UPDATE: 12/30/07 Thanks to some help from the folks at TheGHSI.org, the mystery of the unreachable door in Empire Northtown in Secret of Mana has been solved! (Sorry to report that the truth may be underwhelming.) UPDATE: 12/29/07 I added Pixelove.net to the links page. It's another excellent French language retrogaming website. I removed a few non-working links and moved HardcoreGaming101 to the link-exchange section as I noticed in my site tracker that I'm getting a lot of hits from some of their articles lately. I am still working on Part 4 of the RAU Gallery Archaeology sketch. It's way behind schedule, but it will eventually be done. Part of the problem is that I ended up having to draw way many more scenes than was originally planned. Another reason I'm behind is that too much has been going on lately in my personal life. Aside from the usual holiday business, I also finally got a new job. I start Wednesday and I'm rather nervous and excited about it. I'm also still working on combining the Who's Who with the Scrapbooks as well as cleaning up the MP3 Downloads pages. Finally, this is a first for me, but I wrote a new article reflecting on the past year here at FlyingOmelette.com: 2007 Year in Review UPDATE: 12/24/07 On the music downloads page I cleaned up the sections for Castlevania 3, Gargoyle's Quest 2, Ogre Battle, Over Horizon, and Super Mario Bros. I added a new section for Goldeneye with two new songs. UPDATE: 12/23/07 On the music downloads page I cleaned up the sections for Banjo-Kazooie, Blaster Master, Castlevania Bloodlines, Chrono Cross, Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 2, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy 8, Legend of Mana, Life Force, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, Radical Dreamers, Samurai Shodown, Tales of Phantasia, and Vagrant Story. I added one new mp3 to the Vagrant Story section (Limestone Quarry). I added a new midi for Secret of Mana to the midis section (Distant Thunder). UPDATE: 12/22/07 I cleaned up the Music Downloads sections for Castlevania 64, Final Fantasy 6, The Never Ending Story, and Ys Book 1 & 2. I also added a new section for Vexx with 5 new songs for download. UPDATE: 12/14/07 I've awarded the Golden Ridley to another excellent gaming review site: insomnia. Lots of great reviews and other essays there for games old and new, including much classic arcade love. I'm still working on combining "Who's Who" with the "Scrapbooks". Damn, I have WAY too many characters. Well, it's official - The RAU Gallery Switched at Birth page is now the second-most popular page on this site after the main one, and it's been like that for over a week now. There are good and bad sides to this: 1. The good part is that previously another "generic" Switched at Birth page was holding the #2 spot for the past few years. It's kind of nice that an SAB featuring my own characters would be the page to finally dethrone it. 2. The bad side is that it's a little disappointing that the thing my characters will most be known for is looking like other characters. But I guess that's just the way life somehow goes, isn't it? Speaking of which, I took a look at the 3rd RAU SAB page and realized I had forgotten to put an entry on there. I don't know how I did, but I added it to the top of the page. I also made navigation on that section a little easier. UPDATE: 12/10/07 I updated Q & A. UPDATE: 12/08/07 I've decided that I'm going to get rid of the old Image Arcane/RAU "Who's Who" section. I'm taking the character descriptions and transferring them over to the first page of each character's scrapbook. To be honest, the Who's Who was never meant to be permanent. It was something I threw together quickly to help me get the series off the ground and rolling. Now that it is, and now that I have scrapbooks for each individual character, the Who's Who is redundant and no longer necessary. That project isn't done yet, but I'll be working on little else until it is. I also redid the The RAU Gallery's sketch index page. There are no new sketches (yet), but I made the page format a little cleaner and gave a brief description of each sketch and also marked where characters made their first appearances. I also have one more addition to NES & SNES Nudity for Street Fighter 2010. I had actually known about that before, but forgot until something in my site tracker reminded me of it. UPDATE: 12/02/07 More stuff and site maintenance. First of all, I made a small update to the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Glitch Page. I noticed something about Link's Awakening while replaying it that I thought was worth mentioning there. I also did a ton of maintenance work to The RAU Gallery. I fixed up the RAU Cast Page. I added Loro and Cirrus, and a link to Loro's scrapbook (I changed the intro to Loro's scrapbook slightly to clarify the difference between the old Minerva Project version of the character and the new RAU version.) I also changed some of the character descriptions that I felt were too outdated at this point in the series, especially Deuce and Honen. I also finally got fed up with that problem in Firefox that causes the marquees to not display correctly. I still don't know how to fix it, but I noticed that if you viewed "The Edge of Yesterday" in Firefox, there was no indication that anything was even there in the "old avatars" scene, thus causing Im's "teapot" line to make absolutely no sense. So, for every sketch that uses a marquee tag, I put a note at the top for Firefox users to "Refresh the Screen". (I probably won't be using marquees in that series anymore now.) I noticed another problem in Firefox - in some sketches with side-by-side pictures, on 800 x 600 resolution they would display on top of each other instead of side-by-side. I expanded the tables slightly to fix that problem (See: Playing With the Queen of Hearts and Grimmora x Geo.) I also fixed all the broken and outdated links to CB007.com, Skeezy, and Sweetbee's Game Hive, so now the scenes that reference them will make sense again, too. Finally, I fixed the "this place is full of weirdos" joke in Jacknifed. I found the avatars that went with those posts on my old hard drive and plugged them in, so now it should make sense to everyone and not just people who could remember what pictures James was using. UPDATE: 12/02/07 Another update! I cleaned up the Game Music Downloads sections for Kid Icarus, Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Secret of Evermore. I also added a new section for The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening with 3 new songs. (I also added the mp3 version of the ending theme to the Ending Songs Article, but it's the same file in both places.) One other small change: I moved "Switched at Birth?" from the Museum to the Game Oddities section. I felt it was more appropriate for that section since it originally was part of the Oddities, and when I'm looking for it, I impulsively want to look there. It also makes that section look a little less lonely. UPDATE: 12/02/07 We have two article updates today. First of all, I added more information to Secret of Mana Oddities concerning the Goblin Cutscene, the Chimney in Gold Isle, and an entire page devoted to the character naming system. The second article to receive an update is NES & SNES Nudity, with entries for Breath of Fire 2 and Final Fantasy. (Be careful, because that article may be NSFW.) UPDATE: 11/28/07 My RAU Fanart Gallery has been invaded by Lemmings! UPDATE: 11/25/07 I cleaned up the Music Downloads sections for Chrono Trigger, Illusion of Gaia, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Mega Man. I also added a new section for Drakkhen with 12 new songs. UPDATE: 11/24/07 A couple of weeks ago I said I might work on SAB stuff every Saturday. I've decided that it's a little more important to get the music downloads page fixed. So, I'll be working on that a little each week until it's done. I might even add new stuff as I go along. Nothing new today, but I fixed up the sections for EarthBound, Kirby's Dream Land 3, Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals, Super Mario Bros. 2, and Ys 3: Wanderers From Ys. Here's something I find weird: I check my stats every day and look through the various search strings people use to find this site. This has come up three times now: parent directory and de javu or dejavu and mp3 or wma or ogg and not download and not links parent directory and house theme or housetheme and mp3 or wma or ogg and not download and not links parent directory and jim nabors or jimnabors and mp3 or wma or ogg and not download and not links I'm guessing that all of these search strings were made by the same person because he/she is wording it the exact same way every time. Here's what I don't understand: 1. Why would you want to find mp3s, wmas, and oggs, and yet NOT be able to download them?? 2. What is with the insistence on them being in a "parent directory"? 3. Google doesn't understand "not". You have to use "-". In other words, you should be wording it like, "-download -links". 4. It's "Deja Vu", not "De Javu". 