Does anyone have...

[EdenMaster]

...a subscription to Nintendo Power? If so, I imagine you recieved (or will recieve) a copy of the Super Smash Bros. Melee orchestral concert. If you did recieve this gem, I'd appreciate some MP3s of the songs. If you prefer, I'll even pay you thru Paypal (within reason) for a burned copy.

I need this :).

[Dark Jaguar]

Is it basically rips of the songs on the game, since they are already orchastrated in-game anyway? Does it have any unique tracks? If not, then it's good enough for me to just rip the tracks directly from the sound test option in the game.

[EdenMaster]

No, it's a recording from an actual symphony performed by the Japanese Philharmonic a few months ago. Each subscriber to NP gets a copy of it.

[Dark Jaguar]

Hmm, an actual good reason to get a subscription. I remember long ago when I was actually a subscriber and got a couple neat items, like pogs and a preview of Donkey Kong Country (and of course a cute "oh, oh look how cool we are rebelling against the mighty keep out sign and showing a purposly presented glimpse of the N64" scene). Anyway, that CD sounds interesting.

By the way, the tracks in SSBM ARE performed by an actual symphony too (I do believe it was also the Japanese Phil Harmonic). The performance might have been different this time, and likely was, so I'm still interested.

[EdenMaster]

Indeed, but still, it sounds like it'd be awesome :D.

[Laser Link]

Yes, I would have subscribed a few months ago if I knew about this before they announced it. And I could have recieved an Animal Crossing or Super Mario Sunshine or Metroid Prime shirt too!

[OB1]

And have you seen the awesome new Metroid comic in NP? It's done by the extremely talented (artistically, at least) folks over at Dreamwave Productions. They do all sort of anime-like comic books. It looks fantastic.

I wish I could find some scans for you guys, but since I can't find any I can always show you some of Pat Lee's (the guy who's drawing the NP Metroid comic) art just to give you an idea of what his stuff looks like:

[Weltall]

Pat Lee is pretty good. I think he did an anime a few years back about a cyborg cop and her human partner, I forgot the name but the art was superb... I really should dig them up again... and I'm embarrassed I can't even remember what it's called :o

[OB1]

You mean a comic book. :D

You're thinking of "Darkminds". You can get the first volume (the only DM volume that he did the art for) in collected trade paperback form. It's called "Darkminds: Paradox".

[Weltall]

Anime, comic book, all the same to me.

But yes, it was Darkminds.

And by trade paperback do you mean a graphic novel? I'd get that if I could find it.

[Dark Jaguar]

anime has to be anime...ted. If it's a comic, the proper nerdology is "manga", but only if it's actually from Japan.

[OB1]

That is correct.

And yes when I say TPB I mean graphic novel. I just hate using the term graphic novel since it was created by people that felt insecure about calling them comic books, so they had to create a new term to feel less geeky and immature.

[Dark Jaguar]

Haha, I think the same cynicle thing about the term graphic novel! It's just a long comic book.

[OB1]

I know! But ever since those literary elitists found out that there are actually some excellent comics book stories out there and wanted to read them, they didn't want to use the term "comic book" because it they thought it would belittle them, so they made up a new word for it.

[Weltall]

Originally posted by OB1
That is correct.

And yes when I say TPB I mean graphic novel. I just hate using the term graphic novel since it was created by people that felt insecure about calling them comic books, so they had to create a new term to feel less geeky and immature.

Haha, well isn't calling it a trade paperback the same thing? :D

[OB1]

Nah, the term TPB refers to single issue comics being collected in a larger volume, and it has been used for decades.

[geoboy]

*crawls out of grave*

Oi! let's not do that again! Hey, this place looks different. How long have a been out for?

Anywho, I just so happen to subscribe to a certain magazine known as Nintendo Power, and I just so happen to have received a certain CD containing certain orchestral music from a certain Nintendo game last month. Also, I have conveniently ripped it onto my hard drive.

