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Once again here is another monthly recap of the highest voted and most read news stories on videogame music posted to the Nobuooo website.

November 2009 saw the Data Beez chiptune micro tour take place on the West Coast. 2 Player Productions posted their first episode of Penny Arcade TV. Hiroki Kikuta and Hitoshi Sakimoto shared a conversation on writing RPG music for the Super Nintendo. Soundtracks for Tekken 6 and Aquaria were released online, together with Saitone's 8-bit MJ tribute and Machinarium's bonus EP.

Here is a selection of the most highly rated and read items for November.

News

Gaijin Games sponsoring Blip Festival 2009

Gaijin Games plans to release Bit Trip Void in the U.S. on 11/23 as a Thanksgiving week gift for 600 Nintendo Points, writes GameSetWatch. The company also announced that it is sponsoring New York City's Blip Festival 2009 this December. Both Nullsleep and Bit.Shifter, who guest starred on Bit.Trip Core's soundtrack, are slated to perform at the three-day chiptune concert.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6376

VGM Spotlight - Shadow Hearts: Covenant

Composer and video game enthusiast Mattias Häggström Gerdt (also known as Another Soundscape) analyzes and shines some light on the soundtrack for Shadow Hearts: Covenant. The main focus is how Yoshitaka Hirota's music helps set the mood for the game and portray characters.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6480

Piano Collections KINGDOM HEARTS Field & Battle site goes live

A second CD of piano arrangements of Kingdom Hearts music will be published by Square Enix on January 13. The theme of the album (catalog number SQEX-10177) will be field and battle music, composed and produced by Yoko Shimomura. An excerpt can be heard on the official website at Square Enix.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6369

Giant Robot & Attract Mode hosting West Coast Chiptunes Micro Tour

Videogame culture blog Attract Mode is teaming up with Giant Robot to bring together the East and West coast chiptune scenes for a West Coast micromusic mini-tour starting next week. The tour kicks off on November 7th in Los Angeles, with a chipmusic workshop at the Japanese American National Museum. Afterwards, head over to the Chop Suey Cafe for a live show featuring Trash80, minusbaby, StarPause and Crashfaster with visuals by Daniel Rehn and Paris Treantafeles.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6357

MAGFest VIII announces final bands

Game Music 4 All has news of the MAGFest VIII band lineup set for January 1-4 in Alexandria, Virginia. Groups include ArmCannon, Metroid Metal, Temp Sound Solutions, Rare Candy, A_Rival, The Smash Brothers, Armadillo Tank, This Place is Haunted, The OneUps, Select Start, Entertainment System and The Megas.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6422

Zelda: Spirit Tracks - Link's New Instrument

Nintendo is making use of the musical potential of the DS microphone in their upcoming Zelda title Spirit Tracks. Link's spirit pipes are a set of colored pan pipes, played by blowing into the DS microphone while cycling through different colored instruments with the stylus. They will be needed to overcome certain obstacles through the course of the game, and add an extra interactive audio element.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6390

Tekken 6 tracklist, samples online

Sweep Records has posted the tracklist and eight samples for their three-disc Tekken 6 Original Soundtrack. The artists include members of SuperSweep, Namco Bandai, Basiscape and Monaca. Samples include Bound by Blood (Hitoshi Sakimoto), Fist Festival (Shinji Hosoe), Only One Fight (Ayako Saso), Arisa and Ｇ ～Blast ver.～ (Go Shiina), Artificial Ruins, (Satoru Kousaki), Karma (Akitaka Tohyama), and Yodeling in Meadow Hill (Keiichi Okabe). The album is due out December 9.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6455

GM4A review of Calling All Dawns by Christopher Tin

Anthony "genoboost" does a track by track review of the recently released debut album Calling All Dawns by Civilization IV composer Christopher Tin.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6426

R-Type Your Best, Our Best soundtrack samples online

Pre-orders of R-TYPE TACTICS II -Operation BITTER CHOCOLATE- in Japan will come with a best-of music CD collection called R-Type Your Best, Our Best. The Irem site currently has a sample from the original game, and the sampler CD will include tracks from R-Type II, III, Final, Tactics and other installments in the series.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6384

BioShock 2 Special Edition includes OST CD, vinyl LP

Randy Nelson of Joystiq has posted news that $100 BioShock 2 Special Edition will come with a 164-page hardcover art book, three posters, the orchestral score by Garry Schyman on CD and also on a vinyl LP. The game is due out February 9.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6438

8bit Saitone『MJ 8bit tribute mix』release information

Little Desk has an article posted on the upcoming chiptune Michael Jackson tribute by Tokyo-based artist Saitone. Thriller and Smooth Criminal are scheduled to be released on November 25 on iTunes, while music and video previews from the mix can be sampled on the artist's myspace page.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6402

Nobuooo October '09 - Highest Voted Items

10.09 saw continued coverage of TGS and the Persona Live in Velvet Room concert in Japan. Original soundtrack albums for Muramasa: The Demon Blade and Tekken 6 were announced. It was a good month for chip music as well, with debuts for Chiptuned Rockman, Wanna Hld Yr Handheld, and the Bit.Trip Beat soundtrack. These are among the highest rated/ most viewed items posted to Nobuooo during the month of October.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6381

Podcast

Nitro Game Injection #124: Swordfish Ride

Hiatus? What hiatus? Kyle & Larry are back to give you a dose of great game music. On this episode, the duo talk weather, surf rock, Captain Lou Albano, and of course, games and game music. Album reviews return to NGI, and the guys take an in-depth look at Metroid Metal’s newest release, Varia Suite.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6398