5. WTF?? Jim Nabors??? If you're the person doing this, I'm guessing that you're somehow finding what you're looking for on this site because you've clicked on it three times after running these searches. Lord knows if I can figure out what the hell it is, though. In other news, I also have a new FeedDigest that will display the latest topics created in the Port Saiid Forums, and, thanks to Crawl and 1000, a button that will randomly take you to any one of FlyingOmelette.com's 700+ pages when you click it. (Warning: Could be slightly addictive.) UPDATE: 11/22/07 Due to some people complaining that my sidebar was too long and confusing (?!), I decided to combine some site sections. Changes are as follows: Midis, Mp3 Downloads, and Ending Songs were compiled under "Game Music". Oddities and Glitches combined under "Game Oddities". Cartoon Corner, YouTube Videos, Kitchen Sink, Rec Room, SAB, Poetry Preserve, and Top 25 Overrated Games were put in the Museum. Got rid of the RAU Gallery subsection and assimilated it into the Game Section. Don't ask me why! But this was the part that was causing the most confusion. People were saying they couldn't find it with the way it was set up before (!?!?!?!). Q&A was also assimilated into the main section. Cleaned up the Memory Card - I removed a few sites that were either shut down or hadn't updated since 2005. UPDATE: 11/19/07 Part 3 of Archaeological Thingamobobical is finally up in the RAU Gallery. It's kind of hard to believe Part 2 and 3 were originally supposed to be all one sketch, and not only that, but I split Part 3 again. Yeah, that would've taken me forever to finish. UPDATE: 11/18/07 I finally cleaned up the Site Directory. I removed the links to all the pages that had been removed from the site and added links to everything that was missing. It should be 100% complete now. I also updated Game Glitches with a new feature on the TMNT DOS game. I am hoping to finish the 3rd part of the RAU Gallery Archaeology Sketch today, but I didn't get as much done during the week as I had hoped because I wasn't feeling well. If I don't get it done today, then I should have it done by the middle of the week at the latest. UPDATE: 11/11/07 I've got new MIDI conversions! The following were added: Drakkhen - Character Creation Theme (came out really well, too!) Mega Man 6 - Flame Man Ogre Battle - Viking Spirits Secret of Mana - The Color of the Summer Sky (another really good conversion) Wanderers From Ys - Searing Struggle UPDATE: 11/10/07 Switched at Birth? Madness on FlyingOmelette.com today! First of all, I changed the "Image Arcane Switched at Birth" to "The RAU Gallery Switched at Birth", to reflect the new official title of the series. I also added a third page of RAU Gallery SAB's. There aren't that many of them, so I decided that I should continue my efforts, but making a whole new (regular) Switched at Birth? page, complete with 25 new comparisons for your perusing pleasure. Don't hold me to this, but since I have about a year's worth of SAB backlog, I might try to do one every Saturday until I'm completely caught up. UPDATE: 11/07/07 Updated Q&A again. I've decided to put Q&A on a Monday - Wednesday - Friday update schedule. It will be updated on those days with whatever questions I've received, or not if I haven't received any. UPDATE: 11/04/07 You know, I thought something was wrong with this picture from the classic 80's cartoon series, The Real Ghostbusters, but man, I just could not figure out what it was. No matter how much I tried to put my finger on it, nothing was coming to mind. But then, forum administrator Crawl and 1000 came up with the answer. Thanks, Crawl! That would've driven me crazy forever. Also updated Q&A again. UPDATE: 11/01/07 Well, the Great Thawhidol Debate wages on. It's just funny to me that of all the crap I've done in that series, that a joke about Thawhidol is the one that struck the biggest nerve and brought the house down. Unfortunately, I really didn't like the scene I had replaced it with. Some people on the forums seemed to agree with me. They were also kind enough to offer advice for a slight rewrite that would be somewhat less-offensive, and so that's what I did. UPDATE: 10/31/07 I fixed the RAU Gallery sketches so that when you get to the end of one, you can now go forward to the next sketch or backwards to the previous sketch without having to back up to the index page. I also removed the "Thawhidol" scene from the last sketch and replaced it with a scene I had written for that sketch, but removed because I felt it was unnecessary and the dialogue was too "heavy-handed" for a comedy. But, even though I had lampooned forum members like Troy, Vampyrus, James FP, and ErniePants in the series before, I was (for lack of any gentler way to put it) given a little "heckling" for that Thawhidol scene and just decided to say, screw it, I'm not gonna argue over it. UPDATE: 10/28/07 I decided to split up Part 2 of Archaeological Thingamobobical in the RAU Gallery, for two reasons: 1. The original sketch was about twice as long, and this storyline requires far more images than any previous sketch. I was afraid the amount of images total in the original version would make the page cumbersome to load for people on dial-up (it's probably gonna be a little anyway). 2. I don't have all the images for the second half of part 2 (which will now become part 3) done yet, and due to personal issues, I don't know when I'll have them done. It could take another whole month and I'd just rather post as much of the completed portion of the sketch as possible now. The rewrite required me to delete a couple of scenes, but I had been considering deleting them anyway. UPDATE: 10/27/07 I updated Q&A again. UPDATE: 10/25/07 It's not often that it happens, but I added a new song to the Poetry Preserve. I warn you, it's depressing. I've also changed the "Image Arcane" section to the "RAU Gallery" section. I would prefer that from now on, all comments regarding the series refer to it as "The RAU Gallery" and not as "Image Arcane". The problem with calling it "Image Arcane" is that aside from the fact that isn't even what the current series is called, but I also get confused as to what people are talking about when they say things like, "You know that thing you did in Image Arcane...", and I don't know if they're talking about the old comics or the current series or the character herself or what? Finally, if you're a regular reader of this website, I would like to encourage you to participate in this poll, as the results will affect the future of this entire website. UPDATE: 10/20/07 I updated Q&A again, and, okay, I said that's all I'd be updating for awhile, but I also added a new piece of fanart to the Kid Icarus Fan Art page. Well, it's sort of fan art, it's a shirt, actually. But, heck, why not? UPDATE: 10/15/07 I updated Q&A again, which is pretty much all I'm going to be updating until I'm completely done with the latest RAU Gallery storyline. UPDATE: 10/12/07 I updated Q&A. UPDATE: 10/05/07 Part 1 of Archaeological Thingamobobical is up in the RAU Gallery. UPDATE: 10/04/07 I decided to stop being lazy about it and finally update Q&A. UPDATE: 10/03/07 FlyingOmelette.com responds to the controversy caused by the last RAU Gallery sketch. UPDATE: 09/30/07 If this doesn't make me the world's most horrible internet person, I don't know what will. UPDATE: 09/29/07 Nucleo: *Ahem* Hello. I've been asked to apologize for the lack of updates lately. You see, FlyingOmelette.com has been experiencing some technical difficulties lately, but fear not! We have one of Grimmora's top scientists working on it. Right, Dr. Calzoun? Fils stupides! Ich schnitt Sie! Nucleo: Eh ~ ! So, um, as you can see the situation is well under control. We'll have a real update soon. Jack: Yeah. Unlike half the people in the Memory Card. Update your sites, you damn lazy bastards! Nucleo: Jack, stop swearing at our affiliates, unless you want detention. Jack: Eh...only detention? Not suspension? Nucleo: This isn't Arizona. Jack: Yeah, we'd probably all look more like this if it was. Nucleo: Holy Sh---, ehhh... That is truly disturbing. Jack: Almost made you swear, didn't it? Nucleo: The idea is to assure people the site is still alive, not scare them the hell away. Jack: What?! It's not?! Oh, dammit! I better renegotiate my contract, then. Nucleo: *sigh* UPDATE: 09/22/07 The reason for the lack of updates lately is that I've been working on a huge 4-part RAU Gallery sketch that's been eating up my spare time. I have almost the entire script written, but it will still be awhile before I get any of it put up because of how much work that has to go into the required images. In the meantime, I decided to update the Game Music Downloads section. Awhile ago, before I got hooked on my Secret of Mana replay and writing my next RAU sketch, I was busy giving that section an overhaul. I was changing the format and design to be more eye-pleasing and informative while simultaneously adding some stuff I had been wanting to add for a long time now. However, it got a little tedious