Mar 22, 2010

Interesting blog

It's been some time since I blogged something, but after I read this blog I decided I should post something about it.


The blog is about Kristina, a student from USA who is spending some time in my country doing a project. She's entertaining to read and offers a view on how a foreigner sees my country and culture. I have a lot of friends all around the world, from places like USA, england, france, australia, russia, among others, and I would love if some of them could come over here someday. I bet they would fall in love with this country just like this girl did.

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Feb 10, 2010

Help Overclocked Remix do the Sonic 4 soundtrack.

Overclocked remix's Darkesword:

So, it's started out as a harmless little comment on Twitter.

Then it got picked up by a gaming blog.

Now it's a full blown movement.


OverClocked ReMix wants to do the music for Sonic the Hedgehog 4.I've mentioned before that some artists from Overclocked Remix got in contact with Capcom and did the soundtrack for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Now we're starting a movement to get some publicity out and reach to SEGA, for the soundtrack of the upcoming Sonic the hedgehog 4.I'm pretty excited about this because I have done several sonic remixes over the years. 3 of them got published at Overclocked Remix, and several others at the now defunct VGMix. Plus some others that I've done for fun or for competitions. One of the most well known: Lightspeed, a remix of the Twinkle Park theme, has been very popular and I've seen lots of videos on youtube using it, and even a feature video at screwattack, so you may understand my excitement about all this because I could end up (with some luck) doing a song for this.

Of course there are still bif IFs, because this could come to fruition IF Sega is interested in doing the same that capcom did and ask OCR to make the soundtrack. And then IF I get picked to do a song among all the other really talented artists at OCR. Still, it's a possibility and I would love to be a part of it.

So I'll keep my fingers crossed, in the mean time I'll keep spreading the word about this, and hope that we get yet another OCR-made sountrack for a mainstream game, regardless of my participation on it!.

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Feb 8, 2010

Retro Gaming... and everything.

I'm a retro gamer. I'm a rare breed of geek that shuns the so-called new generation of games and prefers to sit down and play the same old ass games he used to play almost 2 decades ago. And I gotta say, it's a fucking great time to be one!


Not that I don't like new games. I play them, often beat them and enjoy them, but I can't remember the last modern game I played that I had beaten more than once and still want to play now. I mean, I remember beating F.E.A.R. several times and loving it. And I was playing super mario galaxy again the other day trying to beat it for the second time. Hmm and crysis, I think I beat that one 2 or 3 times.

So what's the difference? just nostalgia? well I don't really know. Those last 3 games I mentioned don't have much in common. I think they're just fun as hell and while challenging, are based on simple concepts. I think that's what I like about old games, specially from the NES era. Sure there were a lot of shitty games but the good ones, the classics, are simple, fun, and hard as fuck.

There's also something that I miss from old games, specially PC games. It was the ambition and scope of the big classics. Take star control 2 for example, it's a game where you can explore the galaxy, visit different solar systems, actually drop down to the planets which are different from each other, meet alien races, build a fleet, and all of this in a galaxy filled with hundreds of solar systems. The last game that tried to do something similar was Spore, and it fell short, really short.

Then there's this other game I blogged about some time ago, Covert Action. I could talk for pages and pages about how complex, yet simple and addictive this old PC game is. Then you add other games like alpha centauri... and well, it's sad that all we get today is brown and drag, blood-filled, testosterone-packed action games, and that they're the most celebrated.

Ugh, I got way too sidetracked...

Back to topic, it's a good time to love retro games. The videogame companies are following the trend implanted by hollywood lately: "Let's take and old show or movie, reboot/sequel it, and milk it to hell and back". But unlike the shit that hollywood comes up with, videogame companies are doing it right for the most part. Let's take a few recent examples:

Megaman 9: AWESOME game, worthy of being a classic megaman, and probably right up there with megaman 2 and 3. Also: Megaman 10 is coming to kick some 8-bit ass again.

Bionic Commando Rearmed: Unlike it's 3d counterpart, this game reboots the original while making it awesome and fun and again, hard as fuck. It feels a bit different from the original but it feels right.

