Reposts: Destructoid's Top 10 Castlevania Songs

I'm a big fan of classic video game music. It's engaging, energetic, and my history of playing games has conditioned me to feel active and want to accomplish things when I hear it. When I go running I use a mix of 8 and 16-bit era tracks as I find they provide a great impetus to keep going and push yourself harder than you would otherwise. Now Destructoid has put together a list of their all time top 10 songs from the Castlevania series (which is deservedly renowned for its music, among other things), and the list has inspired this post in more ways than one (geddit?).

Their number two pick, "Bloody Tears" from Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest, is my personal favourite. I particularly like the 16-bit remix of the track using instruments from the Mega Man X2 soundtrack, embedded below. The enhanced sound quality of the 16-bit era really brings out the best parts of the song and ups the foreboding quality by highlighting the pipe organ opening. In putting this post together I also stumbled across another great remix of "Bloody Tears" using the instruments from Sonic 3. It takes a few more liberties as a remix by adding a electric guitar-style melody at various points throughout the track, and the addition gives the song a new, '80s hair metal-esque twist.

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'Reposts' are inspired by other articles or blog posts around the Internet. They are used here with accreditation as the basis for short bursts of Max's interests.

From Around the Web - 9/19/10

There's nothing I particularly want to rant about today so I decided to save my energy and just post a few links. I felt that would be best for all our sakes. Also, it's International Talk Like A Pirate Day and I was extremely tempted to write this whole post in pirate-speak. I got one sentence in before I decided that was a terrible, horribly irritating thing to do. When I found myself looking up the word "avast" in the dictionary I decided to take my own advice and give up on the gag. I feel this will be best for all our sakes. Without further ado here's what's interesting elsewhere in cyberspace:

Retina Displays: One step-closer to a reality for consumers, still tragically ridiculous in appearance

Some interesting statements by one of the poor bastards facing charges from the RIAA for downloading music. Also a site for discussion of new media and copyright issues

Bill and Ted 3. Seriously, it might happen. Maybe the most exciting thing I've read this year.

A series of articles predicting twelve things that will be obsolete in ten years. Very futurist, very cool

Amusing videos: Tornado in Brooklyn + two idiots that give the double rainbow guy a run for his money. Also, even Cthulhu is getting in on the Old Spice phenomenon

Toronto, my home, I weep for you

This Actually Happened: Alabama Teacher Used Assassination of Obama to Teach Geometry

A high school teacher in Alabama was reported for using the assassination of US President Barack Obama as an example to teach students about angles and parallel lines. Wow. I couldn't have made that up. The teacher is apparently not being fired though he has been placed on leave.

Joseph Brown, a senior in the geometry class.
, stated that the teacher "was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president.' "

Reported (mostly) without commentary because the story says so much more on its own.

Found at Geekosystem via The Birmingham News

From Around the Web - 4/30/10

Sculptor Adrian Tranquilli elegantly depicts superheroes' vulnerabilities, as seen above.

How do you see if Schrodinger's Cat is actually in its box? This post on io9 claims to know how!

A fantastic essay on the question of whether or not video games are or could ever be art.

From Around the Web - 4/28/10

Coolest thing I've seen all day: a flash recreation of the original Super Mario Bros that lets you play as Megaman, Link, Samus, or the dude from Contra. Pictured above, check it out on Newgrounds.

A new interview with Ridley Scott suddenly makes me VERY excited about his upcoming Alien prequel(s). Engineers of space? Hells yes!

An exploration of race in Heavy Rain on a sweet blog I stumbled upon called Experience Points.

ScreenRant's annual summer movies trailer has been released and is embeded below:

From Around the Web - 4/25/10

Kotaku, Boing Boing, and Professor Fox Harrell have been taking a really interesting look at identity and online avatars.

Geekosystem and TIME remember 4chan's hilarious 2009 hijacking of the 100 Most Influential People list.

MTV interviews Ridley Scott about his upcoming prequel(s?) to Alien. Colour me cautiously hopeful...

With the James Bond franchise on hiatus, the BBC speculates about who could be the next actor to play 007. Given my feelings about Sam Worthington, I am not taking this well.

From Around the Web - 4/19/10

Greg Kasavin, a producer for 2K Games, has started an interesting blog called Truth, Love, and Courage: Games as Stories. His latest post, on villainy in gaming, is an interesting exploration of the concept in a literary sense from a design standpoint. Good stuff.

The RIAA and MPAA continue their ongoing streak of utter lunacy by making a proposal that I would normally discount outright as preposterous. But then this is the RIAA we're talking about, sheer insanity is kind of their MO.

The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania has been using webcams on MacBooks issued to high school students in order to spy on them. No joke, this is one of the more unbelievable stories I've heard in a while.

Just a few quick links to two awesome musicians I've been listening to lately, Jadea Kelly and Jack Marks.Check em out, they're great!

From Around the Web - 4/14/10

Some of the coolest art I've seen recently, as pictured above.

Joss Whedon? The Avengers? Please yes please!

3D Televisions: Unsafe for Children, Pregnant Women, Drunk People and the Elderly

The furry forest creatures equivalent of Gears of War. Amazing.

