Technical Perfection

Have you ever wondered what happened when you injected large amounts of cuteness into an already cute and adorable character then attached a cute little chain and wrapped it in a cute little bag then placed that into a cute little box ready to be shipped around the world by a not so cute postman only to land on your doorstep ready to melt your heart with it’s cuteness?

Well Exeter based Chiptune artist and Queen of her adorable little creations Ophycore has done just that and you can find her site by clicking this lovely banner.

Now I’m not one for jewellery (Being a dude) but these really caught my eye, especially the Foxy Mc Fox necklace which, on top of it’s cuteness strikes me as unique, seriously how many necklaces do you know with attachable tails? It’s perfect and quite ingenious, if you loose the tail all you need to do is order another one and wear the adorable foxy face until it arrives

Another thing was the Bee necklace, not many people would notice this detail but the wings form a perfect heart shape if you count the single yellow bead below them, it’s a recurring theme in all her jewellery which adds to the overall cuteness.
Now people sometimes associate Hama beads with cheap homemade jewellery but I think it was a very smart choice, not only has it allowed unique accessories to be hooked onto them (like Foxy Mc Fox) but it allows her to create pixel perfect characters from those old retro classics, a great example in her store would be the Koopa necklace which you’ll remember from the Mario Bros series of games, you remember, the turtle you jump on that turns into a shell and can sometimes come screeching back at you after you send it flying into a row of Goomba? Well this one is perfectly harmless and lovingly created to wear around your neck. You’ll also notice Ophy creates non-hama jewllery too and although there is only one item in the store so far I’m sure there will be more in the future.

Oh I almost forgot… If you click “Request Custom Item” on the sidebar under her avatar you can let Ophy know what your dream necklace would be and I’m sure she’d be happy to create it

I’ll be placing a little ad box on the right so you don’t have to trawl through posts to find the banner, although I recommend you bookmark it, or even better.. buy something! like, Right now!

What the HELL do you call this?

Wii Vitality Sensor?

No.. Just no!

If I didn’t still love you for all the great things you did in the past then I’d be busy driving a car through the doors of your head office and then jump out with a crowbar ready to smack whoever led the research team who developed this!

What is the point? Seriously!?

I found this image on 8Bit Collective

Both those carts belong to Sabrepulse and I must say that USK cart is a work of art in itself, the cover design combined with the colour of the case is so striking and unique it made me wonder just how many carts this fabled Japanese musician made? Many dream of owning a White DMG for it’s sheer pureness and rarity but just a simple cart like that can trample all over those dreams…

Fighter X noted that it’s a customised Nintendo Rewritable cart that can only hold 3 songs, either USK knows some contacts/devs in the industry or Japanese auction sites and thrift stores are magical places.

As for the PixelH8 cart, he murdered Donkey Kong or Pokemon Yellow! but thats forgivable since he creates amazing applications and killer tunes.

Update:

Original posts sounded a bit noobish but after doing some research and asking around on 8bc I have uncovered that it’s a Nintendo Power cartridge with a customised sticker, The SRAM size is smaller than most other flash carts out there so it can only hold a handful of songs and according to Damon of Starscream (Great guys, check them out if you haven’t already) Nullsleep has 2 of these Gems and they’re prone to crashing.

Nintendo also created a Super Famicom version (or SNES to us non-Orientals).

The basic idea was to create a Rewritable cartridge that people can take into shops and download new games from special kiosks (after feeding it with money), naturally more than one game could be loaded onto a cart and judging by the original sticker the limit was 7 games at any one time, being rewritable you could also delete games you didn’t need or want to make room for a brand spanking new one but if you wanted to re-download the one you previously deleted then unfortunately you’d have to pay again.

This all sounds amazing right? I mean you’ve just got your pocket money and can’t afford to buy a whole new Game Boy Game but then you remember the magical white cart you received on your birthday and how you can download a new game for a discounted price minus the box and leaflet (which lets face it you’ll loose anyway).
Well not exactly, you see Nintendo only released this in japan and although successful (they supported it up until 2007, the last Legacy Game boy Game was released in 2002!) there were no plans to extend it to other parts of the world and the carts are VERY hard to come by…

Such a shame!

So after flaking out on a previous challenge from Microchip I stepped up and Lolitacomplex challenged me to create a Gabba song based on the thoughts of a gay man possessed enough to attack a fellow chiptune artist… The following track represents what was going on in this person’s sick and twisted (and drunk?) mind before he hit Lolitacomplex and left a horrible bruise!

It incorperates a TTS News reader about some guy starting a Budget Airline (Ryanair?) and a Pikachu at the point of orgasm, on top of that I had to use “Atonal Melodies” which sound absolutely horrible so I concentrated more on the pounding bass drum at 200 BPM before throwing in some animal samples and the most famous chiptune insult some guy muttered to James of CalmDownKidder Records.

I’ll just leave this little audio player here and leave.. quite rapidly..

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A month ago Microchip released the eagerly awaited Muse 8bit Tribute Compilation album, I was meant to be submitting this track to it but I fell short by about 2 weeks, last week however I played it to a rather packed crowd at my first ever gig, the Chiptune Riot Festival in Newcastle and it went down rather well even though my vocal setup failed (I was also nervous as hell and hardly looked up but hey guess I was too immersed in my music )

Muse – The Small Print (Cover)

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But the real gem was this, the song that kicked off everything! The infamous 2001: A Space Odyssey theme recreated in all it’s 8bit glory (With the help of a Timpani)
It felt amazing to have this blasting through 4 speakers on stage and the artists near the stage thinking “Damn I should have done that!”

2001: A Space Odyssey (Cover)

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Overall it was an Immense gig, we learnt that there’s no such thing as a “Quick Setup” as it took us a couple of hours to sort the sound system out and even then it had it’s bugs. The artists that played were amazing, even Odnetnin who’d only been writing chip music for a month or 2 (though he’s dropped Keiron and reformed under the name Odori) and it was an absolute honour to share a stage with them!

It’s impossible to determine a favourite so I’ll leave it at that, many thanks to Kezziebeat for driving me and No Disco up there and extra thanks to Cerebral Scars and his dad for the hospitality and the best damn veggie curry in the world!

Oh there was a White Tiger too

Alright I’ve had this domain for well over a year so I thought I’d kick things off with a brand spanking new blog!

Not the most original idea but hey =)

Mainly I’ll be talking about all things retro, you know when companies weren’t afraid to push boundaries and create new and innovating games instead of churning sequel after sequel spiralling downwards into a dark smelly hole while dragging the average consumer with it (Yes I’m looking at you EA!).
But there’ll be the odd few articles that aren’t related in the slightest

Oh and I write “Chiptune” music so there’ll be snippets of that too

Don’t be afraid to contact me with ideas and such! can find the page at the top and I’ll do my best to reply to them all.