In other words: yes, I'd be happy to give you the music. :) However, I have no place to upload it. If Weltall or someone will let me upload them here, that'd be great. I could also try to give them to you on KaZaA but I doubt that'll work. I really don't wanna waste poor Weltall's bandwidth, though. The whole album is a total of 47 megabytes. I'm wondering if it'd be easier to package them all as one gigantic zip file or if all 15 files should be downloaded individually?

[EdenMaster]

Awesome, thanks geoboy! I was wondering where you were :D. Anyhow, if you have hi-speed you can just email em to me, otherwise I'm sure Welty will let you put em on TCs server for a little while.

[EdenMaster]

We've all seen the awesome image of the 14 original characters, but while reading up on this orchestrated CD, I found the cover art. The same image, but with all 25 characters! I took the liberty of pointing the hidden characters out, and I'll put up the original image, it'll be of better quality without the crappiness of jpeg blurring. Has anyone else seen this, and if so, I'd like to see a higher quality image. It'd make a perfect desktop.

And geoboy, what's up with the music?

<img src="http://www.vgmusic.com/images/ssbmdxol-1.jpg">

[Laser Link]

Wow, good catch EM. Sumassho Burazaazu!

[The Former DMiller]

Ooh, geoboy, could I have the MP3s too? I could use them for my radio station.

[Weltall]

I'll upload them if you send them my way, geoboy. We still have 12GB of bandwidth to waste over the next ten days, so there won't be any problems.

Besides, I want em myself :)

Hit me up on MSN.

[geoboy]

I apologize for the delay. My internet connection had been crappy for the past few days but everything should be fixed now. :)

I probably should've mentioned that I encoded the tracks in Ogg Vorbis and not MP3. It isn't a problem if you have the latest version of Winamp 2 or 3 -- There's an Ogg Vorbis decoder bundled right in with it. The reason I encoded the tracks into Ogg Vorbis is because Ogg compresses much better while preserving near perfect CD quality.

I hope that isn't an inconvenience to anyone. But you see, I'm an audiophile and I just cannot stand the sound of poorly encoded MP3s at low bitrates.

So should I try to email it you in one big 47MB zip file, Weltall, or do you think It would be better to send it through MSN messenger?

[EdenMaster]

Never even heard of that...can they be played normally without WinAmp? If it's not too much trouble on your part, I'd like MP3s. No problem if you can't though, I'll find some way to make them work.

P.S.: I haven't updated WinAmp in about 3 or 4 years.

[Weltall]

Originally posted by geoboy
I apologize for the delay. My internet connection had been crappy for the past few days but everything should be fixed now. :)

I probably should've mentioned that I encoded the tracks in Ogg Vorbis and not MP3. It isn't a problem if you have the latest version of Winamp 2 or 3 -- There's an Ogg Vorbis decoder bundled right in with it. The reason I encoded the tracks into Ogg Vorbis is because Ogg compresses much better while preserving near perfect CD quality.

I hope that isn't an inconvenience to anyone. But you see, I'm an audiophile and I just cannot stand the sound of poorly encoded MP3s at low bitrates.

So should I try to email it you in one big 47MB zip file, Weltall, or do you think It would be better to send it through MSN messenger?

Definitely MSN.

I'm not familiar with Ogg Vorbis. How does it compare to a 320bps LAME-encoded MP3?

[geoboy]

Well, I encoded the tracks with a nominal bitrate of 112kbps and they sound pretty much indistinguishable from the actual CD. I can only detect compression artifacts during the applause and it really isn't too noticeable. http://www.vorbis.com has some free Ogg music that you can listen to as well as a list of compatible players. I recommend listening to a song by 4T Thieves called Mists of Time. It sounds like music that came directly from Metroid Prime.

I will be on MSN tomorrow afternoon. See you then!

