You're Wondering Why - Magnus Fiennes (Death In Paradise Opening Theme)

Now it's time for a feelgood song !!!

I already explained on YouTube why I created not a 10h version, So I will only say something about the serie itself.

Its basicly every time the same thing, on a tropical island there is a murder commited and in the end all suspects are gathered by the English inspector and this local team and the murderer is revealed.
I saw only Season 1 and 2 with Ben Miller and Sara Martins, they were a perfect team cause they were totally different characters and it shows in every Episode.
Sadly Ben Miller left in Season 3 (he was killed in the 1st episode).

Kris Marshall came along to solved it and stayed in the serie until in Season 6 Episode 6 he decided to stayed in London, so the other 2 Episodes of Season 6 were made with Ardal O'Hanion.

More changes were made, in Season 4 Episode 4 Sara Martins was replaced by Joséphine Jobert. She will be in Season 7 also I guess, together with Ardal O'Hanion.

Of course the local police officiers must be changed to, the younger Gary Carr was replaced by Tobi Bakare in Season 4 Episode 1.
Well I hope all those changes didnt effect the serie, meanwhile I have only good memories of Season 1 and 2.

I borrowed the pics from DVD boxes and the music from a YouTube clip of 45 seconds.
Then I started cutting and pasting with Audacity, until I had repeated the music 6 times.
I tried to start change the picture of the season everytime the music changes, but that didnt work very well.

 When published the video on YouTube, I had an idea to create maybe a better long version (better loop) so I started my Audacity and start cutting and pasting. The result was just as good as I expected so I decided to upload it to Soundcloud.

Soundcloud responded direct and the audio was removed due to copyright issues with Sony. I Googled and found out there was a CD released in 2011 by Sony with the theme song of Death In Paradise by Magnus Fiennes.

So I decided to upload it to my Mediafire and Pcloud if you want to hear an alternative long version.

BTW I found some interesting links I will share with you:
* Death In Paradise  - The Soundtrack
* Magnus Fiennes - The Composer/Cover Artist
* Death In Paradise Wiki - All you need to know

Or you can search at the BBC for short clips of each episode

My Music Memories: The Hedgehog's Dilemma of 8bit bEtty

I post this song earlier on my Facebook (I forgot) and when I was looking to the video's ZooiTroep liked, I found this one again. It's a really sad song about 2 people, both too shy to talk to each other. Yeah, I'm still sky and doesn't like crowds full of people I don't know. I don't like being in the spotlights and when I had to talk in public I am still blushing.


Now something about the music, 8bit bEtty uses sounds MSX-ers are very familiar with, I am talking about the standard sound chip PSG. That's not all, he also uses male and female robotical voices (sort of text 2 speech) and let them sing along. 
It's really impressive and it makes the difference between other chiptune or bitpop artists.

This song "The Hedgehog's Dilemma" comes from the album "Fake the Bitters" and you can still buy it on bandcamp.com. 

I must say not all the songs are great, but you must listen the whole album for yourself to judge. And here comes the sad part, after the album "Fake The Bitters" 8bit bEtty stopped publishing.

According to his latest tweets he is in the game-industry. 
However I guess he uses an other alias then 8bit bEtty here.

Here the link to the album: "Fake the bitters" to listen.
If you move your mouse pointer over the titles you can click on lyrics too.

But for this track "The Hedgehog's Dilemma" I make an exception, here are the lyrics:

I am just a shy girl at heart
I wish I could say hi to you
why am I alone again tonight
when I am in a city filled with possibilities

I am just a shy boy at heart
and I know you expect me to say hi to you
I guess I'm afraid of what you'll say
so I guess I will read another book tonight by myself

And sometimes I wish things weren't this way
that I could change
but then I'd lose a sense of myself
Oh what a shame

I am always the girl alone at the show
I start to sweat when you say hello
I will make a reservation for one
I don't think that eating alone is fun

And sometimes I wish things weren't this way
that I could change
but then I'd lose a sense of myself
Oh what a shame

Someday I will find someone shy just like me
Someday I will find someone shy just like me
Someday I will find someone shy just like me
Someday
Someday


Someone shy just like you

Note:
About the title, here is a short explanation from YouTube user: my name is.
"the hedgehog's dilemma actually a metaphor . like, when it's cold, hedgehogs would like to cuddle but they kinda cant bc theyll hurt each other."

Life Is Strange - the mix - TnC OST Mixz "The Decision"

It was never my intention to make a 2nd post to any game, but as you can read in the description of the mix on YouTube, making this mix was a some kind of price I had to pay for getting the music and the game out of my head. 
I will use this post to tell you more about the mix itself.