because of how large that section has become, and I quit before I was finished. The result is that the section redesign effort is half-assed. But I'd rather just put up what I have finished now then wait several months or however long it will take me to get it all done. Eventually, someday, I'll get everything updated to the new format, but the important thing now is that you can still download all your favorite music and then some, and there is even some new content including: Final Fantasy (NEW!) - 18 songs. Final Fantasy 4 - Added an mp3 that contains all three parts of the ending song in one. (Makes Epilogue Part 1 a little more listenable when it's not looped so many times. The original separate mp3 files are still available.) Final Fantasy 6 - Added Dancing Mad Part 1 and Kefka's part, Devil's Lab, and The Phantom Forest. Lagoon (NEW!) - 8 songs. Secret of Mana - Added Distant Thunder, Eternal Recurrence, One of Them is Hope, Secret of the Arid Sands, The Holy Intruder, and The Legend. Silent Hill (NEW!) - 1 song. Silent Hill 2 (NEW!) - 1 song. I also updated Q&A. UPDATE: 09/11/07 I updated Q&A. UPDATE: 09/06/07 I haven't really been able to keep up with "Musical Highlights of the Day" too well since I had gone on vacation last week, but I've decided to go back to "Forum Post of the Day" instead. Enjoy. UPDATE: 09/02/07 I added a few more links to Secret of Mana Oddities, and I also added information on taking the Sprite into the Goblin Cutscene. UPDATE: 09/01/07 Yet more updates to Secret of Mana Oddities. New additions include: Added information on a "Dummied Item" that exists in the game's code, but can't be gotten through normal play. Added information on a glitch that allows you to take the Girl into the Goblin cutscene that's so complicated, I dedicated a whole page to it. Added a couple more useful links. UPDATE: 08/31/07 More updates to Secret of Mana Oddities. New additions include: Changed all instances in which I said "Desert Moon-Sea" to "Sea of Wonders". I forgot that place had an actual name because it's only mentioned once by Sage Joch. Added a third possible theory on Lorima to "More Cameos and References" and also added a couple more obvious story references to that section. Added three more entries to "Random Weirdness". Added the "Whip Glitch" section. Added a link to Video Game Atlas. I also updated Q&A. UPDATE: 08/29/07 I added even more stuff to the Secret of Mana Oddities page! New additions include: Secret Passages & Related Weirdness World Map Weirdness Shadow Zeroes Other Level 9 Spell Effects Howler in the Woods Added a couple more useful links UPDATE: 08/28/07 I updated Q&A. Just as an FYI, I'm on vacation this week, so updates, forum postings, and answers to email may be slow for awhile. UPDATE: 08/26/07 To commemorate my current ongoing replay of Secret of Mana, I completely revamped the Secret of Mana Oddities page. New layout, new oddities (tricks, glitches, observations), updated information and screenshots for the old stuff, and much more! Check it out! Also added NES Times to the Links page. UPDATE: 08/18/07 I updated the Unused Game Music Article with three hidden tracks from Dark Savior. Sorry, I've been sitting on that one for a long time now, but I kept forgetting to add it on there. UPDATE: 08/15/07 I made a small update to the National Scar/Naked Lady information on the Secret of Mana Oddities page. It is also accompanied by a new sub-article on Nudity in Other NES & SNES games. UPDATE: 08/12/07 FlyingOmelette.com now has an RSS feed (that's what the little orange button next to the "Adventure Log" banner is for). Thanks go to Amitrius17 of FantasyAnime.com for helping me figure out how to set one up. UPDATE: 08/10/07 Added one more Forum Archive Topic to the RAU Gallery. I converted that one over to the normal site format because Yuku code is too difficult for me to duplicate here. UPDATE: 08/09/07 I added an unused track for Heroes of the Lance to the Unused Game Music Section. UPDATE: 08/08/07 I added some Kiini wallpaper to my Image Arcane/RAU Fanart Section. UPDATE: 08/07/07 After almost 8 months of hiatus from reviewing games, I finally wrote a review of Alex Kidd in Miracle World. UPDATE: 08/04/07 I have three new Forum Archive Topics in The RAU Gallery today. Eventually, I will write some new sketches that aren't just reposts of stuff from Port Saiid, but I wanted to archive those before I forget that they exist and they get lost in the depths of Yuku & Ezboard. Also updated Q&A. UPDATE: 08/02/07 I was looking at the sprites for Knights of Justice with a sprite/tile viewer and I discovered that the villager has unused walking animation frames! Check it out on the Knights of Justice Oddities Page. I also added one more SAB entry to the bottom. ----- I updated Q&A. UPDATE: 07/31/07 Since I was on a shrine-updating roll and I hadn't yet gotten entirely sick of scanning stuff, I thought I'd do a little work on the Knights of Justice Shrine, too. Updates include" Added complete scans of all three Marvel comics based on the cartoon series to the Downloads Page. These have long been out-of-print and since Knights of Justice was a failed franchise that's highly unlikely to get a revival, I'm hoping I won't get in trouble for posting them. I took that "Impossible Screenshot" from the Kitchen Sink and put it on the Oddities Page, because I felt it was more appropriate for that section. I also added one more SAB entry to that page at the very bottom. UPDATE: 07/28/07 I did a MASSIVE update to the Kid Icarus Shrine today! Updates include: All Mp3s in the Music Section that were originally ripped from NSFs have been replaced with much better-soudning Hi-Q recordings with the single exception of the Boss Theme because I couldn't seem to find a good place to record that without getting sound effects. Note: This also affects the Kid Icarus mp3s on the Music Downloads Page and the Game Ending Songs page as all of them are linking to the same source files. Also addded almost the entire Kid Icarus: Of Myths & Monsters soundtrack in Mp3 format! I highly recommend downloading the Level 2 Overworld and Level 4 Sky Palace themes from that game. They are REALLY good and some of the best music to ever appear on the handheld system. Added a few new tricks to the Codes Section. I found some safe spots when dealing with the Moilas and Syrens on the final level. I also finally learned what determines the different endings and provided a full explanation. Added complete scans of both the Kid Icarus and Kid Icarus: Of Myths & Monsters manuals to the Scans Section. The manuals for both games are full of great artwork! Old games had such wonderfully entertaining manuals. It was possible to get almost as much enjoyment from reading them as from playing the games. Added scans from Nintendo Power's Top Secret Passwords Guide section for Kid Icarus. Added scans of the Nintendo Power coverage of Kid Icarus: Of Myths & Monsters and the Nester's Adventure comic based on it. Added scans of the Nintendo Power Club Trading Cards for Kid Icarus: Of Myths & Monsters. Added another "Switched at Birth?" entry concering a certain pair of floating lips to the Other Section. Added a new section called Kid Icarus Links for finding more awesome sites devoted to the winged hero. It felt really good to do a substantial update again. Yeah, I worked my butt off on those scrapbook pages, but that was mostly just reorganizing. Going so long without adding any new content often makes me start feeling depressed about this place, but I'm better now. Someday, I plan to add complete coverage of Kid Icarus: Of Myths & Monsters to that shrine, but don't hold your breath waiting for it as it's a tall order for me right now. UPDATE: 07/23/07 I finally hit a milestone. I reorganized my entire Image Arcane & RAU Scrapbook section. I organized each section by character and combined all the stuff from both the old scrapbooks and the sketch gallery. In the future, as I add more stuff to the pages, I'll start splitting them up into multiple page galleries like I did for the RAU cast members, but I had too much else to do to worry about that right now. Now that I've got that done, I hope I can get back to regular updates soon, but my job is still overtaking my life somewhat... UPDATE: 07/17/07 Added Random Access, Loogslair, and NES Reproductions to my Links page. UPDATE: 07/14/07 I updated Q&A. I have a new section called "The Kitchen Sink", under "Miscellaneous" in the table to the left. It's not that I need to put the responsibility of updating yet another site section on my shoulders, but for some time I've had a lot of crap floating around on my hard drive that I've wanted to put up somewhere on the site, but didn't really have a place for it. (In some cases that stuff makes its way into the RAU Gallery, but not everything can.) So, that's literally what that page is: Just a bunch of random crap from the hard drives of three computers. I'm still working on reorganizing my scrapbooks. Life has been too busy lately to update much else. UPDATE: 07/01/07 I reorganized my Image Arcane & RAU index page