Things look to be drying up considerably after the deluge of good stuff from July.  Bangai-O Spirits is at last coming, and Konami's Time Hollow certainly has an interesting premise behind it, but I'll wait up for some reviews on the latter.

Final Fantasy Remix?  The samples on the official site have been less than phenomenal, but maybe it'll surprise me.

How come you don't do those "Whatcha listening to nowadays" anymore, Angie?

Man, Bangai-o Spirits had my interest piqued early on because of a screenshot I saw of an Okawara-esque giant robot. I guess it's a shooter of some kind? How was the game on N64 and Dreamcast?

Too Human seems interesting, might check that out. My 360 hasn't been loved since . . . . Mass Effect?

Nothing else, it seems.

Micro-sized graphics with multi-directional shooting; the primary gimmick is waiting until you're about to be pummeled to fire your missile blast. It fires off more at the enemy based on how many are about to hit you, so if 4 or 5 missiles are about to touch you, you might fire off 20, but if 20 or so have you surrounded, you can fire off 400 and light up the screen. All in all, very simple, very old-school, very Treasure. You'll either love it for weeks or get bored after a few hours (I'm the latter personally, but I know some diehard fans). The DC version had an intentionally terrible translation, but I dunno if that's carried over. What Spirits DOES have is a level editing option that lets you trade locally via sound data from the microphone.

For my part, I'm a bigger fan of Mario Sports games than I let on, so Super Sluggers has my attention. Also, if GameFAQs is to be believed, Ys Book I & II FINALLY comes to VC tomorrow, marking the first worthwhile purchase since I don't know when.

And a super stink-eye to Disney, which hasn't deigned to put out Darkwing Duck Volume 3 this year, bumming me out.

Anybody know the answer to this?  I thought that was a large part of the charm of the Dreamcast one, so I'm hoping they do something similar for Spirits.

A big thanks to you, Brother Panda. Bangai-O sounds amazingly fun. Might this be incentive enough to check out Ikaruga, which I also hear is Treasure developed? Not a fan of shooters so much, but Treasure has always done great work.

*hopes for that really bad, intentional translation to carry over*

Edit: Looked up Time Hollow, too. Sounds really nice.

There're actually a number of albums coming out this month, according to GMR, that I'm interested in; mostly Super Sweep albums; can anyone tell me about any of these, other than that they're Super Sweep albums, and soundtracks to shooters?

-Final Fantasy Remix (SQEX-10119) - Samples sound minimalistic, but like Angela, I'm actually someways optimistic
-Densha de Go Go! (SRIN-1045) - Sequel to Majokko de Go Go, maybe?
-Mamonoro (SRIN-1046) - Shooter OST
-Eternal Wheel (SRIN-1048) - Square-Enix/Taito Arcade Game OST
-Illvelo (SRIN-1047) - Shooter OST

I've been following Super Sweep for a little while now, and I've been consistently pleased with what they've had to offer.

You got it, pally:

http://www.soundtrackcentral.com/forums … hp?id=3962

By the way, it looks like Time Hollow got pushed back to September.  My bad.

Rats!  If both that and Sam & Max for Wii have been pushed to September, that doesn't really leave me with anything to pick up in August.  Fine, since I'll be starting teaching, I guess.  It'll be good to save money for moving into an apartment probably in mid-September, too.

Since WB broke street date and sent me Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles (bluray) 3 weeks early, I still plan to get Code Monkeys Season 1 (dvd) and Heroes Season 2 (dvd).  Gamewise?  Nothing.  I've got enough to play anyway, so I'm thankful for a slow month.  If I do play up enough stuff, there're some pretty cool XBLA games coming, and who knows what VC/Wiiware and PSN titles will be released.

My selections from August 2008's releases:

Games:
-Bionic Commando: Rearmed (PS3) <-- I am so pumped for this!

DVDs:
[None]

CDs:
-Final Fantasy Remix
-Technictix Remix Vol. 1
-Tales of Vesperia Original Soundtrack
-Tales of Series Battle Arrange Tracks
[possibly some of those other SuperSweep discs if I have extra money]

I recently ordered a 'big batch', like I used to do in the past. Although only one of them is an August release, they're all new from my point of view.

SQEX-10068 / Vagrant Story Original Soundtrack (This is advertised as 'remastered', not 'reprinted'.)

KDSD-230  / Tales of Series Battle Arrange Track (Only true August release.)

VGCD-104  / Etrian Odyssey (Sekaiju no Meikyu) Super Arrange Version
SVWC-7514 / Lost Odyssey Original Soundtrack
VGCD-135 / Sekaiju no Meikyu II Shoo no Seihai Original Soundtrack
SQEX-10112  / drammatica -The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura-
SVWC-7351  / Final Fantasy XII Original Soundtrack
MJCD-20125 / Luminous Arc 2 Will Original Soundtrack
SVWC-7428  / Blue Dragon Original Soundtrack
VGCD-136  / Sekaiju no Meikyu II Shoo no Seihai Super Arrange Version
SQEX-10095 / Seiken Densetsu Heroes of Mana Original Soundtrack
VGCD-72  / Sekaiju no Meikyu Original Soundtrack

I'll probably get the Siren: New Translation OST, but that's about it... and I might wait until next month so I can grab that and Siren 2's OST at the same time.

