GEEK!!

[Lichfield Dean]

49 minutes ago, Xann said:

Didn't realise how much stuff was in the above auction.

The X-Wing is Red Leader from screen. $400,000 starting bid.

Shatner Kirk hairpiece!

A skin tight suit Jeri Ryan poured herself into.

Buck Rogers, V, Planet of the Apes, Forbidden Planet, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Battlestar Galactica, Logan's Run, Space 1999, Batteries Not Included and Adam West's silly Batman kit.

Bit of shame it's not all staying together in a museum..

It's Greg Jein's private collection (he built the Enterprise D model amongst many other things). There are some unbelievable things on there.

I'd love a phaser. Or a tribble:-)

[Xann]

1 minute ago, Lichfield Dean said:

I'd love a phaser. Or a tribble:-)

Walking tribble!

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

There isn't a definitive live action Batman anything. Some are better than others but none quite nail the comic take (although in some cases the comics changed so much it's arguably impossible for there to be a definitive one

Yeah, I was being a bit tongue in cheek with my 'definitive' comment. I do like the Adam West version, for pure nostalgia - but as you quite rightly say, it's its own thing, and doesn't in any way nail what the comics were like. Naturally, being a 60s kid, I'd go with the 50s/60s comics rather than the 90s reboot, but that's a generational thing. 

[Chindie]

Fitting, for the 60s Batman discussion, and definitely geeky

There's been shit loads of 60s Batman stuff in the last 15 years or so. The 1:6 Romero Joker is astonishingly good.

[Chindie]

Since every thread is a music thread

Last year's Gaming Prom.

It's quite good.

[Xann]

The shirt arm prints list the remixers in the Designers Republic style, as per the racing teams in the game.

Preorders - https://coldstorage.bandcamp.com/album/wipeout-the-zero-gravity-soundtrack

[GarethRDR]

*dies* 

That black top is going to look amazing under my Feisar flight jacket.

[bickster]

On 24/09/2023 at 10:56, Xann said:

The shirt arm prints list the remixers in the Designers Republic style, as per the racing teams in the game.

Preorders - https://coldstorage.bandcamp.com/album/wipeout-the-zero-gravity-soundtrack

Oh I remember that coming out and it coincided with Cream making the major move from the cool but bijou Nation Annex to the full club (which at that point only had one promoter capable of filling it regularly *ahem* that would be me).... any how just after the launch Cream had a big tie in with Wipeout with Playstations set up in the club for people to play it etc. the tie was obvious from the games soundtrack and it being developed by Psygnosis in Liverpool but it also seemed to be a little strange, clubs & games didn't seem like natural bedfellows at the time so it was also quite jarring too. In retrospect it was obvious but it also kind of marked a complete culture shift in both gaming and clubbing that were seemingly occurring simultaneously and independently

It was a real standout out cultural moment I think

[Xann]

 

A few things came together with Wipeout. The PS1 was a fairly funky machine for the time, and there was definitely a spaced out element to it. There was a psychedelic audio visualiser in the Itunes style on the bundled introduction disk. The CD format also delivered cheaper storage. At the duplication point you'd be paying per copy, so chucking on a couple of hundred megabytes of HQ audio made no odds to that budget. On a cartridge that would've been prohibitively expensive.

Previous to that, there were games on the 8-bit machines that included a soundtrack on cassette to play alongside. This one was pretty cool, from a Spectrum game called 'Wriggler'.

Great for atmospherics, not so great if you're cueing it to action on screen.

The Psygnosis in house audio guy, Cold Storage, was good. Better than a lot of the shitehawks making a living from the dance music of the time.

The second Wipeout, 2097, had more known names than the original game: FSOL, Fluke, Chemical Brothers, Underworld and the Prodigy. Yet the Cold Storage tracks don't sound out of place in that company.

Add to that, the game's visual styling was the work of the Designers Republic, who were on fire. I think a few people have noticed a nod towards DR in the current F1 branding.

These games looked and sounded like the future, and non gamers became interested.

 

Of course now video games make big money, and with that comes the resources that would have been the reserve of film a few decades ago.
Don't think video game soundtracks are considered a strong genre outside the geek community, but this will almost certainly change in time?

[Chindie]

Everything is a music thread...

But there's a lot of good music in gaming these days - I linked the 'Gaming Prom' from last years Prom season, which has a few of the usual suspects (it says a lot about how good the melodies of those early games was when modern interpretations with full orchestration of things like the Zelda theme are still wonderful) but also includes some of the more overtly ochestral pieces from the likes of Final Fantasy, which don't sound out of place in the Albert Hall.