a little. As I've said I would before, I've done away with the character profile pages since the RAU Cast listing, Who's Who, and scrapbooks have already taken care of that. I've removed the links to the B&W Sketch Gallery because I'm going to take whatever was in that section and just throw it into the Scrapbook. Right now, I'm undecided if I want to remove all the stuff in the scrapbook that was duplicated in the individual character scrapbooks under the RAU Cast listing page, or if I should just leave it as it is and go from there. I also updated the "Who's Who" section. I did away with the old color-coding scheme and instead just went with three colors - White for canon characters, cyan for canon characters that are also featured in the RAU Gallery, and red for retconned/unused characters. I also added an entry for Leona Starling, changed "Griffin" to "Jaeger Dunlin III", and added a picture for Dion Falkor. I was going to add Nexis Fried, but forgot. However, I probably couldn't say much more about him than has already been said in his RAU Cast entry. Finally, I added links to those who have individual scrapbooks, and the page has a new introduction. UPDATE: 06/30/07 Updated Q&A. UPDATE: 06/27/07 I added "Another Termina" and "Frozen Flame" to the Chrono Cross section of the music downloads page. You'll also notice that I reorganized that section a little bit. Eventually, all of my game download sections will be organized the same way. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that "Scars of Time" had a static "pop" in the beginning that I removed. I've also made the decision to stop using NSFs to record NES mp3s unless I absolutely have no choice, because I've discovered that the sound quality on a lot of them is really messed up and I get far better results if I record directly from an emulator with Hi-Q. For example, compare these two mp3s: Gargoyle's Quest 2 - House Theme recorded from NSF Gargoyle's Quest 2 - House Theme recorded with Hi-Q I don't think there's any denying that the second one sounds better. I first noticed this problem when I went to record the Journey to Silius music. Here is what the Level 1 Theme sounds like in the file that's available on my downloads page: Journey to Silius - Level 1 Theme recorded with Hi-Q But this is what it would have sounded like had I ripped it from the NSF: Journey to Silius - Level 1 Theme recorded from NSF You might also recall that I mentioned running into trouble when I tried to convert the Hiryu No Ken tracks. Along with the usual static, they were also playing back too slowly! That was pretty much the last straw for NSFs for me. I will try to upgrade as many of my NES mp3s to Hi-Q versions as possible, but some games (like shooters without sound tests) are going to make that almost impossible. UPDATE: 06/26/07 All remaining scrapbooks have been added to the RAU Gallery Cast Listing page, including Jaeger Dunlin, Kado, Leona Starling, Nexis Fried, Ogrin Dovekie, Preston Abirok, and Victor Markino. Now that I've finished that project, maybe I can actually write some new sketches... UPDATE: 06/21/07 Kiini and Zumo now have scrapbooks on RAU Gallery Cast Listing page. I also added a little bit more stuff to my Music Downloads. All SNES music, but they include: Equinox - NEW! 1 song Gradius 3 - Added "Fire Scramble" Super Ghouls n Ghosts - NEW! 4 songs TMNT 4: Turtles in Time - NEW! 4 songs UPDATE: 06/19/07 AT&T FINALLY unblocked my FTP ports!! THANK YOU!!! I have no idea why or how since I haven't contacted them about it again, but Crawl tried it one more time today for the hell of it, and whaddyaknow, it worked! I have to wonder if they saw this page. Well, I'll remove the angry updates involving that situation so long as it stays clear. Nothing else new except an Aurora Taglisa scrapbook on the RAU Gallery Cast Listing page. UPDATE: 06/17/07 I've added scrapbooks for Crow, Image Arcane, Jack Sheen, and Talon Kyradius to the RAU Gallery Cast Listing page. I also changed everyone's first scrapbook page so that there's now a list of links to what sketches they've appeared in. I also answered three more emails in Q&A. A sit rep on the uploading issues here at FlyingOmelette.com: *** Paragraph Removed *** Will I ever write reviews again? Yeah, probably. But I thought I'd take the year off from that, especially since all I've really played this year is Airforce Delta Strike, and have just generally felt more into game music than game playing. Speaking of AFDS, if I ever get around to purchasing that video compression program, I'll upload more videos from that game to YouTube. I'd like to eventually get a complete set of every level in the game. UPDATE: 06/09/07 I updated Q&A. Sorry for the delay in my response to that one, but the fur has really been hitting the fan around here lately. UPDATE: 06/09/07 A sliver of good news in all of this. Dreamhost fixed the problem with the backup board. I apparently caused it when I changed the account passwords after the recent security breaches. Oops. However, we're still going to be using the Yuku board for now, but at least I now know it wasn't hacked or lost or anything like that. UPDATE: 06/09/07 ** Removed *** UPDATE: 06/08/07 Several factors have left me with a very limited ability to update this site. They include: A recent security breach at Dreamhost. Although my domain and subdomains weren't directly affected, I was left without access to the site yesterday. Dreamhost changed the webFTP's control panel. It now limits the size of the uploads to 4 megabytes, whereas before it was 78. This means I can no longer get away with using the webFTP to upload mp3s unless they're under 4 megabytes. My DSL provider STILL has my access to FTP blocked. I haven't had time to contact them to get it fixed. A back injury that's forced me to go into therapy. Working a lot of overtime. Hopefully, all of this will be resolved soon and I can get back to regular updates. In the meantime, thanks to this website, I can now provide you with an mp3 of my alltime favorite song from a Game Boy game: Kid Icarus: Of Myths & Monsters - Level 2 Overworld Theme UPDATE: 06/06/07 I added some notes on Airforce Delta Strike to Documentation of Game Glitches. UPDATE: 06/03/07 Samantha now has a scrapbook on the RAU Gallery Cast Listing page. UPDATE: 06/02/07 Three more questions answered in Q&A today. Message board cleanup continues. Thanks to Yuku's unlimited pages per forum (unlike Ezboard that had a 20-page limit), I can now combine our archive forums so the board won't look like a huge ungainly mess anymore. I have to work today and tomorrow so I probably won't be getting much else done with the site this weekend. UPDATE: 06/01/07 Our forums have been transferred to Yuku. If you have any trouble using the new forums, let me know and I'll see what I can do. Also, if you find you can't log in and your username has spaces, you have to actually type the spaces now. UPDATE: 05/29/07 Robin Calypson now has a scrapbook on the RAU Gallery Cast Listing page. UPDATE: 05/28/07 I sincerely apologize for this. I really do. UPDATE: 05/28/07 The FTP problem is still ongoing. I'll have to call the DSL company to get it resolved, but the reason I haven't yet is because I somehow injured my back and have been unable to do much for four days. Even with these impediments, I've still been able to update Q&A again. I'm taking this opportunity (if you can call it that) to work on some simpler and easier things that I've been meaning to get done. As such, I restarted work on those character-specific Scrapbooks for the RAU Gallery Cast Listing page. I completed scrapbooks for Calico King, Chance Tomasaro, Chester Hallet, Christopher Paladin, Cory McRaven, Deuce Koma, Honen Calzoun, Lizaki, Lukyan Degorah, Nucleo McRaven, Raymond O'Malley, Sesa Markino, Taura Asa, Tomi Forrester, and Wildclaw. Some of them contain new pictures that were never posted to the site before. In most cases, they'll be on the last few pages. UPDATE: 05/24/07 The FTP problem has still not been resolved but I managed to update Q&A using the webFTP. Answers to three of life's greatest mysteries have been given. Also, I reported earlier that there was a limit on filesizes, and that's true, but I had misread the limit as 7 megabytes. It's actually 78 megabytes, so that shouldn't be a problem. UPDATE: 05/23/07 It looks to me like the problem is NOT with Dreamhost. The problem is that our DSL provider appears to have blocked me from flyingomelette.com's FTP. I have no idea how or why this has happened, but Crawl will have to inquire with their service technicians about it because it's his account and I don't know the details of it. The reason I know this is because I used a dialup connection and got right in. But if I use the DSL and try connecting to the FTP directly by typing out the full URL, I get a message window asking me to connect to the dialup (our DSL does this with a lot of webpages, particularly ones with hotlinked images). Why I'm suddenly blocked from my FTP, however, as I've said, I don't know, and the DSL company better be able to fix it because I'm