Back in the early 90s when the great Genesis/Mega Drive VS SNES war had erupted, Sega released a very interesting advertising campaign against Nintendo with the slogan GENESIS DOES WHAT NINTENDON’T… It’s been a long time since Sega was actually in the video game hardware business, but it seems that they haven’t lost their touch, even when it comes to sticking it to Nintendo on their own console.

Some interesting things have been going on in recent months on the Wii. While Nintendo hasn’t been doing very much of anything other than a Wii version of Animal Crossing, Sega has taken the opportunity to invest in a whole bunch of interesting games, three of which are focused very much on the more traditionalist core gamer. Sega is out to impress, Nintendo is worryingly quiet and Capcom… well, Capcom is confusing the hell out of me with whatever it is they think they’re doing on Wii.

Don’t you just love bad slogans from the early 90s?

Animal Crossing: City Folk (also known as Animal Crossing: Let’s Go to the City in Europe and Australia) has only just come out in the US and will be available in Japan, Europe and Australia in coming days. So far, the reviews I’ve read about the game have suggested that Nintendo hasn’t really done anything new and have only remixed certain aspects of the DS version of the game, Animal Crossing: Wild World.

While I am disappointed that City Folk/Let’s Go to the City isn’t anything special over its last instalment, the issue I want to talk about is a little different. You see, while Animal Crossing features a wide variety of Animals who end up living in your town, there seems to be a lack of ethnicity for the humans in Animal Crossing…

To the back of the bus, you!

This is something that I’ve thought about for quite awhile and would like to share with everyone. While I’m not a musician, composer or have any professional qualifications in sound design, I feel I do have relevant views on these subjects since I am part of the audience.

The evolution of the video game soundtrack differs greatly from what can be heard at the movies… at least that’s how it used to be. The electronic beeps, boops, buzzes and obvious synthetic effects are becoming a thing of the past as most video games become more complex and tend to become a lot more cinematic. Of course, the obvious difference between a cinematic movie and a cinematic video game is that a movie is viewed in a linear form, from start to finish with no ability to change the events of the movie which in turn isn’t able to effect any changes in the soundtrack. Continuing on with stating the obvious, the interactive nature of a video game opens up many opportunities to create soundtracks which adapt and change depending on how we as the player interact with the game environment. Adaptive soundtracks have evolved to a certain point with video games, but there is room for growth that I’m sure most people haven’t really thought of.

You now have The Legend of Zelda theme playing in your head…

I’m still quite tired from setting up the site so I’ll start off with a small article…

Many gamers would have you believe that Nintendo is responsible for the flood of casual gamers and non-gamers who have been introduced to the video game industry. While I agree that Nintendo is succeeding greatly as they focus their effort appealing to new and untapped audiences, I disagree that they are the ones that encouraged growth in this direction in the first place. Nintendo is taking advantage of the foundation another company had already lain. The true leaders of this gaming revolution are in fact, none other than Sony with its PlayStation 2.

Let’s go into this casually…