Soundtrack Double Feature: Christmas in Springtime in Hell

This post came a little later than I'd like- my Mac had a sudden hardware failure and I had to rush it to the Apple store at the mall for repairs... thankfully unlike what happened three years ago I had a backup at the ready so nothing was lost in the long run. It still put me out of being able to work on my stuff until today, and before I was forced to bring my computer in for repairs, I had ripped two new soundtracks (or at least put them into a format one can easily put them in their music player of choice). But of course, I like to offer a little background on each respective soundtrack. 

Since 2009, retroUSB has created special NES cartridges themed around the holidays to sell on their website. While I never had a personal interest in purchasing these cartridges, they are pretty neat novelties--including a (sometimes interactive) Christmas visual with 8-bit renditions of holiday songs you can leave on in the background during a Christmas gathering and a Christmas themed game or mod. The cartridges also aren't your standard grey plastic: these come in clear white and shine internal LED's like a Christmas tree when plugged into an NES and powered on. Several of the 8-bit Xmas cartridges, including 2015 and 2016's, were showcased at the Festival of Games, a retro gaming-themed holiday event from the same hosts that brought you Long Island Retro Gaming Expo. One of these special cartridges was even used to command a literal quartet of ROB's to dance to Christmas songs.

Of course, you can also get the ROMs to plug into your favorite emulator, and that leads me to 8-bit Xmas 2021, an extensive mod of Excitebike that swaps the bikers with ducks on snowmobiles, adds four player support, and widens the track to six lanes over the original four. It only runs four (music) tracks long: the three songs that play on the title screen, and the theme of the game itself, Exciteduck, which shifts in speed depending on the speed of the ducks. The latter steals the whole show and I would recommend giving the OST a listen if only to hear the Exciteduck theme alone, though that's not to say the title screen tunes aren't worth it if you're in the mood for something a bit more relaxed and fitting for the season... in nine months from now anyways.

Grab the soundtrack for 8-bit Xmas 2021 here. Of course, this isn't the only game soundtrack I have prepped for today, as I have one more treat for everyone.

Some of you may be familiar with Doom, the legendary FPS from the 90's that spawned a million different mods providing new levels, gameplay tweaks, and soundtracks composed in midi instruments. During the end of the front half of 2022, I ended up in a sudden classic Doom phase, playing dozens and dozens of mods throughout the year and even into 2023, and one of the mods I played was the Plutonia MIDI Pack, a music mod that replaces the stock Doom/Doom II soundtrack with new compositions designed for use with The Plutonia Experiment, one half of the commercial mod compilation Final Doom, which initially lacked music created specifically for it.

The soundtrack quickly grew on me throughout 2022, and while the raw midi files were included as extras in the mod download, not many music players support midi format music. This music rip converts them to the more universal mp3 with all the appropriate tags so you can easily listen to them at your own leisure. Of course, I always encourage you to give the MIDI pack a try if you like the songs and want to see how they transform and complement the atmosphere of the Plutonia Experiment.

The Plutonia MIDI Pack's soundtrack can be found here. The MIDI version of the soundtrack (as well as the mod itself) can be directly downloaded from here.

And that's all I have for today- Next month should be pretty packed, with prepping for Easter and the first big convention of the year, and I still have some blog posts I'd like to write to fill the void while I grind out projects in the back. That said, I bid you farewell for now.

The Conventions of 2023

It's that time of the year again. With March now almost over I figured now is a good time for a new convention schedule to set up the next few seasons of the year.

Since I still don't really feel like venturing outside my general area just yet, I'll be keeping the lineup of conventions to what I've attended per year since 2018 (disregarding the two years I skipped due to the pandemic). Most notable is the grand return of AnimeNext, which was skipped in 2022 due to ongoing issues with the Atlantic City Convention Center. Thus, the event was moved to a new home--the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center, which thankfully is much, much closer to my home than the previous location was by a whole two hours. That said, I will miss the aesthetics and atmosphere of Atlantic City- watching the sun set through the windows of the convention center and the beauty of the main lobby area lit by tons of lighting (and the stampede of Jojo cosplayers descending down the escalator at AnimeNext 2019) will forever be a local memory of mine.

For this year, I also decided to mark a few of the "side events" taking place on Long Island that I will be attending. EMcon is a smaller, warmup event the weekend before Castle Point Anime Convention with a few local artists and crafters and an all-ages approach with its presentation, Cradle Con and Long Island Tropic Con are two comic and general fandom events towards the end of Spring and Summer respectively, and Festival of Games is a holiday-themed offshoot of the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo themed around holiday shopping and Christmas-themed games and events. This isn't all of the side events that take place but these are the ones that I figured have enough importance to me (especially after Anime NYC left me too sore to attend one particular side event that was occurring the very same weekend).

For main events on the other hand, there are certainly some I would be interested in attending in the future; however, they would be currently too long of a drive or are too close to other events that they would not likely go onto the schedule without cutting out others. Events like PAX East, Thy Geekdom Con, Anime Boston, and Otakon have been on the radar as events I could realistically attend, but with my physical conditions not being at their best and me only having so much money to spend at big conventions like these, I cannot possibly attend everything even if it would give me more excuses to get out and socialize with more artists and content creators. For now, expect the six events pictured above to make the cut each year for the foreseeable future until I feel adventurous enough to add some new events.