none too happy about it. Edit - Test... Crap! I'm having technical difficulties with the site right now. None of my FTP programs will connect to the server anymore. I can still get in via the webFTP, but I'm not used to doing things this way. Not only that, but the webFTP has a limit on the filesizes you can upload. I'll have to get this situation resolved before further updates can continue. UPDATE: 05/19/07 More music downloads! I had unexpected difficulties with the Hiryu No Ken songs, so I don't have that up yet as promised (and still haven't gotten the Mega Man 2 stuff either), but I will get them eventually. For now, here's a rundown of what I've added: The Adventures of Bayou Billy - NEW! 1 song Arcana - Added "Crowded Marketplace" (seemed to have omitted that one by mistake) Chrono Cross - Added "Another Marbule", "Dream of the Shore Bordering Another World", and "Life ~ Faraway Promise". I also uploaded a new "Time of the Dreamwatch" mp3. The one I originally had up there suffered from poor mp3 compression. I use a better wav-to-mp3 converter now. Conquest of the Crystal Palace - NEW! 1 song Deadly Towers - NEW! 3 songs Donkey Kong Country - Added "Aquatic Ambience" by popular request. Final Fantasy Legend 2 - NEW! 1 song Gun.Smoke - NEW! 1 song Paladin's Quest - NEW! 6 songs Super Mario Bros. 2 - NEW! 3 songs Ultima: Exodus - NEW! 2 songs UPDATE: 05/12/07 I started a new feature called "Musical Highlights of the Day" at the top of this page (right below "Recent Updates" and above "Adventure Log"). That's something I've been wanting to do for some time, and I now have enough music on the site to make it worth doing. I'll just pick a few songs at random every few days or so to spotlight there. I'll be adding some more stuff to the downloads section soon, too. I'll try getting to some of your requests (the ones I'm actually capable of fulfilling, anyway), and I especially need to get around to the Mega Man 2 tracks. Also expect Hiryu No Ken goodness in the near future. The promised update to the Game Ending Songs article will happen eventually, but I'm putting the project on hold for now due to the fact that trying to archive the old forums to my hard drive has proven more problematic than I would have liked. For those inquiring about The RAU Gallery, yes, there will be more sketches eventually, too ("Jacknifed" was a send-off for the Game Pond, not the RAU Gallery series itself), but as of right now Dr. Calzoun is still experiencing technical difficulties. UPDATE: 05/10/07 The things I do when I'm bored (Firefox users, wait for everything to load and refresh.) Two more letters answered in Q&A today. Slow month for updates. I hope all that music I posted was enough to keep you busy for awhile. UPDATE: 05/2/07 Allright, I'm still working on that Game Ending Songs update I've been promising, but I got a little sidetracked with all the YouTube videos. Here's something to keep you busy until I get that update done: New to Game Music Downloads: Alundra - Added Alundra, Happiness, Melzas the Combined God, Requiem, and Tarn's Manor. Blaster Master - NEW! 6 songs Castlevania 2 - Dwelling of Doom was missing a fadeout. I fixed it. Castlevania 64 - NEW! 2 songs Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness - NEW! 1 song Chrono Trigger - Added Boss Battle 2, Chrono Trigger, Corridors of Time, Courage and Pride, Delightful Spekkio, Frog's Theme, Guardia Millennial Fair, Last Battle, Singing Mountain, The Brink of Time, Tyrano Lair, Wind Scene, World Revolution, and Zeal Palace. Final Fantasy 8 - NEW! 2 songs Final Fantasy Mystic Quest - Added Battle 2, Bone Dungeon, Focus Tower, Lava Dome, and Mountain Range of Whirlwinds F-Zero - NEW! 8 songs Legacy of the Wizard - NEW! 3 songs Mega Man 4 - NEW! 6 songs Mega Man 5 - NEW! 1 song (Yeah, I know, I need to get more of the Mega Man 2 soundtrack up. Be patient!) Soul Blazer - NEW! 4 songs Star Fox - The Main Theme was accidentally linked to the same file as the Ending Theme. That's been fixed. Super R-Type - NEW! 3 songs Tales of Phantasia - Added an arranged version of Fighting of the Spirit. Terranigma - Added Top of Saint Mountain. Wild Arms - NEW! 2 songs Ys 3 - Added the Genesis versions of Ballacetine Castle, Be Careful, Departure at Sunrise, and Frozen in Time. Added the PC and TG16 versions of Departure at Sunrise. UPDATE: 05/1/07 My Links page was in dire need of being updated and organized, so I did just that. UPDATE: 04/29/07 I have three more game videos: Airforce Delta Strike - Hyper Speed Rick & Rollergames missions Star Fox - Path 2 completed without dying UPDATE: 04/26/07 Edit - Added two more videos to my page: Airforce Delta Strike - Over the Cloud Mission Ys 3 - Final Boss in 8 minutes Instead of cluttering up my blog with all of these Google and YouTube videos, I made a separate site section for them, and I added three more: Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits (PS1) final boss in 26 minutes. Dragon Spirit: The New Legend (NES) in one life. Gradius 3 (SNES) normal difficulty in one life and with no codes used. UPDATE: 04/23/07 I reuploaded versions of my Airforce Delta Strike and Star Fox videos without those obnoxious watermarks. And here are a couple more: Airforce Delta Strike - Night Blitz Mission - Me beating the Night Blitz mission in a little under 6 minutes with Ruth Valentine (aka Viper 1, aka Lily). This mission looks pretty cool as it takes place in a city with a lot of searchlights. It's worth noting how low to the ground I am throughout this whole mission. Airforce Delta Strike - Railroad Mission - Me beating the Railroad mission in a little over 5 minutes with Alex Levine (aka Anaconda 3, aka Rush Hour). I didn't perform this one as smoothly as I'm capable of. Basically, you've gotta take out all these enemy railcars and jets to keep them from destroying the train. UPDATE: 04/22/07 In case you've ever been interested in actually seeing me play a game, here are a few YouTube & Google videos that I made: Airforce Delta Strike - Iceberg Mission - Me beating the Iceberg mission in a little over 2 minutes with Brian Douglas (aka Cobra 3, aka Sprog). This is the mission that had me stuck for awhile because I didn't realize rocketpods go right through the hulls of those ice floes, and they're MUCH harder to take out with lock-on missiles. Airforce Delta Strike - Leopold Battery Mission - Me beating the Turning Point mission (again with Brian Douglas) in a little over 5 minutes. When I first got here, I honestly couldn't believe they expected you to fly right into the barrels of those cannons. Airforce Delta Strike - Twister Mission - Me beating the Twister mission with Holst Prendre (aka Cobra 1, aka Duke) in a little over 5 minutes. I probably should have used a faster plane for this one considering the distance between the targets. Yes, they literally have you nosediving into the center of three tornadoes in this one. Star Fox - Path 1 - Me beating Path 1 of Star Fox without losing a life. I screw up in a couple of places (mainly that wall I accidentally shoot on Venom, and then I got jostled a bit in the corridor on the approach to Andross), but I still make it to the end without losing a life or a wing. UPDATE: 04/20/07 Sweetbee's Game Hive has moved to ww.sweet-bee.com. The links have been changed accordingly. Some news on what's up with me: I was stuck on this stage in Airforce Delta Strike for the longest time because I couldn't figure out how to beat these damn ice floes in the time limit and without crashing. The problem is that with normal missiles, you have to fly through these things to be able to hit the inner targets, which is not only difficult in itself, but is made nearly impossible by the fact that they sometimes submerge while you're trying to fly through them. Then I discovered rocketpods go right through the hull and took all four out in under 5 minutes. D'oh! So as progress continues in that game, I take breaks to draw more sketches of Dr. Honen Calzoun: I have become a truly demented person. "What iz zis? I am mad scientist, not babysitter!" For quite some time, I've had this image in my head of a female Oni child, and I finally decided to draw it. No, she's not related to Honen. I named her Cirrus. The first drawing I did of her was actually this one: Dr. Calzoun tries to give Cirrus a flight lesson. I don't really know if I'm going to use the character or not, and right now I don't have any plans to, but I wanted to sketch her before I forget about her. On a side note, be expecting a really big, BIG update to the Game Ending Songs Extravaganza article soon. And I do mean it's a big one! ~FO UPDATE: 04/15/07 Several updates today: Updated Q&A We have Journey to Silius music now! Added Departure to the Poetry Preserve. Added Journey to Silius to the Game Ending Songs article Added the TG-16 version of "Departure at Sunrise" to the Wanderers From Ys section of the ending songs article, as well as a midi sequenced by DiefWolf. UPDATE: 04/14/07 Okay, I fixed all the following MP3s as to remove the extra note/percussion beat after the fadeout at the end: Blast Corps - Simian Acres B-K - Gobi's Valley, Inside Clanker, Mumbo's Mountain, Rusty Bucket Bay, Spiral Mountain, Treasure Trove Cove (Normal and Alternate), and Gruntilda's Lair. I forgot to put a fadeout on the "Final Battle" mp3 for Banjo-Kazooie. I fixed that. I also fixed Click Clock Wood Spring, Summer, & Winter, and Clanker's Cavern because they had an extra note or percussion beat or something after the fadeout. I don't know what it is with N64 music that has a tendency to do that, particularly the ones from Rare because I had that problem with Blast Corps, but not with Zelda or Mystical Ninja, but I'll try to be more careful from now on. I'll continue going through the other B-K mp3s to look for problems... UPDATE: 04/11/07 Edit - Er, should've been 15 songs on Star Fox. I forgot about the two ending themes. They're there now. Okay, time for that huge music update I've been promising: Azure Dreams - Carried over all 11 songs from the Azure Dreams Monster Shrine. No new material. Banjo-Kazooie - NEW! 18 songs. Special Note: I managed to splice together the two Gobi's Valley tracks so that the first loop is the normal track and the second loop is the alternate track for when you're near the Sphinx. The transition is completely smooth, too, so check it out! Brandish - NEW! 2 songs. Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest - NEW! 7 songs. The Legend of Zelda - NEW! 4 songs. The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 1 (SNES) - NEW! 2 songs. (RARE!) Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals - NEW! 6 songs. Seiken Densetsu 3 - NEW! 3 songs. SkyBlazer - NEW! 3 songs. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - NEW! 1 song. Star Fox - Carried over all 13 songs from the Rec Room feature article. No new material. Young Merlin - NEW! 1 song. Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link - Added the Palace Theme by popular request. Updated Q&A. I'll try to get some of that game music I've been promising posted tonight... UPDATE: 04/10/07 Two more sketches in The RAU Gallery. Minor addendum to the Zanac entry in the Hidden Game Music article (see below), too. I'll be working on getting some more game music up on the site, too. UPDATE: 04/05/07 I added more stuff to Hidden Game Music including entries for Banjo-Kazooie, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Kingsley's Adventure. UPDATE: 04/03/07 Okay, I reorganized that Hidden Game Music article so that now all the entries are alphabetized. I was just adding the new entries to the bottom, but that apparently was too confusing for some readers. UPDATE: 04/02/07 I've made a HUGE update to my Hidden Game Music article. I made the following changes: Got rid of all NSFs and SPCs and made EVERY track available in MP3 format. I removed the entries that were about game songs that sound like other songs because I felt that was more appropriate for the Cameos Database, and they were already listed in that section anyway. This section is now purely for unused music. I removed the EVO: Search for Eden entry because that track was proven to exist during normal gameplay. Added entries for Castlevania, Mega Man 4, River City Ransom, Kirby's Adventure, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. UPDATE: 03/31/07 Added some more awesome sites to the Memory Card. Changed the icon for Crawl's site to something a little more appropriate. Updated the entries for Wildclaw and Zumo in the Who's Who. That's all I'm doing with those for now. I updated Game Midi Conversions with the following: Added a corrected version of the Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei 2D Tokyo theme. My original version had incorrect duration on the notes. Added a "Tell a Strange Tale" midi for Secret of Mana. I'd like to try doing more from this game since I'm getting better at this... Added the SkyBlazer "Boundless Flight" midi. Added screenshots for some games that were missing them. I updated my Links page so that all sites that have won the Golden Ridley Award of Excellence now have a small Ridley icon next to them to indicate that they won. UPDATE: 03/30/07 Added Quebec Gamers to the Links page. It appears my Game Ending Songs article was mentioned in a recent edition of UK magazine, Retrogamer: Scan of the article I really am quite flattered, especially since they refer to me as a "great" website. I've seen other magazines make mention of "really terrible NES fansites", and assuming they've actually visited mine, I always thought I was included in that. Nice to see not every professional outlet feels that way about us. For once, I actually feel kind of ashamed that I don't make more game-related updates these days and instead spend my time making jokes about cat nipples and elves getting their pants pulled down, but, well...At least I did make a recent update to that section (see the March 23rd entry below, my birthday, actually). Hopefully, I'll get back into gaming soon. I actually have been playing Airforce Delta Strike (PS2) on and off lately. I really enjoy it when I get into it, but my attention keeps getting turned to other things. But this and the fact that some of my friends have been updating their sites again lately has put me in a better mood lately. Thanks to site reader Emultest for bringing that Retrogamer article to my attention. Updated Q&A again. Man, Q&A was busier today than work. That's a first. I updated it again. Slow work day. Had a few spare minutes this morning, so I updated Q&A. UPDATE: 03/29/07 Some minor tweaking to the Image Arcane/RAU Who's Who pages. I updated the entries for Chance Tomasaro, Chester Hallet, Cory McRaven, Honen Calzoun, Image Arcane, Talon Kyradius, Taura Asa, and Tomi Forrester. Damn, some of those pictures were REALLY outdated, and some still need work, like Taura. I put those 2 Mendou videoclips on my Urusei Yatsura 2 page and added two more! UPDATE: 03/28/07 I also finally wrote up guidelines for the SAB section and relinked it in the table to the left. I don't have any new material up yet, but I'm sitting on a bunch of submissions, so there will be something soon. Recently, in the Q&A section, I had made mention of a blogger that actually inspired "The Adventures in Site Tracking" section. For various reasons, I decided at the time not to go through with it. When I finally changed my mind, I had long since lost the URL to that site. Call it fate, call it luck, call it karma, but through a series of strange events, I actually managed to find that URL again, even though it's been gone from my sitetracker for a long time now. I have been given a second chance, and far be it from me to pass it up: Adventures in Site Tracking #4. WARNING! Don't read that if you don't want to lose all faith in the human race. UPDATE: 03/27/07 Added the following to MP3 Downloads: Kid Icarus - NEW! 9 songs Raiden - NEW! 6 songs Tenchi Muyo - Replaced the Alchemy of Love WMA with an mp3 and added 7 new songs In addition, the Kid Icarus mp3s were also made available on the Kid Icarus Music Page in the Shrine and I changed the name of that section from "Midis" to "Music" since it's no longer just midis. I also added a tracklist for the NSF. UPDATE: 03/25/07 I learned something new yesterday. Apparently Juice Newton + Transformers = recipe for Comedy Gold. Because YOU demanded it, here's another one: Playing With the Queen of Hearts I think that's gonna be it, folks. We don't want to wear this joke out now. Some video clips of some of my favorite scenes from Transformers and Urusei Yatsura 2: Transformers: Go get'em, Brawn!! - I would've thought Optimus Prime's reaction to Brawn's request here would've been that it's too dangerous (and stupid) to do that, but oh well. Ironhide's All-Purpose Solution - I'll bet he uses this one on the TV, too. Smokescreen is a Little Slow - And I don't just mean his speed as a car. I think this is the funniest one of these. I could watch this one over and over again and it never gets old. Soundwave Runs Through a Volleyball Net - In a REALLY ridiculously exaggerated manner, too. Urusei Yatsura 2: Great Mendou Moment #1 - Tanks don't go bathing, you idiot!! Great Mendou Moment #2 - Mendou is scared of the dark. UPDATE: 03/24/07 Two more submissions for the RAU Fanart Section have been added. BWA HA HA!! I made a slight update to Overlord Woes thanks to regular contributor, James Torrance. Thanks! Now that sketch is a million times better. (How the hell do you people find these things?) Updated the Miscellaneous Section of the Kid Icarus Shrine with new information on Super Smash Bros. Brawl submitted by site reader Boo Destroyer. I put up two more RAU Gallery Sketches. I sincerely apologize to anyone who actually reads them. Updated Level 4 of the Kid Icarus Guide with information on the ending scenes and a new safe spot for fighting Medusa submitted by Rey from the Video Game Museum and TheAlmightyGuru, respectively. I updated Aurora's entry in the Who's Who. Boy, that one needed even more work than Robin's. UPDATE: 03/23/07 I finally got a DSL connection here at home so in celebration, I've added some new music to the site: Donkey