New Super Mario Bros(DS/Wii): Some people say this game could have been more, and I agree they got lazy with some stuff (2 toads for player 3 and 4..) but still its a great, classic but modern mario game. I loved it and got all the coins and all the shit you could get.

Contra Rebirth: Digital awesomeness. It screams "silly action movie parody from the 80's" which is what contra was in a sense. Great, classic contra gameplay.

Castlevania Rebirth: Loved it. The Metroidvania games for the handhelds are good, but I love some classic castlevania. Give me a whip and some undead and vampires and I'm set.

A boy and his blob: Haven't played this one yet but I hear good things about it.

And very soon, I will be able to play a new Blaster Master remake, along with Sonic 4, which is the classic 2D sonic-only we have been waiting for.

So far I've got my favorite classic NES games remade in its classic format: Clastlevania, bionic commando, contra, and now blaster master. If I get a new classic ninja gaiden game, It would be the icing on the cake.

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Feb 1, 2010

Tanking Woes

Incoming World of Warcraft rant. If you have never played WoW reading this post will be like reading Egyptian hieroglyphs

So I've been levelling up a Blood Elf Paladin (tank spec) lately. I've always been an alliance player but things have been slow on alliance side that with my best friends not playing much and I being on a guild that well... it's a long story but I'm not really excited for being there.

Anyways since Blizzard included the nifty Dungeon Finder Tool I decided I should give it a try and use this new character as an experiment: levelling a toon using exclusively the dungeon finder. No quests, no mob killing outside the instance, no exploration. Although I've accepted and completed some dungeon quests that other players have shared, and turned them in, I'm trying to limit myself to not get anything explored.

For the most part it has been helluva fun, and pretty good xp too. Also I'm relearning all the classic dungeons that I haven't run in quite some years. As a tank, i get instant queues, because there are practically no tanks in my battlegroup.

But with all this fun comes some other things that aren't quite as fun or nice. Being a tank means that you are the leader, and you have the hardest work of the group. Healers in classic dungeons aren't as stressed out as tanks because there's not much damage going around. With that said, my dungeon experience would be much more fun if other players:

  • Did not pull for me. Some of them see the tank's a paladin, and think: "Consecrate, yay, lets pull all the mobs in the instance to him, because you know, he can't!". Consecrate is a powerful aoe tank tool but it's not snap aggro, so most of the time when they pull mobs to me they just pass through the consecrate right to another dps, or worse, the healer, and then blame the tank because "he can't get aggro".
  • Did not tank for me. So most dps warriors I've been grouped with tend to charge the mobs ahead of me, not caring about pats roaming around, or healer OOM, or me tanking OTHER things. To top it off they are bottom of the damage recount all the fucking time! god i hate dps warriors so much right now, it hurts.
  • Did not tell me how to tank. At this point, I have a warrior tank, a DK tank, and a paladin tank. The DK tank I have used for most of WoTLK and I used the warrior during BC. I think I know how to do this, and most of my runs are pretty quick, with chain pulls and taking the right path through the somewhat confusing old classic dungeons. Still some players feel the need to tell me to "go fast" or "do this and that" before we even start the run. And guess what comes after that? yup, they pull for me.
  • Attacked the mobs the right way. I mean, ok you are new to the melee dps and don't know you should get behind the mobs. I can kinda let that pass for warriors and enh shamans, but rogues? you are a rogue and are right besides me, trying to stab the mob in the face, and getting him to parry like crazy and go all out on me? geez. I have encountered only 1 warrior dps that got behind the mob to deal dps in the hundreds of runs I must have done by now, and I even congratulated him for it.
  • Did not /afk + /follow. It's a pain in the ass when you find that you have been running the dungeon for 5 or 10 minutes with a dps who is afk and following someone and just riding off the xp. To say the truth by now I've ignored most of the assholes that do this, and blizzard was smart enough to make the people on your ignored list be also ignored from your random dungeon groups, but still you find another one every once in a while.
  • Did not constantly ask for Recount reports. Because doing 500 dps in a level 50 dungeon is serious business.
What puzzles me is how all of this disappears for the most part when you do Heroic level 80 dungeons. which makes me think that players do this things not because they're new to the game or trying to learn, but because they're just being assholes.

