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Tag: Music

Posts related to musical things (film scores, albums, etc).

Do the Laugh

Do the Laugh

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OGL DISASTER REPORT: Andrew catches us up (briefly) on the ongoing Wizards of the Coast Open Game License drama.

WEEK IN GEEK: This week, Andrew realizes his dream tabletop game exists but spread across a television show and a video game as he discusses his first time through season 1 of The Walking Dead and his time with State of Decay 2. D. Bethel keeps the post-apocalyptic survival theme going as he finds a lot to enjoy in the premiere episode of HBO’s The Last of Us.

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FEATURED MUSIC:

Klingon Time Lords

Klingon Time Lords

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A QUALITY BALANCE OF MERCY & TERROR: This week, our hosts discuss the simply incredible finale for the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: “A Quality of Mercy.” They discuss the merits of the episode on its own and as a finale for a new Trek show, but they also cover how it intersects with the original series’ first season episode, “Balance of Terror.”

CHAPTERS:

  • (00:00) Intro – Stop with the fireworks already
  • (01:53) First season finale to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
  • (42:37) Outro – Dan talks about Thor: Love & Thunder (end credit music spoilers, no story spoilers)
  • (45:23) Outtakes

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • “The Effect of Randomosity” (21 November 2014): Where our hosts talk about an alternative reality in the original Star Trek series called “Mirror, Mirror.”
  • “Starfleet First” (31 January 2020): Where Andrew reflects on the premiere episode of Star Trek: Picard.
  • “The Spicy Circle” (13 May 2022): Where our hosts cover the premiere episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds first season.

INFO:

FEATURED MUSIC:

Liminal Space

Liminal Space

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A BAD MIX: This week, the Twitter account, @TerriblyBland, posted a thread calling out nerd industries’ tendency to do networking at bars, especially during and after conventions. As ever with nerd discourse, the claim was met with a lot of support…as well as some very staunch opposition. Andrew and D. Bethel look at the original claim and examine the overall conversation.

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • “Some Solid Copy” (14 August 2015): Where Andrew first discussed his experience playing Watch the Skies, a megagame.
  • “Action Noir Theater” (29 July 2016): Episode 100, Part 2 where our hosts reveal the first part of an intended series of the audio drama, Nick Springer. With a bonus, heavily-produced opening where a song by D. Bethel brings Andrew back from being trapped in the rift between space and time!

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FEATURED MUSIC:

Dating the Void

Dating the Void

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ELEMENTARY, DEAR WOHN JATSON: A brief look at an upcoming multi-platform release from Capcom that gathers two Ace Attorney games previously unavailable outside of Japan. The collection, called The Great Ace Attorney, features some interesting localization of characters names. While not unusual in itself, the fact that in Japan a character named “Sherlock Holmes” had to be changed––to “Herlock Sholmes” for release in the United States points to some very strange aspects of copyright law. Andrew dives deep into the mystery.

Image Source: Capcom

CUTTING CUTSCENES: Based on an GamesIndustry.biz interview with Weird West narrative designer, Lucas Loredo, who posits the idea that maybe we live in a gaming world that no longer has a need for cutscenes in games. D. Bethel and Andrew dive into the purpose of cutscenes and do their best to answer the question themselves.

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FEATURED MUSIC:

ADDITIONAL MUSIC:

Scumbag Removal

Scumbag Removal

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WEEK IN GEEK: This week, Andrew finds progress in repetition as he plays the new indie video game hit, Loop Hero, by Four Quarters. D. Bethel, on the other hand, finds a lot of quirky charm––despite the somewhat very dark places the story goes––in the new SyFy show, Resident Alien, based on the Dark Horse comic series.

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • “Sad News Theme” (28 February 2020): Where Andrew talked about watching the rebooted MacGyver for the first time.
  • “The Call Boss” (02 April 2021): Where Andrew, Taylor Katcher, and D. Bethel discuss Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

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News Cruise

News Cruise

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ANY PORT IN A NERD STORM: Rather than blasting the news, Andrew and D. Bethel blur the distinction between nerdy news and Weeks in Geek with Andrew expressing his excitement for Star Trek: Lower Decks on CBS All Access, Dan’s strange sense of place after watching the HBO true crime documentary mini-series, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, before they discuss the news of the upcoming live-action Mulan remake getting a simultaneous (albeit for $29.99) release on Disney+ and in theaters.