Library of Congress acquires entire Twitter archive. I suppose that means my writing is now published and in a library?

From Around the Web - 4/6/10

Pope vows to get church pedophile down to "acceptable levels"

The ocean is terrifying

Mattel is changing the official rules of Scrabble and begin allowing proper nouns... Blasphemy!

io9 has put together a fantastic breakdown of the Google Book Settlement and why you should know what it is!

From Around the Web - 3/29/20

Godzilla! Movie! New! Yes!

The writer of Battlefield Earth has formally apologized to the universe. Interestingly his excuse is that he was trying to get laid. Using Scientology. Yeah...

NH State Rep makes the most offensive statement I've heard all year: "Anime is a prime example of why two nukes wasn’t enough." Wow.

A great breakdown of the recent Scott Pilgrim trailer, comparing it to the graphic novels.

From Around the Web - 3/8/10

Above: love that Godzilla, love haikus.

A law-minded discussion of the recent split between Activision and the heads of Infinity Ward.

Hey, looks like I will be able to play Portal 2 after all!

Famous movie quotes depicted as pie charts. Awesome.

A tragedy. Lets hope Kotaku is completely off base in their reading of the article.

From Around the Web - 2/3/10

Booze that doesn't give you a hangover? Hmm... Part of me is excited, but another part of me thinks that's taking a lot of the fun out of it... Maybe that means I'm an alcoholic...

Is Suda 51 the Alfred Hitchcock of Video Games? Interesting article given my post the other day about video games and the auteur theory.

Todd McFarlane is still working on Spawn 2. If he promises to bring back John Leguizamo as the creepy clown, Violator, then I'm totally in. Leguizamo makes anything watchable, even Super Mario Bros.

From Around The Web - 2/15/10

An interesting and informative explanation of How 3-D Works. [Link Broken]

Another piece on Dollhouse. I need more time to think about this show before I do my own write up on it.

Norwegians are hilarious. Also, Google Street View truly is a worldwide phenomenon that is distinctly of our time.

I'm going to pick up Heavy Rain on my way home, based on these reviews, and you can be sure I'll be writing about it soon...

I'm thinking about moving away from Blogger based on recent reports of their... inflexibility... If any of you have thoughts on the matter then please let me know.

From Around The Web - 2/8/10

I've been somewhat lax with my posts recently, but hopefully I'll be able to show you why soon. I'm working on something that should compliment this site nicely... It might be a little while before you hear anything though, because tomorrow morning I'm heading to California for a week. I doubt I'll end up posting much/anything while I'm away. In the meantime, here are some links that I've found interesting:

The review of Away We Go that I never got around to writing

More thoughts on the dearly departed Dollhouse

Some discussions of the science behind Avatar's Pandora

From Around the Web - 1/30/10

Adam Giambrone REALLY wants to be the mayor of Toronto, but somehow seems like a disingenuous tool

Kanye West is blogging again. This is fantastic news. I may write an entire post on this tomorrow.

The most amusing new blog I've encountered in weeks

RIP Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. io9 discusses some of the reasons we loved you during your brief and problematic run.

From Around The Web - 1/26/10

If I had been Errol Morris I probably would have shit my pants when I got this message in writing on official Miramax letterhead. Harvey Weinstein is clearly a corporate badass, and would most likely eat me.

Why hire a real secretary when you could just buy an iLane? All the benefits without the hassle of having to deal with a real, live woman!

I just learned the sad news that The Big Bop is closing. For all those who don't live in Toronto, this was a rock club that featured all ages shows. I spent a large proportion of my youth there and it's sad to see it go.

Ok, so I lied. There was at least one awesome thing about Youth In Revolt: it introduced me to this song

It all seemed so innocent when we were children...

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

From Around the Web - 1.13.10

While I continue to try and get back to current posting, here are a few interesting links that caught my attention today:

There`s an honest to god lesbian ant colony in South America

The complete script for Avatar has been released online, and here`s what was cut from the film

The most sexist thing I have seen in a very long time

It's Been A While

I want to explain the general dearth of posting lately. I was hired to organize an event called the International Press Freedom Awards, and it happened last week on December 9th at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto. With all the prep work for that and studying for the LSAT that I wrote on December 5th, I've been pretty busy all fall, particularly in the last few weeks. Now at least I can share some interesting reading.

Below I've embedded an e-booklet that we put together for the Press Freedom Awards. It contains articles on the worldwide culture of impunity around the murders of journalists, and the winners of this year's Press Freedom Awards: Jila Baniyaghoob, The Novaya Gazeta, and Terry Gould. These stories are somewhat unusual for this blog given my typical choices in content, but they're all interesting reads and well worth your time. They're also not happy stories, but that's kind of the point. I hope you give them some time.

From Around the Web - 11/25/09

Bah, two link posts in a row... There will be stuff worth reading soon, I promise

I am quickly discovering that David Thorne's website is one of the funniest places on the internet

If you like Star Wars even a little you should check out this fantastic piece on the core values of the series, and extends this into a defense of Episode 1

The worst news I've heard all week... or all fall, for that matter...

The best news I've heard all week