Beyond Mode 7 Update

Happy weekend everybody! It’s been a long while since I made any sort of noise about Jesse DuRona and my forthcoming Super Nintendo themed anthology, but things are really coming together, so here’s an update!

As of now, we’ve collected around 20 pages of finished material from other artists, Jesse and I have an equally large amount of content in-progress and on the way, giving us so far over 50 pages of confirmed art, comics, essays, illustrations and memories of the greatest 16 bit system ever (and this coming from a kid who grew up on Sonic and Sega Genesis!) It’s going to be chock-full of great art, great stories and great testimonials!

As with any anthology, we’ve hit a few road bumps along the way, so far it’s been nothing we couldn’t handle, but the major road block to our main deadline is the fact that Jesse and I are still on the waiting list for a vendor table at MAGFest, where we had hoped to premier the book. Pre-registration for the show proper ends on the 22nd of December, and if we have not heard from the Vendor Hall coordinator by that time, we’ll have to push back the books official convention premier to MeCAF 2014, to which I’ve already applied for a table!

While disappointing in many ways, MAGFest represents the CORE of the audience we hope to get interested in Beyond Mode 7, MeCAF has always been a very well attended convention with a lot of youth, vigor and interest in games, past and present!

That said, we will still be attending MAGFest in January and if we are not tabling as in years past, we will be pushing flyers into people’s hands, letting them know about the anthology! We may even be able to use the show to pursue a Kickstarter Campaign, allowing the book to reach even more people!

Details on the Kickstarter are still pending, we have a lot of work to do to prepare for such a thing and we want the book to be completely finalized before we proceed with a campaign.

Hope all is well and remember that submissions are extended now through the MAGFest registration deadline of the 22nd!

Thanks,
-RD

MAGFest Report Part 3: MUSIC!!!

Time to wrap up the event that was MAGFest XI.

As the highlight of the year, one could think it’s all downhill from here, but with the inspiration I get from the show, it’s really easy to just move towards MAGFest XII producing the art and comics I love the whole time! What helps is that there’s just so much Music at MAGFest, it’s hard to get through all of it in just one year. Without the VGM Remix and Rearrangement community, there would be no MAGFest and without MAGFest, there might not be so much drive in me these last two years. I’m very grateful to know and work with and learn from all the amazing musicians, DJ’s, MC’s and ReMixers who make the journey every year to the Nation’s Capitol to celebrate the thing we all love!

So, I admit, this year I only went to 4 concerts. The busy sales at my table combined with my night at the Lumberjack Lounge (and also, you know…actually sleeping at a reasonable hour) seriously curbed my time in head-bang mode. Still, the 4 shows I did see were awesome and really helped show how MAGFest really operates, it’s heart-beat revealed.

The show’s I saw were Thursday night’s line up of The OneUps, Metroid Metal and The Megas. I also went to Knight of the Round’s metal set Saturday afternoon, to hear them live and support the group the hired me as their album artist! I’ll talk about each performance below briefly, then discuss the other performances I missed, but have since caught up on thanks to this magical thing called the internet!

The OneUps – Longtime MAGFest performers, the OneUps revealed a vastly new look at sound last year at MAGFest X and it took the show by storm. They’ve since continued to bring the Funk and are really tightening up their sound, set and presence on stage. The 4 members, Tim “T-1000” Yarbrough, William “VCR” Reyes, Mr. Musin, and Jared “JBOOTY” Dunn are as smooth as their sound, flawlessly presenting each track with little shenanigans and just pure funk. They let their jams do all the talking. Well, except when Mustin gets pumped. They’re a highlight show for me every year and I can’t wait to hear their newest stuff, slated for 2013. The best part of their set was when the next performers, Metroid Metal decided to have a little fun behind the projection screens on stage. The band rolled with it, enjoyed it and it really showed how casual, fun, and close all of the performers are at MAGFest. They also presented Lucio, rapper and beat-maker extraordinaire in a preview of a new colab project between the two artists! As an encore, they brought out Brental Floss on keys to jam! William and Tim also spent some time in the Jam Space with a premier performance of their new duo: Altered Beasts!

Metroid Metal – Another long-time performer at MAGFest and the combination of many talented individuals from various groups in the scene. Danimal Cannon from Armcannon, Kirby from Temp Sound Solutions along with founding member Stemage, Bass from Chunkstyle and drum action by Kevin Lawrence make up the current line-up and they all know how to rock your face off. Their set was loud, energetic and really got people wound up for The Megas. They covered a wide range of Metroid games, not sticking to any one system or title too long. I did find some of their arrangements to be a bit different at times, but they always brought it back to the sounds we love.