Theres some **** good music in games today, hence why a lot of games release with soundtracks as bonuses and so on these days. And even going back from that, to the days of SNES and cartridges, you've still got some very atmospheric, cool work - David Wise on Donkey Kong Country for instance

 

[GarethRDR]

My geekiest geek-out moment came as a result of the WipeOut soundtrack.  Some years back, round the in-laws' and an episode of QI was on in the background.  They'd just gotten to the bit where "...and so-and-so's buzzer goes like [sound]" and... you know when you know a song really well?  To the very minutiae, you've actually trained your ears into some sort of Pavlovian response?  I swear to all mighty Zeus, one of the buzzer sounds was the same vocal sample used for Cold Storage's Messij, and I literally DiCaprio-pointed at the telly and screamed "Holy shit, that was Cold Storage!" to the complete bemusement of the assembled throng (bemusement that only increased as I verbal-diarrhea-d the reasons for my excitement).  My brain nearly imploded from hearing said sample outside of the concept of pixelated anti-grav racing.

3 hours ago, Xann said:

The second Wipeout, 2097, had more known names than the original game: FSOL, Fluke, Chemical Brothers, Underworld and the Prodigy. Yet the Cold Storage tracks don't sound out of place in that company.

There's a lightning-striking-twice on that one for me personally; on the Wip3out soundtrack you had the likes of Sasha (Xpander, no less, which I'd personally hold up as one of, if not the best trance song ever written) and Paul van Dyk, but the then Psygnosis sound guy Gary McKill wrote this absolute behemoth for the soundtrack.  Heavy rotation for me, ever since:

 

Edited September 26, 2023 by GarethRDR

[Designer1]

I was a gnats cock away from working for Designers Republic years ago.

One of those sliding door moments but overall I like to think I made the right decision*

*I'm still really not sure I did.

[Seat68]

On 24/09/2023 at 10:56, Xann said:

The shirt arm prints list the remixers in the Designers Republic style, as per the racing teams in the game.

Preorders - https://coldstorage.bandcamp.com/album/wipeout-the-zero-gravity-soundtrack

I used to be mates with one of the wipeout team. Then he moved to New Zealand and lost touch with him. He was producer on one of the wipeout titles. 

[Anthony]

I always loved everything about the wipeout games, and wanted to love the game itself, but I found it so boring. I was puzzled why all this effort had been put into what was basically a shit game. 

As an aside the Designers Republic did the Pop Will Eat Itself branding and the resulting merchandise was fantastic. There's an online shop these days called Shop Will Eat Itself recreating (with permission) really good quality tshirts, hoodies etc. 

[bickster]

22 minutes ago, Anthony said:

I always loved everything about the wipeout games, and wanted to love the game itself, but I found it so boring. I was puzzled why all this effort had been put into what was basically a shit game. 

As an aside the Designers Republic did the Pop Will Eat Itself branding and the resulting merchandise was fantastic. There's an online shop these days called Shop Will Eat Itself recreating (with permission) really good quality tshirts, hoodies etc. 

iirc they were brought to PWEI's attention after the work they did for their hometown band Age of Chance (and before that Chakk). I know Jeff form AoC was really proud of the work they did for them

Then went on to do stuff for Warp Records, Pulp and The Orb etc. The Orb stuff was particularly memorable

Didn't they also have something to do with Grand Theft Auto too?

[Dodgyknees]

15 hours ago, Designer1 said:

I was a gnats cock away from working for Designers Republic years ago.

One of those sliding door moments but overall I like to think I made the right decision*

*I'm still really not sure I did.

My partner uses that measurement quite often. Usually after we have had sex. 

[tonyh29]

Not me being a geek but was in London the other week and there was a Star Wars fan exhibition on so me and the boy went in and killed an hour or so … all stuff built by geeks , was quite good 

[Xann]

20 hours ago, Chindie said:

Everything is a music thread...

  Meh - The gamers sabotage Rate Your Music by giving silly ratings to their OSTs.

20 hours ago, Chindie said:

David Wise on Donkey Kong Country for instance

This is fairly niche. If you haven't got a Nintendo connection, or aren't a genre collector? The appeal is reduced.

Though I think its star might well rise in the future, to how we regard classical now perhaps?

Then just like Bach should really be played on harpsichord rather than piano, the involved followers might want the original form?

6 hours ago, Anthony said:

I always loved everything about the wipeout games, and wanted to love the game itself, but I found it so boring. I was puzzled why all this effort had been put into what was basically a shit game. 

Think it was a likely priority product for console marketing? Here's our new machine and plenty of support, make us a show pony.

 

[Chindie]

Something non-music.

How about a figure of a reasonably obscure pulp fiction hero from the creator of Conan? A character so old he was old when VTs elders were a lad.

Mine arrived this morning.

[Lichfield Dean]

The best