megaman

Interview: Takashi Tateishi, Composer at Capcom and Sound Producer at Konami

• by Heidi Kemps • In Game Music, Interviews •   0

I once again attended MAGfest this year, and had a wonderful time presenting panels alongside LordBBH. (Check out the videos of our panels!) My good friends from Brave Wave Productions were also in attendance, and this year they brought Takashi Tateishi as a guest. Tateishi-san has had quite an interesting career: working on one of the most beloved soundtracks ever in Megaman 2, lending his composition skills to cult favorites at Takeru, and doing a whole mess of sound work at Konami in the late 90s. I’m extremely happy to have had the chance to sit down and chat with him about his career. Read on for some interesting anecdotes about early game music development… and also learn about the rarest official Megaman music release of all time.

Continue reading →

Crowdfunding and Expectations, Case file No. 9

• by Heidi Kemps • In General, Retro •   3

As we’re all quite aware, the much-anticipated Mighty No. 9 released this week, and, well, it’s been kind of a mess. The review scores are middling, it’s been raked over the coals all across YouTube and Twitch streams, and everybody who thinks they can make a quick grab for nerd attention by hopping on the trainwreck du jour has been making half-assed (and sometimes shockingly misinformed) digs at the game since its release.

But here’s the thing: there’s a lot more to MN9’s problems than just some angry yellman screaming about how Keiji Inafune scammed people out of four million dollars. I’m not trying to say “you shouldn’t be let down by MN9,” because it’s not my right to police your personal feelings. But I do think it’s important that people understand that there’s a lot to take into account when thinking and talking about this game. There are countless valuable lessons to learn here: about how games are made (and why they sometimes don’t live up to expectations), of keeping hype in check, and why putting money up for anything sight-unseen is a risk you really need to consider carefully.

Continue reading →

Interview: Manami Matsumae, former Capcom and current freelance composer at BraveWave Music

• by Heidi Kemps • In Game Music, Interviews •   0

I went to MAGfest in the DC metro area again this year, after having a lot of fun last year and putting on a really cool panel. Besides doing another panel (which will be up shortly, with notes), I also had the opportunity to partake in some of the musical festivities – it is the Music and Gaming Festival, after all!

Above: Manami Matsumae plays the keyboard in a live performance of Mighty No. 9 songs at MAGfest 16.

Among the performers at the show was Manami Matsumae, a storied game composer currently working with BraveWave. She’s perhaps best known for her work on the original Rockman/Megaman. Her body of work encompasses many more great tunes, however, including several of Capcom’s early-90s arcade classics. She graciously took some time out of her busy schedule to chat with us during the event, and the result was some very cool anecdotes about working on the Capcom sound team during the great Japanese video game boom of the 80s and early 90s.

Read on for the details, and remember – it’s thanks to the support of readers like you that I’m able to travel and conduct cool interviews like these!

Continue reading →

The Gaming Figures of Winter Wonder Festival 2016

• by Heidi Kemps • In Figures, Rad stuff •   2

Y’know, with so many gaming websites now printing a bunch of general “nerd news” amongst gaming-related articles, I find it saddening how much Wonder Festival gets ignored. Here’s where all of the coolest gaming figures on the planet are being showcased, but nobody’s talking about them! It’s not even a matter of “well this stuff is only available in Japan” anymore – hell, GameStop and Hot Topic are stocking Nendoroids and scale PVC figures these days! It’s never been easier to get a lot of these things! But no, we’re gonna focus on unboxing whatever garbage Funko pooped out last week, I guess.

Oh, uh… I guess I got a little ranty there! Eheheh. Anyway! Winter Wonder Festival 2016 was last weekend, and with it came a whole mess of figure news! As usual, I’m here to collect the coolest gaming figures that were shown and put them all in one handy little article for you! Hooray! This year brought us some super cool surprises – while I was a little disappointed overall that my favorite manufacturers didn’t have much truly “wow”-inducing new stuff to show, the out-of-left-field announcements of stuff like a friggin’ figma Iron Fossil and Beat from Jet Set Radio more than made up for it.

The usual disclaimer: I know things like the Fate series. Shining stuff, KanColle, etc. fall under the “games” category, and I am excluding them because there are just so many of those figures that you can very easily find pics and info elsewhere.1  We’re focusing on the more under-the-radar gaming figures – the sort of stuff that doesn’t get merchandised in shiny plastic form all that often.

Click on the photos to see bigger versions if they’re available. And, as always, if I missed anything, let me know in the comments!

Images are sourced from Akibahobby, FigSoku, Dengeki Online, and the official Good Smile website.

Continue reading →

  1. I would also like to welcome Granblue Fantasy into this category. Damn, does it EVER have some gorgeous figures, though. ↩

The Gaming Figures of Summer Wonder Festival 2015

• by Heidi Kemps • In Figures, General, Rad stuff •   0

Oh boy, it’s Wonder Festival time again! Yes, Japan’s twice-yearly figure and modelling extravaganza just had its annual summer outing, and there’s plenty of great new stuff on display – especially if you like games! It’s a bit tough to find the interesting gaming figures amongst the massive amount of goodies on display, however.

That’s where I come in to help! I’ve been carefully searching for info on gaming-related figures from the show, and I’ve collected everything I’ve dug up here on this page to serve as a one-stop information source to know what kind of delightful game character figures you can expect to see go up for preorder from your favorite importer/exporter in the near future.

You might notice that this list doesn’t include *all* the gaming figures shown at the event. Like I said last time I did this feature, I understand that I’m omitting a lot of stuff from series like Im@s, Love Live, KanColle, Tony’s Shining stuff, etc. I’m not going to argue something stupid like “these properties aren’t games” because they are, obviously! But there are just so damn many of them that they’d dominate the list. I’d rather give the focus to more obscure stuff because hey, obscurity is our lifeblood here! I’m also skipping over stuff that’s already out for preorder, was shown elsewhere very recently, and/or hasn’t changed significantly since its last showing (i.e. that Orchid Seed Sorceress from Dragon’s Crown that still lacks a color prototype).

Images are sourced from Akiba Hobby (possibly NSFW), Dengeki Online, MFC, Figsoku twitter and website, WHL4U, the Hobby Search blog, and the AmiAmi Blog. As always, if I’ve missed anything, let me know and I’ll add it ASAP!

So normally I try to sort by manufacturer, but this time I’m going to put what are by far the MOST IMPORTANT figure announcements first. I’m not even “Read more”-ing them, this is how important they are!

wf2015_082_cs1w1_400x wf2015_083_cs1w1_400x

Yes, it’s Sarah and Akira! From the original Virtua Fighter! In their beautiful circa 1993 blocky polygon glory! In figma form! Holy crap, FREEing, you know how to get this girl’s attention (and, inevitably, money). Besides the crazy Sega nostalgia on display, this also means we are that much closer to the Vanessa figma thousands of fans are craving! (I count for thousands of fans, trust me.)

And now, everything else.

Continue reading →