I listened to couple of Life Is Strange soundtracks on YouTube and there were so many songs I liked a lot, mostly the more depressed sounded ones. 
I just wanted to hear those songs together so I started my old Mixmeister Fusion and let the automatic BPM determine how the playlist would look like. 

It turned out alright (I guess) with a mix of instrumental, mixed vocals of male/female and 
a balance in soft beginning and hard endings. 
I mean, most songs in the mix started very quietly and the erupt at the end. 
But it was hard to cross-fade those songs with all different BPMs (according to Mixmeister Fusion, that is). 

It took me 12 versions before all song transitions were fine. I kept on cutting / pasting / listening to the same transitions to find the perfect mixing in key ( in my case, mixing by ear, not by the beat).

So in the end, I had my mix, but it seemed logic, if I want to publish on YouTube I must do more than just showing a title picture during the playing of the mix. 
I made some notes for different versions of the video, and suddenly I had the idea when 
I listen to the mix I made.

What if, the whole video mix shows with short video's and the music itself, the state of mind of Max Caulfield to make in Episode 5 the final decision, sacrifice Chloe, her best friend or sacrifice the city Arcadia Bay. 
I used short videos from Episode 5, where Max walks to the Lighthouse and is reminded of all the good memories she had with Chloe, just before Max had to make the decision. 

So I started the mix with a short video of Max and Chloe before Max had to decide and end the video with a short video of the tornado. It only seems normal to name the mix "The Decision". 

Some of these memories of Max are seen in the mix, I had to cut a lot to get different memories and not let the background noise/music ruin the mix.

But there was more trouble ahead.
My video-editor could only handle 800x600 resolution, so the video quality is....bad. However the audio seems okay, so I uploaded it anyway. 

After uploading I tried to search for my video, but YouTube search didn't find it. 
Maybe it's better, cause there are so many well made fan video clips with scenes 
of Life Is Strange. If you hate the video, but like the mix, I have uploaded it to mixcloud. 

Check the links below for the video and mix.



The video or The Mix

Note: I wrote Mixz instead of Mix, cause it's not really a smooth mix with nice transitions between the songs (and I speed up all songs to 115%)

And finally: I found some other Life Is Strange links I had to share it with you:

A beautiful Wikipedia fan-made
A fan-made story for the prequel of Life Is Strange
A playlist of Life Is Strange instrumentals, each 10 minutes long

That's all folks for today !

112 MSX Basic Games presents: PARAS.GAM (76)

In PARA'S you must take care of 4 skydivers/paragliders, that must land on a small island.
Not easy, cause 3 rockets are trying to hit you and the palm tree is also dangerous.

This was not an easy game to translate, cause the creator "Visser Design" didnt finish the game, so there was no score, no lives, no change in gameplay and a bad sprite collision and the player had no change of getting the para (skydiver) safe on the island. 

Why I tried to improve it ? Cause I liked the idea of the game. I added a short manual, speedup the intro screen, restored the score and lifes count code, make the position of the rockets random, updated the sprite collision and more 
I forgot already.

Be warned. This game PARA'S has a different way of calculating the score. You get 1 life (PARA'S) and if you fail you must try again. 
When you reached the 4 lifes the game is finished but...

You have to save the 4 skydivers before the counter go below zero. And your score is the counter, counting from 10000 til 0.

Very original, but I had to make some changes to make sure only players that resqued 4 skydivers can have a score.

There is not much sounds or soundeffects in the game, only when pressing fire or getting/losing a life. 

I could add some sea-sounds, but is it really necessary ?
You can be the judge by playing it:

Mediafire/Pcloud

 

112 MSX Basic Games presents: KESHISAR.GAM (75)

I never could have figure out what the purpose of the game KESHISAR was, cause it was made in Japan. It had English texts, but without a manual I was lost here.

Lucky me, Jan Hartman had made a txtfile in Dutch to explain what was wrong with the original game and how to play it. That was really something.

Now I could play the game and knowing what to do.

It's of course a puzzle game without any time limit
(YEZZ !!!), but if you make
the wrong decision you need to start over.

The game was by Richard Naka for MSX-2(+) and runs in SCREEN 5.
I really was amazed by the small animation, the fast gameplay and the nice graphics (without loading any additional pictures).

The purpose of the game is making squares and rectangles from the pieces on the screen by rotation them with the spacebar, pressing RETURN make them disappear. 
If the screen is empty, you will rewarded with a nice simple drawing and you may go to the next stage. There are 10 stages, plenty of choice I must say. 