Kong 64 - Added Angry Aztec, Crystal Caves, DK Isle, and Troff n Scoff Super Castlevania 4 - NEW! 11 songs. I've also given a long-overdue Golden Ridley Award of Excellence to The Almighty Guru. This site has a lot of awesome game reviews and shrines, dozens of game fonts, and a music preservation section. Some of the games covered are my old favorites (Secret of Mana, Contra, Yars Revenge, Section-Z), but there is also a lot of information on more obscure games. I learned many interesting things about games I had never heard of anywhere else before. I need to spend some time doing general site maintenance now. I updated the Midis Page with the Arcana and Breath of Fire 2 stuff I posted earlier, and I also added Tricob's Cobra Triangle stuff to the page, too. (Added a few screenshots for games that were missing them, too.) Here's a rundown of all the changes made to the Game Ending Songs Article: Added the arcade version of the Dragon Spirit ending song. Added a midi conversion of the Drakkhen ending song. Added Elemental Master (suggested by Codie Martin). Added a much more accurate midi conversion of the HyperZone ending song. Added Panzer Dragoon. Added a midi conversion of the Robotrek ending song. Added Super Mario Kart (suggested by MaskedSheik). Added the Genesis and PC versions of "Departure at Sunrise" to Wanderers From Ys. UPDATE: 03/22/07 In my continuing effort to be the internet's most bitter and contemptuous denizen, I have once again reorganized my links page and removed some sites that requested a link exchange, but either didn't fulfill their end of the bargain or mysteriously removed my site. I'm getting so sick of this crap that from now on I am not exchanging links with just any ol' site any more. I will exchange links with sites ONLY if my link is placed on the page first, and then only after I have a chance to look over the site and review it. My main requirement for that part of it is that the site has original content and isn't just trying to be a directory of some sort. I also got rid of the "Other Link Exchange" section because it's been years, and those sites were still linking to the old Geocities page. Some of them are no longer updated and those that are, I'm doubtful will change it at this point. The sites in that section that I still find useful I moved to the "Other Game Sites" section and the rest I removed. I hate the internet so much these days I don't know why I stick around. That is all. Actually, there's one really good reason to stick around. It's when people do unexpected things like this that it makes my day. UPDATE: 03/21/07 Winamp totally died on me and it took all night to get it working again. I have no idea what caused it, but I had to uninstall it and reinstall it three or four times before it would work again. That put a slight delay on getting more music updates done. Crawl is actually the one who did all the work on this, but I'm going to post about it anyway. He moved the NES Enshrined mirror to a subdomain on FlyingOmelette.com located here: http://nesenshrined.flyingomelette.com The reason I'm posting it here is because I've been checking the stats on it every morning (along with this site and the other sites I host), and well... They're kind of pathetic. But whenever I post a link to something on this page, it almost immediately starts skyrocketing up the hit list, so hopefully that'll help. I also changed it on my links page. We hope to eventually have an archive of the Working Design Critic's RPG reviews, too. In other site news, I've begun a bit of a cleanup of the IA/RAU Scrapbook and Sketch Gallery. If you go to the RAU Cast Listing and look under Christopher Paladin and Nucleo McRaven's entries, you'll notice I've added links to scrapbooks for both characters. These scrapbooks consist entirely of images pertaining to the particular characters they're listed under. Eventually, almost every character will have one. Most of the drawings and text were duplicated from the Scrapbook and Sketch Gallery, but the last few pages on both of them have some stuff I've never posted to the site before, if you're interested for some reason. I plan to eventually phase out the Sketch Gallery. It's pointless now. Once all the new individual scrapbooks are done, the remaining miscellaneous pictures will be moved to the old IA/RAU Scrapbook and the Sketch Gallery will be no more. I'm also going to phase out the Image Arcane Character Profiles (I think I only did ones for Aurora, Tomi, Eddy, and Kin-Liu so far) because the Who's Who section and the RAU Cast listing already do a good job of explaining the details of every character and the scrapbooks have the images covered. When I come up with new ideas for characters, I'd rather not have to update those along with the Who's Who (and I haven't looked at them in awhile, but I'm betting their information is outdated by now anyway.) UPDATE: 03/20/07 I wrote another RAU Gallery sketch. Yes, I'm losing my mind. UPDATE: 03/18/07 Throw another sketch on The RAU Gallery! UPDATE: 03/17/07 I got the Midis Page at Deathamster's Nest working again! I normally do not update that site, but this issue was my doing. A long time ago, before I moved to Dreamhost, I had limited storage space and I informed the sites I was hosting as subdomains that I was removing all midis to make room for other things. Well, storage space is no longer an issue, so I reuploaded all their midis. I've updated the Miscellaneous section of the Kid Icarus Shrine with a picture and a little bit of info on Pit in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Unfortunately, that's as much coverage as it's going to get because I don't own a Wii. But thanks again to everyone who submitted information about that. At long last, I've updated the Codes section of the Kid Icarus Shrine! I have two new codes submitted by site readers long ago (and I also gave credit to the Nintendo Power Guide where I got those original passwords...what the hell? I thought I already did that. Shame on me!) I've been tinkering slightly with the IA & RAU Who's Who. Right now, I'm ONLY updating information and pictures for characters that are featured in The RAU Gallery section of this site. Mostly, I wanted to get rid of those old terrible drawings of Preston and Ogrin that I did when I must've been on some sort of 80's crack. Robin's entry needed work, too. The characters I updated so far are Deuce Koma, Lukyan Degorah, Nucleo McRaven, Ogrin Dovekie, Preston Abirok, Raymond O'Malley, and Robin Calypson. Sorry, I'm a few days late, but I finally updated Q&A again. UPDATE: 03/13/07 Updated Q&A again. Now for some more midi love: Arcana - Prologue - I was able to get the Arcana midis fairly accurate to the actual game songs. This one has some note-bending issues, though. Arcana - Reinoll's Theme - I love this song! And it's VERY accurate, too! Arcana - Town Theme - Also quite accurate except for the percussion. Couldn't quite get that to jive correctly. Breath of Fire 2 - Evan, The God of Death - The final boss music. This one came out REALLY nice! If not for the minor note-bending quirks of SPC2MIDI, I'd swear this sounds even better than the actual game song. Skyblazer - Ending Theme - You're better off downloading the actual game song from the Game Ending Songs article, but if you want a midi of it for some reason, this is the best I could do. UPDATE: 03/07/07 I know I'm getting a little behind on the videogame music download requests lately, but I've finally got some stuff up today. Here's what's new: Contra - NEW! 7 songs Disney's Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers - NEW! 2 songs Super Earth Defense Force - NEW! 3 songs UPDATE: 03/06/07 Updated Q&A again. Thanks for all of your comments and input, everyone. In my continuing effort to make this the most screwed-up site on the internet, I've added yet another sketch to The RAU Gallery. I am a truly demented person... UPDATE: 03/04/07 Updated Q&A again. UPDATE: 03/03/07 Updated Q&A. UPDATE: 03/02/07 I did it. I got the second Forum Archive Topic done. It's in the RAU Gallery now. That's all for tonight. I'm on a bit of a roll tonight. I put up an archived forum topic in The RAU Gallery. I might have another one soon, but may not be done tonight... Since I feel the need to do something to put me in a better mood than what I've been in lately, I've awarded the Golden Ridley Award to Random Hoo-Haas. If you haven't been there yet, it's an excellent site with a lot of extensive game shrines, unused stuff in the Metal Slug games, beta version of Shinobi II, humor, episode reviews of cartoons based on videogames and more. It's been awhile, but there's actually a new Site Tracking Adventure in The RAU Gallery today. UPDATE: 03/01/07 No real updates, except that I made all of those new midi conversions available in the Game Midis Section. "I'll know when my time has come I'll know when it's time to go The last thing I will ever see Is the last dream I dream Before that eternal sleep And may that last dream Fade with me into the night For that last dream Is one that I'll cling to tight Never let go