OC Remix

Every so often, I head over to Gametrailers.com to check for a new AVGN episode, via ScrewAttack. In the main window, I saw a graphic of Ryu from Street Fighter II, of the famed Street Fighter series, throwing out one of his trademark fireballs, and could not resist clicking.

I’m still recovering from the fallout of what I came across.

I proceeded to watch a HD video review of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and was stunned. Of course, the newly redrawn, updated characters were very well done and look splendid in high definition, 1080p goodness. However, I was actually more struck by the music playing in the background, which had updated and remixed versions of Street Fighter II’s very memorable character music. It sounded awesome! Surely they released a soundtrack for the game; maybe I could find it on Amazon and download it? As I continued to watch the video, the speaker casually commented that it was a nice touch that the soundtrack was done by OC Remix, as if this were a common household name that I should be intimately familiar with. Impressed with the quality of the music, and very curious about this group, I naturally turned to Google for all my answers.

After a brief glance at OC Remix’s website, I quickly realized I had struck gold. According to its wikipedia article, “OC ReMix is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and tribute of video game music through interpretation with new technology and software, as well as various traditional means.” First of all, the fact that there even is such a group is just amazing. Second, its incredible website is laced with extremely high quality remixes of video game tunes, and they are all free. For a video game music junkie, it just doesn’t get any better than this. Simply amazing! So, OC Remix is a community of highly talented musicians, who happen to be massive fans of video game music, posting their remixes for others to enjoy. Wow. Oh, and that awesome soundtrack for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix? A free download from OC Remix’s website, and it even includes tracks losslessly compressed with FLAC! These guys are so in the know. I cannot believe I only just discovered this site.

Oh, and since I know you’ve been waiting for it, here’s a little clip I put together comparing Ryu’s theme on the Super NES to the remixed version. How far we’ve come!

Bond… James Bond

This week I watched my first James Bond movie, Casino Royale. Yep, first Bond flick ever, no joke. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve never really gotten into the James Bond films. I know, pretty strange to hear, but it’s just the way it… was. Having watched Casino Royale, I am now officially hooked on the Bond franchise, and I spent 15 minutes earlier today queuing up all the Bond films on Netflix (in chronological order, of course). I intend to give the Bond franchise a fair chance at completely winning me over.

By the way, this is my favorite Bond quote from the movie, delivered during the scene when Bond meets Vesper for the first time. Such wit!

DownloadHelper

Since this post is getting a bit long, I’ll make this quick. DownloadHelper is a fantastic Firefox add-on that makes it incredibly easy to download videos that you’re viewing in your browser window. The most obvious areas of application are for your typical videosharing websites (YouTube, Dailymotion, etc.) but you can also use it to download flash videos at CNN or MSNBC. Good stuff.

So, that’s it. Oh, and happy new year ‘n stuff.