Hi, I'm Dranzerstorm
Welcome to the Video Game & Music Lounge
This world is dedicated to Video Games and Music as I'll be showcasing the following.
Video Game Reviews set to the same tones as Retro Retrospective's Anime Reviews
Music reviews of Anime Openings & Closings
Western Cartoon music
Vocaloid Classics.
We may even have some Top Tens
I hope this World entertains you.
Now we dive into a short history about Vocaloid.
Vocaloid is a singing voice synthesizer program developed by Yamaha with the idea of helping people practice their singing much in the same way they did with their keyboards teaching people how to play.
To do this they use an A.I with a distinct voice whether it be male or female, English or Japanese to act as the Synthesizer voice. Now this doesn't sound very spectacular does it? Well when the second version came out, history was made.
Hatsune Miku along with Len & Rin Kagamine and Megurine Luka became icons of the brand, later becoming virtual idols in their own right, with Miku leading the group.
These idols were created for the Vocaloid system by Crypton Future Media, with the idea of having a virtual person help with your singing; with Japan's industry of cute idols, Miku and the others were accepted members of the pop industry which would start the idol and mascot trend which still continues now.
Shows like Aikatsu owe it's existence to Vocaloid and Miku.
But what about Miku herself?
Well here's Cryton's profile of her.
Birthday: August 31
Age: 16 years
Zodiac sign: Virgo
Height: 158 cm / 5.18 ft
Weight: 42 kg / 93 lb
Suggested Music Genre: Pop, rock, dance, house, techno, cross over
Suggested Tempo Range: 70–150bpm
Suggested Vocal Range: A3–E5, B2–B3
Her career includes: Mascot for Super GT Championship with Good Smile Racing, Toyota, Sapporo Snow Festival and even Domino's Pizza to name a few.
There's even ongoing plans to get her into space, Britain's own fashion magazine "Clash" used her as a cover model, she helped Nico Nico Douga's popularity massively, Sega has a range of rhythm games dedicated to her, the thousands of homages in anime, most notably Black Rock Shooter where the lead is based off her design and to top off her ongoing achievements, she opens for international singing sensation Lady Gaga.
All this and still no anime series, she practically is Anime's mascot.
So that's Vocaloid, a simple voice program that has created the biggest virtual stars of our time.
The Snes is arguably the best console in the world. (Not as good as the Sega Megadrive)
But what if I was to tell you, that some of your favorite Anime were once on the Snes? Well today we talk about my favorite title along with a special mini tribute list of the best anime Snes titles. So lets start with the best of the bunch, Gundam Wing Endless Duel.
Endless Duel is a brilliant fighting game from 1996, with a kick ass soundtrack and solid game mechanics, in fact I'll let this Let's Play better show this game.
This is a good Let's Play, give the guy some likes
The game features a solid combo system, an Endless mode and one of the best soundtracks for a Snes game. You can play all the Gundams as well as Oz's three best Mobile Suits including the Tallgeese, Mercurius & Vayeate. Guarantee if you have a Snes Emulator Endless Duel will certainly be one of your titles as it was never released out of Japan, and for a fighting game it's arguably one of the best 2D 16-bit Fighters ever released, even a hardcore Street Fighter Veteran would give this game credit.
Little known fact that the game was built using the same engine used for the Power Rangers Fighting Game, also released on the Snes.
This isn't the only Anime game released on the Snes, here are some more significant titles from that era.
Slayers: Released as a turn based RPG reminisce of early Final Fantasy titles.
Wedding Peach: Released as a Party Game, a very Japanese Party Game.
Sailor Moon: Has done a Puyo Puyo Pop Puzzle game, a side scrolling beat em up, a 2D Fighting Game and a turn based RPG, the RPG needs it's own entry.
Tenchi Muyo: Turn Based RPG with Strategy elements, also needs it's own entry.
Dragonballz: A large number of 2D Fighting Games, the best of which being Hyper Dimension along with a few RPGs from both early Dragonball & Dragonballz.
G Gundam: A 2D Fighting Game but with a much weaker engine than Gundam Wing.
Ranma 1/2: 2D Fighting Games, a puzzle game and at least one RPG.
Yu Yu Hakusho: 2D Fighting Game, managed a sequel.
That's just for Snes, there are many other anime titles that spawned popular games and it only gets weirder heading into the Playstation era, but that's for another time.
Lets look at some more video game innovation from Sega, while were at it, lets talk Jet Set Radio.
Jet Set Radio is about a graffiti gang known as the GGs, who set about painting the city of Tokyo-to in their graffiti art while fighting rival gangs and the police. You complete missions set to a time limit very much like Crazy Taxi crossed with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater; all actions are performed on inline skates set to the most colorful backgrounds possible along with some epic street music; although not the first game to use cel shading but it was certainly the game that popularized it.
If you've heard Jet Set Radio's plot before then it's very similar to the anime Air Gear, the only difference is that Air Gear relies more on heart of fighting and fan service while Jet Set Radio keeps to it's street roots and came before Air Gear.
Oh and the name Jet Set Radio refers to the in-game Radio Station for a bit of trivia.
Now to describe Cel Shading. Cel Shading is where you take a 3D Graphic computer image and render it to appear flat as if to look like a cartoon.
As for it's overall use in video games in general, it's the type of graphics that goes in and out of fashion; no triple A title would dare use it but best selling franchises, most prominently Legend of Zelda Wind Waker and even Skyward Sword used it to great effect.