Never let go... So long Goodbye So long Goodbye..." - FO, 2007 UPDATE: 2/28/07 More fun with SPC2MIDI: HyperZone - End Credits (Version 3) - This is nearly identical to the one I posted below, but the crash cymbal was changed to a more-accurate electric snare. I had this stray instrument and didn't know what it was. I guessed it was for a cymbal crash, but when it showed up in the song's intro, I realized I had guessed wrong. Pocky & Rocky - Battle With Black Mantle (Version 2) - I made a couple of adjustments to this one. I realized after listening to the original a few more times that the lead instrument should be a guitar, so I made it an electric jazz guitar (it was an oboe on the older version). I also changed that weird instrument I still can't figure out to a kalimba. Pocky & Rocky - Haunted Shrine - Not quite as successful as the other P&R midi, but I don't feel like dedicating more time to it since I like the other one more anyway. Drakkhen - Tent Master - Ah, not the best RPG in the world, but Drakkhen has some cool music. I always found the Tent Master's theme to be rather soothing. These are extremely easy to do because most of Drakkhen's music uses only two or three channels at the most. Drakkhen - Earth Area (Night) - This is a nice relaxing nighttime melody. Drakkhen - Hordkhen's Castle - Kind of ominous and scary. Drakkhen - Staff Roll - The ending song that made my original Top 50 endings. I had second thoughts about it afterwards, but converting this midi reminded me of how much I actually do like it. Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei - 2D Tokyo (Guitar Version) - This one I did just for the heck of it. The drawbar organ/grand piano version below is more accurate to the game, but I wanted a heavy metal version. Tales of Phantasia - Fighting of the Spirit - Well, this is nowhere near as good as the mp3 of the same song I have available in the downloads section, but I wanted to make my own midi of it anyway since this is one of my alltime favorite game songs. One reason it's not as good is because this is the SNES version and the PS1 remake is better. Also, that damn pan flute is supposed to be string ensemble, but that sounded like crap for some reason, so I was forced to change it. Eventually I'll have all these up in my midis section. UPDATE: 2/23/07 First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who gave me positive feedback on The Great Forum Wars sketch. I'm glad others had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. In other news, I have some more midis converted with SPC2MIDI. HyperZone - End Credits - I have a version of this already on the site that was converted using mostly piano. I finally fixed this to include the correct instruments. I'd say it's about 95% more accurate now, and man, what a difference it makes! Highly recommended. And if you like it, be sure to get the mp3 of the actual game song from either the Game Ending Songs article or the downloads section. Pocky & Rocky - Battle With Black Mantle - This one turned out really well, too. There's some kind of weird "picked" instrument I couldn't quite get right, though, and went with Muted Electric Guitar for now. An mp3 of the actual game song is available in the downloads section. Battle Clash - Valius's Theme - This one also worked out quite well. Once again, the mp3 of the game song is in the downloads section. Arcana - Dark Castle Bintel - This one mostly came out allright, except that when the main melody kicks in, the oboe sounds a little shaky. I've generally come to the conclusion that you'll have better results with SPC2MIDI if the game uses the default SNES sound samples instead of a custom sound driver. I think it's possible that Arcana uses custom drivers, so the notes are a little off in places. An mp3 of the game song is also in the downloads section. UPDATE: 2/21/07 Part 4 of The Great Forum War is finally up in the RAU Gallery! I think this one is my crowning achievement. UPDATE: 2/19/07 Part 3 of The Great Forum War is now up in the RAU Gallery. (I am going to be in so much trouble for this one...) UPDATE: 2/18/07 Part 2 of 4 of The Great Forum War is now up in the RAU Gallery. UPDATE: 2/14/07 I've put up Part 1 of my ridiculously ambitious 4-part sketch in the RAU Gallery. This is only the beginning... UPDATE: 2/10/07 Okay, a few things. Made a 2007 Update Log. Added the following to Game Music Downloads: Castlevania: Bloodlines - NEW! 1 song. Mother - NEW! 1 song. Super Mario Bros. - NEW! 1 song. I also fixed the Blast Corps "Angel City" mp3. Thanks to Junus Crowe for pointing out that it had an extra percussion beat after the fadeout. I have no idea how that happened or why I didn't notice it before I uploaded it before. Finally, I'm still working on those RAU Gallery sketches, but in the meantime, I added two more pages to the Image Arcane Scrapbook: The first one has all of my most recent sketches. The second one has a bunch of stuff from my old comics and sketchpads. UPDATE: 2/8/07 Honen and Zumo's reenactment of a scene from the Alien movies. Here's a midi I converted of the 2D Tokyo theme from Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei: Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei - 2D Tokyo MIDI Conversion by Flying Omelette If you liked that, you can get an MP3 of the actual Super Famicom song from the Downloads page. And, hey, I also did one for the Robotrek ending theme: Robotrek - Credits MIDI Conversion by Flying Omelette You can find the original version of that one in the Game Ending Songs article. UPDATE: 2/3/07 Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm working on an insanely-ambitious RAU Gallery sketch and it's going to be awhile before it's done. In the meantime, I've added 3 mp3s for Omikron: The Nomad Soul to Video Game Music Downloads. UPDATE: 1/31/07 I updated Q&A. More to come, eventually... UPDATE: 1/25/07 I updated Q&A. Added the following to Video Game Music Downloads: Demon's Crest - NEW! 1 song Lufia & the Fortress of Doom - NEW! 9 songs Super Mario Bros. 3 - NEW! 6 songs UPDATE: 1/20/07 Added "Comics Curmudgeon" to the Links Page. Added a few more sites to the Memory Card. CB007's Game Review Archive is now CB007.com. The links were changed accordingly. UPDATE: 1/19/07 I have three new RAU Gallery Sketches since the last update! UPDATE: 1/16/07 Added the following to Video Game Music Downloads: Final Fantasy 7 - NEW! 4 songs Gargoyle's Quest 2 - NEW! 7 songs Mega Man 3 - NEW! 14 songs Ys 3: Wanderers From Ys - NEW! 24 songs UPDATE: 1/14/07 Another RAU Gallery Sketch. It's a good one! UPDATE: 1/13/07 I have a couple of new RAU Gallery Sketches . UPDATE: 1/9/07 I finally banged out a review of Dynowarz: Destruction of Spondylus. I have an injury on my right wrist at the moment. I thought it would mean no updates for a few days, but it looks like the swelling is already starting to go down. But if I disappear for awhile, that's probably why. Side note: I just saw A Fistful of Dollars. This movie's soundtrack, even way moreso than The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is definitely what inspired a lot of the music in Tin Star, including the two songs in my downloads section. There are parts where the notes and instruments are identical. Some music also sounded a lot like the opening theme of Wild Arms. UPDATE: 1/8/07 Added the following to Video Game Music Downloads: Crystalis - NEW! 9 songs Rudra No Hihou - NEW! 1 song StarTropics - NEW! 1 song Ultima 6 - NEW! 5 songs UPDATE: 1/7/07 I feel another RAU Gallery Sketch coming on! UPDATE: 1/5/07 I did another RAU Gallery Sketch, but I have to give fair warning: It's not quite the jokefest the previous ones have been. I tried adding back some of the more "human" qualities to the characters and develop them a bit, so it's a little sappy in parts. I was a little hestitant to post it for that reason, but eh, I worked hard on it and the funny parts are there. Anyway, the lowdown on my life situation: I have had several really huge projects dumped on me at work lately. Last Saturday, I had just finished up some of the ones I'd had on my desk for awhile and thought it was the end of them...but I suddenly got four more projects and they involve at least twice as much work as the ones before. This means I have to work a lot of overtime on the weekdays and a lot of Saturdays, too. So that's why I never got back to writing reviews and Rec Room articles like I had said I wanted to, and I'm still officially on hiatus from those things. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to cut through about a 1/4 of those projects and if successful, it might mean I'll have it done within a month, at which time, I'll hopefully be able to get back to normal updates. In the meantime, I'll continue to write RAU sketches if ideas come to me and I'll continue to make updates to the Music Downloads. The rest of the site will just have to wait, though. UPDATE: 1/2/07 Starting off 2007 with a brand new RAU Gallery Sketch. It's just amazing what you can do with old drawings you made when you were 12. BACK TO UPDATE LOG INDEX BACK TO MAIN PAGE