The Megas – The Mega’s have been coming to MAGFest from California for the last 4 years. Last year, at MAGFest X I missed their show, but Jesse DuRona caught it and was instantly hooked. He’s been singing their praises (literally) all of 2012! I finally caught them live after hearing their stuff on album for so long, and wow, quite the show! They’re much heavier and loud live than their finely tuned albums. High energy, high action, and lots of audience participation. It was amazing fun and worth the wait to see them.

Best part about the Metroid Metal and The Mega’s sets on the floor was the amazing Zero Suit Samus cosplayer doing hula hoop dancing.

Then her friends joined in!

Knight of the Round – KotR was the Saturday afternoon show I got to see. I recently did an Album cover and Teeshirt design for the band, so when I heard they were also going to be at MAGFest, I was stoked! They put on a head-banger of a show for a super enthusiastic crowd of fans! Justin and the gang really rocked stage 2 with some big sound! Afterwords I spent some time at their merch table finally getting a good look at the teeshirt, and all the folks who were excited by it. They were nice enough to hook me up with one and 2 others (I bought one of em!) and they’re pretty amazing designs all around! Buy their new album at their bandcamp and be sure to like them on Facebook! I’ll have poster prints of both designs available in my store shortly!

Again, you can check out all of my photos from the shows at My Flickr!

Okay, while I missed out on a lot of music at this years show, I’ve been able to catch up thanks to both Arecibo Radio and 8bitX’s live streams and the many fans who recorded live video during the various performances. I’m going to quickly cover what I’ve heard, found, and listened to about the amazing sets I had to miss!

bLiNd – You can listen to a full recording of bLiNd’s hour long DJ session on his SoundCloud page! Featuring MC duties by A_Rival halfway through, this set gets better and better as it goes on and bLiNd covers SO many quality, classic games! Totally worth a listen!

Benjamin Briggs – Ben Briggs is another DJ who’s featured his entire set up at SoundCloud. He’s an amazing talent and highly regarded even by much longer-term remixers/DJs. His sound will amaze you!

Bright Primate – Up and coming Boston-Based chiptune DJ’s Lydia Marsala (Vocals, Songs, Emotion) and James Therrien (Game Boys, Songs, Logic) form the duo that is Bright Primate! Find their show on the Chiptune Stage at YouTube!

Virt – Virt of course did a chiptune show…and of course you should watch the WHOLE THING…and of course you SHOULD LOVE IT!!! Virt: wears cat ears to every show!

Danimal Cannon – The aforementioned Danimal Cannon also does chiptune sets. THanks to Chip Music Chronicle for having all of the chiptune stage shows up on their YouTube! Here’s Danimal’s set!

Yuzo KoshiroThe Man. The Myth. The Legend. He was this years featured guest and he did a late-night dance party DJ session that packed the house and brought the nostalgia on heavy! Very sad I could not make his set, but at least it’s recorded in digital history for all to see!

Triforce Quartet – I caught just a bit of Triforce Quartet’s set immediately after Knight of the Round on Saturday. They started with a small crowd and the theme from “Game of Thrones” and by the time I returned later to Stage 2 to buy some goods from KotR, they had a packed house and were doing an amazing Legend of Zelda arrangement! Unlike KotR who was headbanging, mashing, jumping up and down metal, Triforce Quartet had a full house seated audience and they were all entirely entranced by the music! Hope they return for MAGFest XII!

And that folks, is just scratching the surface. There were SO many more chiptune performers (again, all available through Chip Music Chronicle’s playlist at YouTube!) and live bands! MAGFest XI proved once again that MAGFest works very very hard year after year to bring the best of every kind of video game music out there to the stage. Each year, every band, performer and act puts on better and better shows and the collaborative vibe this year was unmistakable, masterful and brought so much fun and joy to the entire event!

I hope to see MAGFests performers continue to come together both musically and personally, it adds a whole new level of imagination and performance to every concert, party and panel!

Thanks again to everyone at MAGFest for putting on the best show of the year. Period. You guys and gals rule!

See you all next year for MAGFest XII!

-RD

All photos are ©2013 Randall Drew
All Music is © their respective creators/arrangers/musicians

MAGFest Report Part 2: Friends

I have a lot of friends who I only see once a year. At MAGFest. This blog post is about them in all their pure awesome.