While it may not be the most popular choice for video game graphics, but it is necessary for most modern anime video games to use cel shading.
Sega seems to popularize things without even trying and cel shading is yet something else they can add to their innovation list.
Sega has always been known for Sonic the Hedgehog but how did the Blue Blur get his speed? Well lets go back to the 80s and look at two arcade classics, Space Harrier & Afterburner.
Sega are well known for being the great innovators of the Video Game industry, many of the things we take for granted these days such as motion controls, advanced weather physics and online gameplay were just some of the things that Sega brought into gaming but one of it's first major innovations was how to speed up gameplay so we dive back into 1985 and look at Space Harrier.
There's not much to talk about with Space Harrier, you play a man who can run and fly at absurd speeds and shoot out of a large laser cannon, taking down such enemies as Cyclops Mammoths, Chinese Dragons, Blatant ripoffs of Mobile Suits and Easter Island heads. Now that's out the way, what innovations did it bring to the table? Well here's a list.
1. One of the first 16-Bit Graphic Arcade Games
2. First to use an Arcade Cabinet that allows the player to sit down and also the first to use a force feedback feature that moves in time with the player.
3. One of the first to use a Boss Rush mode
4. One of the earliest examples of a third person shooter
5. Influenced the Star Fox franchise
6. First time use of the Flight Joystick
7. And finally most importantly it brought Sega's Super Scaler technology to the forefront of games.
To explain this feature Super Scaler allowed for pseudo-3D sprite-scaling at high frame rates, with this higher frame rate it was possible to have as many as 32,000 sprites fill a moving landscape along with over 32,000 colours displayed simultaneously. In fact the games' difficulty was made all the more harder when you're moving at super speed as you avoid enemies, shots and obstacles while also trying to take them out with your own shots, so I can probably add Bullet Hell innovation to the list as well.
Two years later Sega's Top Gun style Combat Flight Simulator would take what was developed by Space Harrier and turn it up a notch as the Arcade Cabinet now rotates both horizontal and vertical to give the player the feeling of piloting the F-14 Tomcat Jet, as an extra feature there were speakers behind the player at head level that utilized stereo sound to enhance the experience.
As for the game, it's exactly the same as Space Harrier only with Fighter Jets.
Both games are legendary arcade titles that even years later are still fun to play, and in 1991 when Sonic was being made, the same technology would be used to make Sonic run fast.
This is just one of Sega's great innovations.
Everyone knows a good cartoon theme song and believe me, when researching this, there are practically no worst lists out there for cartoon theme songs, they just seem to work but I disagree, I can think of ten that aren't so good, so we run down my top 10 worst cartoon theme songs. Only rules are obviously no Anime theme songs and I'd like to avoid movies as well.
Honorable Mentions
Care Bears the Movie: Because the singer is really not interested in singing the song but rules are rules and Movies can't be on the list.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Their Clones: Because none of their songs have a shred of dignity in them but are still entertaining none the less.
Any without a theme song: Are exempt from this list.
10. Horrid Henry
In the UK one of the most common cartoons is about a troublemaker named Henry, and his entire opening theme is basically a child sticking it's tongue out and chanting, not exactly stellar cartoon viewing from my Country but considering some of the entries I've posted in the vault so far this is fairly tame compared to them.
9. Butt Ugly Martians
Whatever they are spelling right at the start, it's clearly not a word or even an abbreviation, it's just bland and rubbish.
8. Jane and the Dragon
It sounded like the narrator wanted to sing but gave up the moment he mentioned the leads name. It comes to something when the Narrator thinks the theme song isn't worth singing and so called lead, Jane can't even sing properly.
7. Pound Puppies
Infernal barking combined with ugly close ups of some of the characters. At least it improved in later years but my god the original is bad.
6. Smurfs
The Smurfs theme song is what would happen if the Dwarves in Snow White forgot all the words to their work song.
5. Happy Tree Friends
Same problem as Smurfs only this one is more frequent as the episodes are really short and it only reinforces the show's content of killing innocent woodland creatures.
4. The Magic Roundabout
I guess I don't like Fair Ground Carousel music, too many bad dreams.
3. Jem and the Holograms
I'm aware that Jem had two theme songs but I'm going with the outrageous version with the poor sound and the interruption from the Misfits. The ironic thing is when the Misfits say their songs are better its actually the truth. The Misfits did sing better although it might be my twisted taste in music. Also a cartoon with a central theme of music shouldn't have a bad theme song.
2. Angela Anaconda
Oh god this dreary cartoon about freaky Newspaper cutouts is as bad as it sounds, it was bad enough that they ruined the Digimon Movie and also I don't think Angela really needs to remind everyone it's her show, that's the height of obnoxiousness.
1. The Smoggies
But the award for worst theme song goes to the Smoggies, the weird thing is that it started off okay introducing the main characters before a sudden switch to these mutant things called Suntots that look like someone spliced a troll doll with the cast of Jem and the Holograms, but by the end of the song they can't seem to decide who to sing about; cartoon's worst polluters or cartoon's most disturbing take on whatever Suntots are supposed to be. It's a "Save the Environment" type show and you're making us support the villains more. Such twisted logic.
Bonus: As a bonus I will throw any one of these cartoons on this list into the Cartoon Vault.