In the end the good things overcome the bad when it comes to the dungeon finder, but I just wished I didn't get one of these players every 2 runs.

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Jan 28, 2010

Ah... Fox News.

I have a lot of friends and know a lot of people outside of my country, mostly from online communities like OCRemix, and most of them coincide that Fox News sucks. Now I don't watch TV and only read local online newspapers and seldom check CNN and BBC for international news, but I happened to stumble on this particular article and.. wow. Mind = Blown.


The ignorance and incompetence, not to mention the lack of fact checking and familiarity with context of the topic is mind-blowing. Seriously? a merge of the dominican republic and haiti? how would that solve anything? Let's think about this for a second:

First, although the island was indeed, one whole country for some part of the 19th century, it was always divided by different cultures and origins. The part of the island that is now Haiti was conquered by the French, and overpopulated by African slaves, while the other part was conquered by the Spanish, whom had a bigger representation of their government, culture and people than what the French had in their side of the island. Also there were the original habitants of the island before the colonization, the "aborigenes" and also like in the French side but at a much smaller scale, there were African slaves in the Spanish side.

Over the years the difference in culture, form of government, religion, and language only grew stronger until it ended with what we have now, two completely different countries that happen to share the same island. Stating that they should be merged is like stating that Spain and Portugal should be merged, or that the USA and Mexico should be merged.

But even putting aside these facts, what good would this fusion do? we're already a poor country, not nearly as poor as haiti but still we're not even in the top 15 most developed of latin america, so attaching the poorest country to our economy would drive it to bankruptcy. Not to mention the problems of adapting the Haitian people to our laws, culture, etc. It's a logistics nightmare that a 3rd world country definitively can't achieve.

0ur country is sending truckloads of help, raising money, our government is hosting all the international meetings and doing everything they can to get help from other countries and international organizations for Haiti, our hospitals are already overloaded with people from Haiti that needed treatment after the disaster, what else can people want? we even were helping probably more than anyone else before this tragedy happened, because before this disaster Haiti wasn't in the headlines of CNN or Fox and all they had for support were their closest neighbors.

So yeah pretty dumb and ignorant article. I bet some nations would be happy if this were to happen as they can leave all the responsibility to us, but helping Haiti or any other overly poor nation isn't the duty of just their closest neighbors, its the duty of the entire world.

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Jan 27, 2010

Manos: The Hands of Fate

So.. I watched the MST3K episode featuring Manos: The Hands of Fate.


And... well, yeah, Manos, the hands of fate... yeeeeah.

Manos! the hands of fate... what else can be said. It's the worst movie ever made without a doubt. Its just... you'll never expect... I mean, you can never be prepared to how bad it really is. And then when it's over you realize that, yes it was THAT bad.

Manos, the hands of fate. It has changed my life. I think it should be one of the best MST3K episodes ever because it was so damn hilarious, and I think I can't possibly go through the entire movie without the riffs delivered by the MST3K cast.

So, if you have 2 hours of your life to spare, and be warned that these are 2 hours that you'll forever want back, you should give manos a try. It's on google video, so go watch it!

The master will probably not approve though...

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Jan 19, 2010

Earthquake in Haiti

So, as most of the world knows by now, Haiti has experienced one of the worst disasters of the century, a 7.3 earthquake. As I live in the Dominican Republic, we felt it very hard too, but luckily we only experienced some minor damage to some structures and well, it was kind of a big scare.


The situation in Haiti, however, couldn't be worse. The Capital of the country, Port-au Prince, was completely destroyed and people are in need for help there. As a Dominican we have witnessed the poverty and calamities that the Haitian people had to go through, and now after the earthquake, well it's unimaginable how these people will get through.

If you are reading this and want to lend a hand, I suggest the american red cross, the situation is of a catastrophe and it's only getting worse, so even a little help goes a long way.

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