Kieran Nolan » Nintendo

Bleeps on Wax

kieran — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:45:53 +0000

I've had a short loop I made in LSDJ on the Nintendo Gameboy included as a locked groove (infinitely repeating loop) on the Minimalizm v4 compilation. I always wanted to have some sound I made pressed onto wax, then I found this project and thought I'd give it a go. The venture is funded by the loop creators each agreeing to buy a small number of records. You email on a .wav file of your track as a 4 bar, 133 bpm loop, compilation organisers Noise Vinyl take care of the rest and it becomes part of a 7", 33 rpm vinyl record.

CDs and MP3s are fine and all, but Vinyl has a charm all of its own, both soundwise and from it's tangible form and it doesn't look like it's going to die out any day soon. This article from Wired suggests that vinyl will outlive cds commercially... and if there's a power cut you could always listen to your records on this, though perhaps not at audiophile levels :)

Octocky 8bit Improvo

kieran — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 02:39:51 +0000

A musical creation game from 1986 by Toshio Iwai, who created Electroplankton and most recently the Tenori-On for Yamaha. Octocky was released on the Famicom Disk System, the Japanese version of the 8-Bit NES console. The syncing of music, visuals and gameplay were groundbreaking at the time and it still stands out today. More information and a rom image to run in a suitable emulator are available here. Bonus review here.

History of Zelda Documentary

kieran — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:01:25 +0000

'Zelda No Video' is a documentary about Nintendo's 'Legend of Zelda' series by Enterbrain in Japan. It was made in 2003 but was never officially translated into English. However earlier this year Zentendo released a fansub of the documentary, which took over a dozen volunteers nearly four years to complete. The documentary takes us from the series' roots on the 8bit Famicom / Nes console up to the 'The Wind Waker' on the Gamecube. A really interesting piece of videogame history and a great insight into Zelda as a cultural phenomenon in Japan and worldwide.