When we had an article back in October featuring our very own Mike Choi, I’m sure at least a few people were loudly expressing in their heads “I wish I could play game music on a piano too!”

Well, I’ve managed to find a place that could serve as a pretty good primer for those of you who don’t have adept skills are reproducing your favorite game tunes. NinSheetMusic.net features a steadily growing database of tunes from many of the popular video gaming series to date. Fan-submitted sheet music for the piano, using a freeware program called Finale Notepad, are judged and tweaked by the site staff before uploading. This provides a decent amount of quality-base, rather than everything submitted being automatically thrown up on the site. Originally, the site was only supposed to host tunes from Nintendo console games. However, as of fairly recently, popular demand has changed that status quo to the freedom to submit gaming music from *any* console. While this technically may make the site name a bit obsolete, I doubt many people will care.

Tunes range from fairly simple to rather complex, so your favorite themes may be beyond your ability at first. However, if you ever wanted to seriously sit down and try your hand at tickling the ivories, this would probably be a site to check out.

I can play Green Hill Zone! (…sorta)

In the realm of 2-D fighting games, SNK is second only to Capcom in terms of sheer longevity and quality. Even though Sammy’s Guilty Gear is the current reigning champion, the series owes its existence to SNK, Capcom, and the gameplay mechanics that they established. Throughout the years, SNK has produced a number of hit franchises, both fighting and otherwise. Any gamer worth their salt has been exposed to at least one SNK game, weather it’s Metal Slug, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Athena, or Samurai Showdown. This new fighting game is a celebration of SNK’s 20 plus year history. Even though many gamers will find this game a bit lacking (especially graphics wise), this game is a dream come true for hardcore SNK and fighting game fans.
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Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 was lost somewhere over the South Pacific on September 22, 2004.

Or at least thats the premise behind the the TV show LOST. And now the show that so dearly loves teasing its fans and with viral sites and meta games has branched out into billboards for the fictional airline that led most of the cast to a mysterious island where they’ve been trapped for 67 days thus far.

The billboards point to a web site: FlyOceanicAir.com, which heralds the return of the airline to the air. Theres even a press release. Of course watching the little video is interrupted by a man wanting to know what really happened, and links to another site: Find815.

LOST will return with at least 8 new episodes on January 31st in the US on ABC.

From /Film and TV Squad

Get them while you can, Nintendo fans. It appears the big N has decided to discontinue the popular wireless wavebird controller for the Gamecube (and Wii compatible). Fellow poweteer, Zac Shipley points us to this article which points to this article telling us of the sad news.

From GoNintendo.com:

I haven’t heard of any plans to offer the WaveBird Wireless Controllers in stores again (I did some checking, and we are still shipping the original Nintendo GameCube Controllers to stores). If you’re unable to find the original Nintendo GameCube Controller locally, you can still order this item from us. – Nintendo customer service rep

And yes, my sole reason for posting this was to have an excuse to make that Duck Hunt graphic. You may still find Wavebirds on Amazon.com, but prices vary.

For those of you who traverse the video game music scene like I do, we’ve got a bit of good news. VGMix (short for “Video Game Remix”) is now back online after over a year-long hiatus.

VGMix, which has been noted to be the largest gaming recomposition site on the net next to OverClocked Remix, is also known as being the most accepting of the two sites. Whilst OCR has a reputation for being very particular with what kinda of quality they let into their repertoire of music, VGMix is more of a user-friendly site for newer remixers to submit their works to the community at large in stages of WIP’s, and learn from the feedback they recieve. When VGMix went down completely (except for a placeholder and a makeshift forum) for a complete overhaul of their system, many VGmixers were to either brave the harsher judgments of OCR, or wait patiently.

As of New Years Day, VGMix X (formerly propositioned as VGMix 3) secretly launched a completely navigable site to the community. Whilst many of the features previously promised to be a part of the new version of the site have yet to be fully implemented, site Administrator Virt (of Contra IV musical fame) says it’s only a matter of time until everything is up to full running capacity. That is, after he and his staff return from their shenanigans at MAGfest 6.

In move determined to make him unpopular with readers of this site, Wisconson State Senator Jon Erpenbach is proposing a tax on videogames.

His goal is sound: Keep 17 year old delinquents in the Juvenile system instead of the harsher adult system, but using taxes on videogames may be the wrong way to go about it.

His reasoning:

“The idea being that this is kind of a kids-kids thing, in other words, if we’re going to do this for kids maybe this would be a good way to go about it. And if it’s not the best way, I’m open to any other way,”

This would put the burden on Wisconsin gamers (the vast majority over the age of 18) to fund the court system, and may put a stigma on videogames when they’re taxed at a higher rate. Wisconsin gamers are already talking about ordering games online where they won’t pay the tax

From Channel 3000: Watch The Report

Show Notes:

This video is definitely on the longer side of what I’d prefer, but it does cover 9 different figures so its packed with toy video goodness.

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