.  It will be nice to see him again rather than repeatedly transferring Venonats to him.

It’s a little unclear exactly how they’ll work but the full details are available here on the official Pokémon GO website.

In a quest described as “A Mythical Discovery” they list 3 quest items:

1.) Spin 5 Pokéstops.

2.) Catch 10 Pokémon.

3.) Transfer 5 Pokémon.

I sincerely hope the quest items to unlock Mew are a bit more challenging than that.  I’m sure this is just an example or as indicated in the pic above perhaps the first level (of eight) that you need to do to get Mew.

There is also another screen showed which displays rewards for doing the specific items listed.

There appears to be some sort of stamp reward but it’s still unclear how this works or how you get them.

This screenshot shows a potential update to the game with the research icon replacing weather which has been moved to the top right corner of the screen.

To me this is the most exciting update to the game since the Buddy System was released, even though that system doesn’t have nearly the impact now that it did upon release.

To me, this is how Mewtwo should have been done.  I don’t care how hard the quest is or how long it takes, I’m so much more excited to play the game working toward a stretch goal than I am doing random raids hoping to win the EX Raid Pass lottery.  Even eventually getting the pass doesn’t mean I’d even be able to attend the raid if I happen to have an obligation that day.

I’m very much looking forward to March 30th to get my first glimpse of what this update looks like and have a new reason to play the game.

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Ben Folds Five’s “Whatever and Ever Amen” (8-bit Cover Album)

Ben Folds Five’s 1997 sophomore album, Whatever and Ever Amen, was one of my favorites released that year.  This album presented a new challenge: converting a piano-driven album to NES pulse waves.  Some of the album is rollicking, some of it is soft and understated, but none of it lends itself to the sounds of the NES quite as well as other genres of music.  This album introduced me to Ben Folds Five and made a huge impression on me.  One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces of You is one of my favorite songs by the group.  It’s probably not the track that came out the best of my 8-bit versions from this album but the opening piano still takes me back to the summer of 1997, even if they’re processed by the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Click above to listen on YouTube or .  . .

Download Ben Folds Five’s “Whatever and Ever Amen” (8-bit Cover Album) on Google Play

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I Don’t Know How To Play Fortnite

I’d been hearing about Fortnite for some time now.  Given that my time for console gaming is exceptionally limited I’d been largely ignoring it.

That was until it was announced that it was being put out as a mobile app by invite only.  Figuring I’d be very low on the list for an invite I signed up only to receive my invite later that same day.

I’d played a lot of Halo as a multiplayer game in LAN parties then later Halo 2 online.  The age of these games give you an indication of how old my multiplayer shooter experience is.

Fortnite on mobile is a very fun experience.  The controls are much better than I would have thought though I would really like to give this game a shot with a traditional controller.  I know a mouse/keyboard combination is probably even better but I’m a controller guy (i.e. not a serious gamer).

I’ve figured out the basic gist of the game but there’s still a lot I’m in the dark about.  I’m sure a lot of things I’m confused about could easily be settled by watching a tutorial video but what fun would that be?

If there’s a way to customize your character I’m not smart enough to figure it out.  Oddly it seems to just give me a randomly generated character with each new game.

When you’re done in the lobby you are thrown into some sort of strange melee where everyone is jumping around and hitting each other but no one seems to die.  At first I thought this was the game and couldn’t figure out why nothing was happening.

After that you’re transported to a blue bus floating above an island on a balloon.  After a while you’re able to jump out of the bus and skydive to the island below.

Your default weapon is a pick axe which you can use to break apart almost anything and get bits of steel, wood, or presumably other materials.  There is undoubtedly something you can do with these materials but that is beyond me at this point.

You can also find weapons which you can then use to attack other players.  There are names hovering in the air giving you the names of other players.  After a bit I started hunting down these players and emptying all my ammunition into them.  It turns out these are members of your own team.  Luckily you can’t seem to kill them, you just watch as they stand there looking at you wondering why you are so bad at his game.

There’s also some storm that is always imminent.  In one of my games I survived long enough to see the storm in action.  I still don’t know what purpose the storm serves or why it happens but I’m sure it must be fairly significant to game play.

In one game so far I was able to hole up in a mine and actually take down several enemy players who do not have their names displayed and are much harder to spot.

In yet another game I stumbled upon a llama pinata, something that I know is an extremely rare item in the game.  I was excited even though I didn’t know hat 75% of the items did and I knew I’d be dead within a minute anyway.

With all of this being said I’m having a lot of fun playing this game.  I’m thinking I will eventually do some research to answer my questions and, most likely, make me much better at this game.

My teammates will likely appreciate this.

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Pink Floyd’s “Animals” (8-bit Cover Album)

Before huge hits like “The Wall” and after “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “Wish You Were Here” there falls the 1977 album “Animals.”  This has always been my favorite Pink Floyd album.  The 17-minute song “Dogs” is my favorite by the band, a blending of Gilmour and Waters’s contributions, mashing up multiple songs and ideas into one.  This was the hardest track to recreate as it contains numerous tempo changes.  This is some of David Gilmour’s finest playing and it is impossible to capture that feeling and style with 8-bit synths.  I ended up having to play drums along to the song then move the drum hits around manually to lock them directly to the beat, recording each fill individually and manipulating it.  At the end of the day I’m happy with the result especially since there were multiple times I was about to give up thinking this entire project was just going to be impossible.

Click above to listen on YouTube or .  . .

Download Pink Floyd’s “Animals” (8-bit Cover Album) on Google Play