Every year for many years now, a bunch of us from the former OneUp Studios message boards (now Mustin Enterprises) gather at MAGFest to catch up, celebrate and party. Since the show has moved to the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center the style of the gathering at MAGFest has stepped up a notch. Spear-headed by long-time internet friends JoeCam and Taras “Pappy” Butrej, a group purchases a large suite and hosts a suite-party. Usual suspects include Rory O’Boyle, Haroon “FFMusicDJ” Piracha, “Jesus” Ian and Brohon. You’ll meet all of them in the photo above. Often the group chooses a theme.

This year’s theme was “Brotel Party – Dress like a douche, but don’t act like one!” Needless to say there were a lot of popped collars, glasses being worn inside and excited shouts of “BRO!” Everyone from Dale North Editor in Chief of Destructoid, to Jake “Virt” Kauffman of WayForward, to Kunal Majmudar and Maximo Lorenzo show their faces at the so-called “Lumberjack Lounge.” It’s a gathering of not only some of the best talent in the VGM Remix/Rearrangement community, but also some of my best far-away friends! Each one is doing something different and amazing with their talents and I hope to give you all just a snippet of their awesome here in this post!

Oh, and in case you were wondering; This is how nerds run a shots competition:

The competition is set up into rounds of 3 shots, each winner advancing until we have a 3-way showdown at the end. There’s prizes for the winners AND Losers. Each shot MUST be themed after a game (or game-related, as there was a Wreck it Ralph themed shot this year for Venelope!) This years winner was HAT! With a shot called “Purple Tentacle” from the classic LucasArts game Day of the Tentacle!

My good buddy Haroon was making his second-place shot from last year on the side for us non-participants so we could taste what it takes to place in “Onimushots!”

I’ve mentioned a lot of people already, so why don’t I get down to specifics? I’ll share a little bit about each person and what they’re doing that’s just so awesome! (No specific order, just as they come to me….)

Maximo V Lorenzo – I’ve talked plenty about this guy already, but seriously, Go read his webcomic OHKO!

Mustin – Co-Founder of the former OneUp Studios with Dale North, now the man behind Mustin Enterprises and The OneUps!

JoeCam – Asshole. Also, writer for The Gaming Vault.


Taras “Pappy” Butrej – DudeBro. Does movie reviews at his blog Mainstreamin’

Kunal Majmudar – Runs Pixeltone Music and co-founder of SWD Tech! Guest percussion for The OneUps also, all around awesome guy!

X-Strike Studios – Tim, Rorry, Ben and the whole gang at X-Strike do video game movies with a sense of humor and nostalgia! I’d recommend Project: Snake Low Budget Espionage as a good starter!

Overcoat – Aka Scott, he hosts Touhou Tuesday and Radio Overcoat Tuesday and Wednesday nights over at AreciboRadio! Be sure to jump into the chat and talk with all the other fans as well as hosts, guests and producers!

Kristina “TrueStar” Kauffman/ Jake “Virt” Kauffman – Kris is another Arecibo Radio host, co-hosting Touhou Tuesdays and her own show Noise Channel on Thursday nights. Her shows are often produced by Virt, who’s 110% Awesome.

Ailsean – God of Guitar.

Steph – Steph is the guest coordinator of MAGFest and one of the bubbliest, happiest people I know!

Flik – Chris Serani was MAGFest’s official photographer this year and I’m sure he’s busy right now uploading thousands of photos!

Justin Taylor – Super nice guy who knows how to METAL. When not on stage, wears glasses!

Brandon Strader – No longer an “up and coming” OCRemixer this guy knows how to rock and will have a solo album coming VERY SOON! Hit up his website!

NO-Shows:

Here are some folk that sadly couldn’t make it this year, but are MAG Veterans and sorely missed!

Mazedude – Chris Getman and his wife just had their first child, baby Isabella! Mazedude is hard at work on his next solo album “American Pixels” Pre-order now for a free Chiptune EP!

Larry “Liontamer” Oji. – Loves McRibs. Had the flu and had to skip MAGFest this year, he’s a veteran attendee, long time VGM DJ and co-host of Nitro Game Injection on Arecibo Radio! He’s also the Community Manager and a Judge over at OCRemix.

KyleJCRB – Main host of Nitro Game Injection and master of the KNGI radio network!

These are just some of the people I meet every year now at MAGFest to catch up with! The list goes on and I’m sure I missed some folks, but hey…that’s why we hang at the show!
To see my complete MAGFest photo set with many of the people listed here in it, his up my Flickr account!

Tomorrow, the final part of my report and what MAGFest is really all about: The Music! Let me tell ya, this year was incredible!

-RD