Music

Arcade, Others

American Idol [Arcade – Cancelled]

monokoma
08-04-2010
No Comments

In 2009 an arcade developer, Raw Thrills (best known for big buck hunter, fast and the furious and H2overdrive), were developing an arcade music game based on the popular show American Idol, but it got cancelled after some time, probably because of licencing issues.

The game was expensive to play, but you were able to record your own video. After you’d finished playing the machine would either send the video of you playing the game via e-mail or it would burn it to dvd for you.

You can read more about this unreleased game at Arcade Heroes.

Thanks to Kieranmay for the contribution!

Videos:

 

Leaked, Unseen News

Tommy Tallarico’s Play Me Sound Editor for the NES leaked!

monokoma
04-02-2010
No Comments

In January 2010 Kirakid from the Nintendo Age Forum was able to find a previusly unknow NES Sound Editor at a Swap Meet in Orange County California. It was later discovered that this cart is  a prototype music development tool created by Tommy Tallarico (the artist who wrote the music for more than 250 games, including the Earthworm Jim series, Messiah, MDK, Wild 9, Unreal, Cool Spot and Maximo) to write an NES Sound engine that he put on Color A Dinosaur.

After Kirakid sold this prototype to the NA community, Mr.Mark and BeaglePuss dumped and released it for everyone to enjoy. You can download Tommy Tallarico’s Play Me Sound Editor from the Nintendo Age Forum!

Also, Tommy commented this find on the Nintendo Age Forum (thanks to Frank Cifaldi):

“Holy shit! Yeah… those are my carts. And the “Tommy T.” label is my handwriting. The “Golf Power” was an old cartridge casing that I erased over… I was a game tester for Golf Power so when the game was completed I used the cart to put an NES sound engine on it for when I was working on Color A Dinosaur!

It’s actually a pretty historical cartridge because Color A Dinosaur is always heralded as the worst game I ever worked on… which drives the price of the actual NES cart up because so many people try to find it. I’ve signed a ton of those things. The complete NES Color A Dinosaur story can be found here.

There are a handful of videos on YouTube of the game

Also… that was right during the time when I went from a game tester to a composer (which is why I used my Greg Norman cart).

Pretty crazy!!

Make sure to pass on this info and the story with the cart. It’s a pretty interesting piece.”

Huge props to Kirakid, BeaglePuss and Mr.Mark for sharing this interesting piece of NES history with the community! 

Microsoft, Nintendo, Playstation 2 (PS2), Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Wii, Xbox 360

Guitar Hero 3 [Beta]

monokoma
01-11-2009
No Comments

Guitar Hero 3 was developed by Neversoft and published by Activision and RedOctane. It is the third main installment in the Guitar Hero series, and the fourth title overall. The game was released for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360 in October 2007. [Info from Wikipedia]

Dirty Harry noticed that in early videos of the game there are some notable differences:

  • In the final, there is no 1x combo. When no combo is earned the amp is blank, only showing 2x, 3x, and 4x combos.
  • All of the combos are orange. In the final the 2x is orange, the 3x is green and the 4x is pink.
  • The frets at the bottom look more like they do in Guitar Hero II in the beta.
  • The ‘Star Power Ready’ message is much more bland and less exciting than in the final.
  • There is no lightning effect when you get star power.

Thanks to Dirty Harry and Jason for the contribution!

Video:
 

Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Rock Band [X360/PS3 – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors
03-07-2008
4 Comments

Danny33 has wrote a topic in our forum where he makes us notice that in the first build of Rock Band we can see some interesting changes from the final version:

  • Different looking drums and microphone
  • Energy notes look very different
  • Guitar model not made yet
  • Notes look very different
  • During drum fills, sections do not flash.
  • Microphone notes are now blue.
  • Playing notes during the Big Rock Ending do not flash.
  • Welcome to the Jungle was set to be playable, but was removed. (This song later ended up in Guitar Hero 3.)
  • Different looking HUD/s

Also, ForWhomTheBellTolls noticed:

  • Great was replaced with Awesome when getting a streak singing.
  • There is no “You Win” after you beat a song in the final product.
  • The guitarist highway wasn’t blue during the solo like in the finished game, as well as the solo percentage HUD (You put that, but I wanted to add the blue highway portion.

Even in the e3 2007 build we can find some minor differences:

  • Different looking notes
  • It appears that the Stratocaster was smaller.

Thanks to Danny33 for these infos!

In the PAX 2007 version, the notes that filled your overdrive meter were bland and gray instead of glowing. Also, when you engaged your overdrive, the “highway” the notes appeared on would catch on fire and every note you hit would send plumes of smoke and debris off of the sides.

Thanks to Dr. Swank for these infos!