[The Former DMiller]

I've never heard of it either, and if it's something new I doubt it supports Macs. I'll check it out but I'm not getting my hopes up.

[The Former DMiller]

You know what, it doesn't matter anyway because the program I use to stream my radio station can only stream a few formats, and that sure ain't one of them. Oh well, I'll check out this new mystery format anyway because geoboy has this audiophile intrigued.

[Nick Burns]

Lookee at what I found

[geoboy]

Sorry about that, DMiller. I had a feeling you meant a streamed internet radio station when you said you wanted to use them for your radio station. Oh, and I'm certain Ogg Vorbis works for Macs. It's completely open-source so it works on many platforms.
http://www.vorbis.com/download_mac.psp

There happens to be a Mac version of winamp in the works as well. I think that will be able to play 'em.

[Weltall]

I'm online now, Geoboy.

[The Former DMiller]

Yeah I did look into and it seems pretty cool. It won't surplant MP3s anytime soon, but it's a nice format. And I did mean a streamed internet radio station, but I stream it straight from a program on my computer.

[Weltall]

I have the music uploaded as a 48MB zip file.

http://www.tcforums.com/music/smashing_live.zip

I will keep it up for one week only.

[EdenMaster]

Geoboy, Weltall, you both totally rock!

MELEE!

[EdenMaster]

Oh, and here is a converter to make the OGG files MP3s.

http://www.mp3-to-wav.com/oggconverters.htm

[Sacred Jellybean]

*downloads (insert obnoxious new format to fuck up the system and further help people forget the concept of standardization) to MP3 converter* Whee!

EdenMaster equally rocks. Almost. Okay, maybe not.

[geoboy]

If any of you plan on burning and audio CD, it's be best to do it BEFORE converting them to MP3. Compression, decompression, then re-compression is a bitch on audio quality and isn't necessary when making an audio CD.

That is all. :) :) :)

[A Black Falcon]

I'll just use the Vorbis Winamp 2 plugin... I'd use Winamp 3 but its not as good yet... for one thing it doesn't really work with Winamp 2 skins...
Anyway when theres a plugin why convert them?

[Sacred Jellybean]

These automatically worked in my Winamp... and since they'll burn to a CD for audio okay, it looks like I won't be needing the mp3 converter. Unless I want to put them on a CD for my MP3 player...

[EdenMaster]

I rock...

[The Former DMiller]

They actually worked for me! I'm so happy! They are now officially a part of my radio broadcast. :)

[Weltall]

You can stream internet radio right off your computer? Maybe I can delve into my gigantic music collection and make an internet radio station for TC... then again, I'd be mixing some un-Nintendo music in there :D

What program do you use for that?

[The Former DMiller]

I use Audion to stream from my computer. I'm pretty sure there's a PC version of that program out there somewhere. If I have time after classes today I'll try and find it for you. You also have to have a program that physically sends the music out to broadcast. Audion doesn't do this on it's own, it only sends the music to a streaming program. The program I use is ShoutCast, and I know there's a PC version of that. IceCast is also a popular program. I've heard ShoutCast is a bitch to install on PCs, though, but I wouldn't know since it was easy on my computer. :)

[geoboy]

So now that most of you have the music, what do you think about it? I'd have to say I like the Smash Bros. Great Medley arrangement the most. It covers a lot of music and the transitions between songs are well done. I also love the Depths of Brinstar track. At first I didn't care for it, mainly because I stronly believed that Brinstar music should consist of wailing electric guitars. But after a while the orchestral version started to grow on me.

[jonsoh]

Ok, I've just found out about this today... I heard a couple of tracks and I was hooked!

I don't suppose anybody could hook me up with a copy...?

[EdenMaster]

Well, thank you for unearthing this ancient thread.

[Geno]

January, 2003... I wasn't even a member then.

[EdenMaster]

TendoCity was but a gleam in your Address Bars eye :D

[Geno]

Yup. :)

[A Black Falcon]

I remember this thread...