Video

Official Blip Festival 2009 promo online

The three-day music and arts festival returns to Brooklyn's Bell House December 17-19, presented by Manhattan arts organization The Tank, in partnership with NYC artist collective 8bitpeoples. 2 Player Productions has uploaded the official trailer, featuring the track Sitges Savepoint by Random.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6437

Super Street Fighter IV: Guy, Cody, Adon trailer

Joining Dee Jay, T. Hawk and Juri in Super Street Fighter IV will be fighters Guy and Cody from Final Fight, along wtih Adon from Street Fighter Alpha. Capcom's latest trailer features voice acting and battle techniques from the six newcomers, set to music by Hideyuki Fukasawa. The game is due out in Spring 2010.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6463

Penny Arcade TV - The Pilot

2 Player Productions' pilot episode of Penny Arcade TV is now online. The reality show covers Mike and Jerry's daily activities over the course of the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo, with cameos by Ron Gilbert, MC Frontalot, Wil Wheaton and other PAX personalities. Music is by Anamanaguchi, Random, Alex Mauer, Cheap Dinosaurs and Frontalot, with sound design by Gabe Liberti.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6452

View PixelJunk Shooter's first level

Q-Games' PixelJunk Shooter isn't out on the PS3's Playstation Network until December 10, but for now VG247 has ten minutes of footage of the first level of the game. Music is by High Frequency Bandwidth, one half of the techno group The Orb.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6470

Melolune IGF Demo

Plants vs. Zombies composer Laura Shigihara has submitted her role-playing game Melolune to this year's 12th annual Independent Games Festival. A new trailer displays the sprite-based art, voice acting, and music by Shigihara. More info on the story and gameplay is available on the official site.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6419

JulieHally L.E.D. Nation video debuts

VORC Records has released a promotional video for "256 e.p." due out on November 25. The EP combines energizing 8bit rock with male and female vocals sung in a robotic style. (Hally is a chiptune pioneer who recently produced Chiptuned Rockman.) Sweden's DreamHack is welcoming JulieHally and Saitone with open 8bit arms, ie a live performance, later this month.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6436

Releases

Aquaria Original Soundtrack now on Bandcamp

Alec Holowka's original score to the IGF-winning game Aquaria is now up on Bandcamp, where tracks can be sampled and the full album downloaded for $10. The download includes several additions to the score: a new song with voice actor Jenna Sharpe and remixes by Danny B and Brandon McCartin.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6443

Amanita releases free Machinarium Bonus EP

Jakub Dvorsky of Czech Republic-based indie game company Amanita has posted a bonus EP of music from Machinarium. The five tracks, not included in the official soundtrack album, are by tomas dvorak (Floex), available both streaming on the Amanita website and as mp3 downloads.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6446

Tekken 6 Arcade Soundtrack released on iTunes

In anticipation of Sweeprecord's three-disc soundtrack to be released December 9, Namco Sounds has put an abridged Tekken 6 Arcade soundtrack on sale on iTunes for $5.99. The digital album includes 17 tracks, including Break Theory by Keiichi Okabe, Artificial Ruins by Satoru Kousaki, Only One Fight by Ayako Saso, G by Go Shiina, Cemetery by Rio Hamamoto and Staffroll by Ryuichi Takada.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6482

Interviews

West Coast Chiptune Romp - Data Beez Q&A

Data Beez coverage continues with an interview with participants Adam Robezzoli of Attract Mode, chiptune musician starPause and visual artist Paris Graphics. The Q&As take place at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where the chip music and portable visualizer workshop took place over the weekend.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6397

Concerto Tactics: The Music of Hiroki Kikuta and Hitoshi Sakimoto

This informal conversation between game composers takes a look at Super Nintendo titles Secret of Mana and Ogre Battle, and also more recent game scores for Muramasa: The Demon Blade and Concerto Gate. The topic of the discussion is the use of electronic equipment in synthesizing and modifying orchestral music in games.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6462

2 Player Productions on Reformatting PAX for DVD

Paul Owens and Paul Levering are the makers of chip music documentary Reformat the Planet. This year they filmed the behind-the-scenes making of PS3's Infamous game and released the Blip Festival 2008 live album. Here they discuss their upcoming DVD chronicling the events of this year's Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6441

Aquaria Piano Jam - Alec Holowka Interview

Infinite Ammo's Alec Holowka has been busy shipping copies of his two-disc original soundtrack album for Aquaria, featuring cover art by Katie de Sousa, an eight-page booklet, mini-poster and additional audio content not found in the game. In this interview on the subject of CD release, the game creator describes how the making of the score reflects a broader perspective on game design.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6475

Kajiya Productions on Translating Final Fantasy

Gamasutra interviews Alexander O. Smith and Joseph Reeder, two localizers who have worked on the English-language translations of such games as Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, and Final Fantasy XII. The conversation delves into their treatment of song lyrics and even providing vocals on Square Enix music projects.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6420

GameCulture: DJ Shadow Talks DJ Hero

Joshua Davis may not be the household name that Eminem and Jay Z have become, but his keen ear for instrumentation, razor-sharp turntable skills and bottomless record crate have earned Davis a massive and fiercely loyal following as DJ Shadow. When it came to actually making DJ Hero and its plastic turntable Activision turned to Shadow.

http://nobuooo.com/item/6366

This concludes another month in videogame music news. Highlights for December will be online in early 2010.