RELEVANT LINKS:

  • Bethel, D. “News Blast: Three X-Films Announced for 2018.” A Website [ , ] For All Intents and Purposes. 23 April 2017. –– Where D. Bethel discusses the announcement of the New Mutants movie, along with the announcement of Deadpool 2 and Dark Phoenix. Deadpool 2 was the only film to release in 2018.
  • Diaz, Eric. “Mulan is Going Straight to Disney+ for $29.99.” Nerdist. 04 August 2020.
  • And, for the sake of completion, here is the website for the city of Cerritos, CA, which indeed translates to “little hills.”

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • “A Veritable Odyssey” (12 July 2019): Where Andrew and D. Bethel discuss the first trailer for the live-action Mulan remake.
  • “Bouncing Waveforms” (15 May 2020): Where D. Bethel discusses the most recent (and final?) announced theatrical release date for New Mutants.

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FEATURED MUSIC:

The Battle Is The Game

The Battle Is The Game

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WEEK IN GEEK: Andrew finds the retro-JRPG stylings of Square Enix’s Octopath Traveler engaging and fun while D. Bethel gets challenged making the new pages from his webcomic, Long John, into short videos for Instagram, forcing him to look at his own work in new ways.

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RELEVANT EPISODES:

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Coma Chameleon

Coma Chameleon

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HAPPY GEEKSGIVING: Disguising a perfectly good Week in Geek episode, our hosts discuss the recent nerdy things in their lives that, like American Thanksgiving, seem to be all about bringing people together––directly or indirectly. Andrew relates his time with Hideo Kojima’s recent game, Death Stranding while D. Bethel has spent the last half-year taking up the challenge of finding out whether he’s actually a fan of the band Queen or not.

What nerdy and geeky things have brought you through the beginning of this winter holiday season? Let us know!

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • Episode 06 – Hear Law, Article 9 (03 July 2014): Where Andrew and D. Bethel discuss the importance of Hideo Kojima’s PS2 masterpiece, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, has in the continuum of video game history.
  • Episode 18 – All the Way (26 September 2014): Tangentially related to Queen, in this episode Dan and Andrew talk about the Highlander franchise.
  • Episode 28 – A Mighty Oak (05 December 2014): Where D. and Andrew discuss the place the first Metal Gear Solid holds in video game history.
  • Episode 70 – The Big Fiddle (30 October 2015): Where D. Bethel discusses his time with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain after completing it.
  • Episode 75 – A Sad Game About Nuclear Disarmament (11 December 2015): Where Andrew and D. discuss a particularly harrowing and powerful scenario from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
  • I Can Segue (01 November 2019): Where D. and Andrew discuss the most recent level of tragedy around Fallout 76, and spitball ideas for how to make it into a single-player game with light multi-player elements…something that Death Stranding seems to pick up on.

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Listeners in the Woodwork

Listeners in the Woodwork

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TO ME, MY LITIGATORS: Eyebrows raised recently when a Florida man sued Marvel, Fox, Saban Entertainment, and many other production companies saying that the generation-defining theme song of the ’90s X-Men animated show actually plagiarized a strikingly similar theme of a popular Hungarian tv show from the 1980s. Nerd Law man, Andrew, and X-Men fanatic, D. Bethel, put their heads together to see if this case has any legs to stand on. (A big thanks to friend-of-the-show, André La Roche for his consultation on this topic.)

DISNEY PEMDAS: Last week, Disney made waves as it began an irresponsibly long Twitter thread announcing every title that would be available on its upcoming Disney+ service. D. Bethel and Andrew sort through the announcement, talking about how much this will shift the paradigm of entertainment consumption.

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RELEVANT EPISODES:

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FEATURED MUSIC:

  • “Nerd Law” by D. Bethel
Episode 153 – Back Off the Wagon

Episode 153 – Back Off the Wagon

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A WEEK IN GEEK: Before things get started, D. talks about becoming mildly internet famous for about a day (the social media accounts of his favorite band, Twisted Sister, shared art he made of each band member). For those wondering, here’s the scene from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure in which Twisted Sister appears:

INDIE ACCOLADES: Andrew and D. talk about the world of independent creation––mostly games, mostly video games––and how it works in the face of the big corporate franchises discussed for the past few weeks.

WEEKS IN INDIE GAMES: Andrew and D. mention a few indie games that they’ve been enjoying over the last month or so. Andrew discusses his love and frustration with Thomas Happ‘s metaroidvania Axiom Verge and Powerhoof‘s Crawl. D. keeps returning to the existential dread that is noio‘s  Kingdom: Classic as well as to the hilarious existential horror of Kitfox Games‘ The Shrouded Isle.

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INFO:

For all intents and purposes, that was an episode recap.

FEATURED MUSIC:

-“Disco Medusae” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)*
-“District Four” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)*
*Tracks are licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/