This is the 2nd non-Europe MSX Basic game and I have tried to see how it works. 
It was so complex I gave up and inserted only a manual in it.


I am a little worried I choose too many mind games for my 112 MSX Basic Games list, 
I hope you don't mind.

NOTE: The screenshot on the right shows the solution of STAGE 0, to get you started.

At: Mediafire/Pcloud

TnC on the big WWW

The more I blog the more I come across many links to logos, persons and organisations that are also named TnC, or Noise Collector or even TnC Stuff.

Well when I started the first blog I named myself TnM, that is short for The Noise Maker
and changed it to TnC to be more original. Time goes by and I see I was wrong again.

So if you find me here, you must googled "tnc msx".
Good job !

I have some MSX posts in mind in the near future so stay tuned.
But dont expect reviews of the lastest MSX games, check other websites for that.

If you interested in older MSX stuff, check this blog.

Bye Bye.

112 MSX Basic Games presents: PATIENCE.GAM (77)

At first I didnt want any YAHTZEE or PATIENCE related games in the 112 list, but this Patience version was so different and yet so playable I felt like I had to put it into the 112 MSX Basic Games list.

Actually the full name is C.U.C. Patience, a listing from the C.U.C. magazine specially for SpectraVideo (and later also MSX) users.
All software they published in their magazines or tapes were made for both SpectraVideo and MSX, very nice feature.

I didnt remove all SpectraVideo related codes in the listing, I just translated and added some kind of Highscore. The Dutch manual in Dutch was a bit long to translate and I had to play the game for more than 10 times before I had a proper working Highscore. Last but not least I changed also the cursor into blue, cause the intro-screen was blue too and I could better see where the cursor was (yeah Im getting old).

By the way, its amazing how the letters C.U.C. and word Patience are displayed in the intro. Wow ! That must be tough to make !
The cursorspeed may be a little too sensitive, I removed all spaces and variables after the NEXT-commands to speedup the intro-screen and generating the play-screen. So now it runs faster, but the cursor too, sorry !

I could explain how the game works, but I think my translation in the game itself will be enough. Like any other Patience game you have to make rows from 2 until King from the same type. That would be enough to start.
   The game is not capable of checking if the game is finished or if there are no valid moves for you. I guess checking it would make the game much slower and maybe unplayable.
That's the only disadvantage of C.U.C. Patience I could find.

Have a lot of fun trying to beat my Highscore (4975 !!!)

Mediafire/Pcloud

112 MSX Basic Games presents: MINDBUST.GAM (78)

I wanted to continue with the 112 MSX Basic Games serie, but it was hard to select the next game for the list. Mostly cause I didnt want another Pacman/Snakey/Othello clone or another (Dutch) text-adventure, so I had to search harder.

By accident I started a program called "DENKER.BAS" (THINKER.BAS in English), which turned out the be a real mindbuster. It was an old listing from the magazine "COMPUTE",which was also converted to MSX-1 by Jurre van Dijken.

Many cross-platform games are text-only, this one uses the features of SCREEN 1 very well. So it looks fine on MSX-1 and its very difficult too.
I can assure you !!!

Somehow I solved puzzle number 2 more faster than number 1. I wasnt patient enough to solved puzzle 3, it was too hypnotic for my eyes, so I quit early. Sorry.

All other info can be found in the REM lines at the beginning of the listing.
Yes, another MIND GAMES, but one not to miss. What a great conversion, Jurre !

Find it at: Mediafire / Pcloud

The MSX-1 DrumComputer (COMPDRUM.BAS)

Before I owned a Philips Music Module I liked to messin' around with SOUND command and created random-sound-geneators and my own sound-effects for use in MSX-Basic games.

Then I found this program, called DRUM a listing in the Dutch MSX Computer Magazine 10.
It was ( and is still)  an amazing MSX Basic program, made by  Eric Madrange, where you can listen to a lot of different drum-patterns (check out JAZZ ROCK) or create your own.


Of course the last feature, the drum-editor, was the best, cause you could save and load your home-made drum-rhythms easily.

Well, it was very basic, you can only add a bass-drum, snare-drum and a hihat to your drum-pattern. So no tom-tom or cymbal like in other editors (Moonblaster).
Still it impressive how it works, without reading a manual or remembering pages of key bindings.

Specially for this post I created some new drum-patterns and translate it were needed
the listing into English. You find the downloadlinks below.

* Good old Mediafire *
* The new Pcloud *

And I made specially for this post a short video, here.