Current mood:	tired
Current music:	Say Good Bye and Good Day - Kokia

"Say Good Bye and Good Day"
Brrr. Winter's really coming around the corner. It's already 66F down here in my room D: Sigh, and the days feel really long now as well. Seeing the holiday stuff in stores and all around is also another sign of the current times. Oh well that holiday spirit is never really in me for obvious reasons.

Now despite the fact I was off today, I ended up at the store today since it was on the way back from an errand I had to run. I only stopped by to check on some marketing stuff, but in the end I forced myself on the schedule to get things done. Of course the ASM wouldn't do it, so I had to take things into my own hands. Got a pretty neat little Phoenix standee out of it though, but in all negativity the holiday hours are now up too D: Insane times like Black Friday or after Xmas awaits. (This is part of why my holiday spirit get stepped on and tossed out of the window) Although it's not my first year doing this, I'm going to be handling it from the management front of things and damn I'm not excited for it in the slightest. Can't believe they refuse to give us a third register for the season too. We shouldn't have ever sent that thing back!

Joy to the players! Phoenix style!


Enough with the holiday complaints, now for some Wacky Jappy fun!


Ontamarama

So Noise factory ended up making a rhythm game that's like Dance Dance Revolution meets Ouendan. The soundtrack isn't half bad and to my surprise, Basiscape, was involved in it. Unfortunately, the compression really hurts the quality of the music though. Anywho, in Ontamarama, you're entrusted with the task of saving the musical spirits of Onpu Island, which are known as "Ontama". And to do this, you battle one another with the Ontama! The premise of how these showdowns occur is basically similar to that of the Puyo Puyo series, only a lot more worse. Gameplay itself involves you having to tap/touch/blow/encircle the Ontama to fill up musical notes that you can then play by using the Dpad or buttons. It's basically multitasking hell, but that's not the only problem. While there might be some pattern to the notes that show up, there's none at all to the Ontama. And that's a big negative for a rhythm game. In general, the controls to the game are pretty unorthodox and not even completely explained in the game's tutorial unless you read the manual. Honestly, it's by no means a must have rhythm game. But it's still worth a look see just for the zany concept and themes.

A little history on Basiscape and other renown studios:

Basiscape is Hitoshi Sakimoto's own studio. They've been seen in a ton of productions all around the gaming world now. Even Sakimoto himself has started to branch out to anime works such as RomeoxJuliet. He'll also be composing for the "Tower of Druaga" anime. Most common known works for Sakimoto and Basiscape include: Odin Sphere, Grim Grimore, Final Fantasy Tactics/A/A2, Final Fantasy XII/Revenant Wings, and Ogre Battle series.

Another renown composer with his own Studio is Yasunori Mitsuda. He runs Procyon Studio. Mitsuda's most popular works were on the Chrono and Xeno series. (Xenogears, Xenosaga 1) He's still seen today contributing a few tracks to certain games, but no particular full works.