Will be donating some cd's & dvds i don't use anymore to local charity.

Thinking about maybe buying The Game's LAX album if it gets really-really good reviews..

Game

N+ / PSP - I won't be able to play it until custom firmware lets me

Soundtracks

Illvelo Soundtrack - I buy whatever Nagata and Hayashi do now.

Mamonoro Soundtrack - Wow. Yasui is doing a shooter soundtrack? This should be good!

Psyvariar "The Mix" - Even though I wasn't  blown away by either of the OSTs this should be enjoyable, especially with a Namiki remix.

nice choices Jodo.

I'm not sure if I'm buying anything for this month. I am getting a free copy of Disgaea 3, and I already have an advanced copy of Rhapsody DS (coming Sept 23). These are good. <3 NISA.

I did order Star Ocean: Second Evolution OST *and* arrange albums recently. I know there's nothing different between them and the first smile prints really...but um...I miss this music and I can't find the first smile prints anymore.

I've been a very bad game music fan lately. Sure, I've continued to listen. But my purchases have been paltry. So I hope to make up for it. I have a list of about 20 more to order and, amazingly, they are available for purchase. It's a good thing I was so dedicated in the past. It's neat to find what I want without having to wait 30,000 years for one to show up on Yahoo Japan. It's very relaxing to just go to an online store, add something to a cart, and be done with it. (Years of collecting OOP game music probably changes the physical structure of the brain, much like smoking cigarettes has been confirmed to do.)

I noticed that Dramatica was on yer list, do you think it would've been better-arranged by either Koichi or Mizuta?

I dunno, something about this cd just didn't sit well with me.

VGM
Well Comiket 74 is this month so there's about ~15 CDs right there... couple more if I could find someone to help me obtain event only stuff (know anyone??).

Game
Too busy for anything new (2 jobs!!!). Playing through Suikoden 3 whenever I get a free hour or two.

Metal
Nothing I've noticed...

My purchases for this month are rather minimal.

Games:

Ratchet and Clank: The Quest for Booty

Music:

Tales of Series Battle Arrange Tracks

Before it was delayed until September (I ordered it in May if that tells you how much of a fanatic I am. Shakes fist!)

Sound Horizon's Moira

I can't think of anything for me this month. I bought the JP version of DS Bangai-O and really haven't got on with it at all. Tutorials are all in Japanese though so perhaps I should have waited but I didn't think it was likely to get a translated release.

I'm going to buy a bean bag... and perhaps that DS Guitar Hero, which I realise isn't an August release. Anyone know if it turned out to be fun?

It plays well enough, although I admit it: the wrist strap left a tinge of pain in my hand after a couple of rigorous play sessions on Expert mode.  Your mileage may vary, but no matter the position, I found it impossible to find one that allowed me to comfortably play for any extended periods of time.

Which was just as well anyway; truthfully, I got bored with On Tour rather quickly.  That's not so much a negative slant on the game itself, but at Guitar Hero as a whole.  Not even the novelty of the portability factor could wash away my ever-increasing feeling of apathy I've developed for the series.  I'd suggest you save your money and put it toward Rhythm Tengoku Gold if you need a new music-rhythm fix.  It's far and away the more enjoyable game.

Thanks for the suggestion. You could be right. I loved the GBA version but haven't yet picked up the DS version, unsure of how I'd like it with the touch screen controls.

Group hug?

What the hey.  I'm always down for a little reconciliation:

http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/2173/poohheroxa0.jpg

I have to wait for the Tales Battle Album to be released, so it'll be another week or two before I can listen to Drammatica.

I know this is really late but I finally picked up the Metal Gear Solid Box Collection. It took about a month of poping into my local EB until they got a sealed one. I've only ever played MGS1.

InterLace has a MySpaces too

in Neptune, Sveden

Uggh!!

My impulse control is poop.

Staring into the maw of tax-free weekend in Massachusetts, I splurged on a PSP. Not sure why, but I got a good deal. My friend who works at the store sold me a Madden bundle, but traded in Madden and the stupid documentary disk and put the credit against the item itself, sneaking in a nice slipcover just because. So a nice Electric Blue system, 1-Gig card and slipcover for the cost of one of the dull black ones with nothing on the shelf. Not bad. There don't seem to be any dead pixels and it works quite nicely (though Remote Play was a big disappointment - I can't see myself getting through MM8 with a full second of lag). I also picked up Maverick Hunter X and Gurumin, since they didn't have Powered Up (I ordered it online though, immediately after playing the demo on MHX). Good stuff, but

A. UMDs are weird - I always thought the outer rim was just a disc case, not part of what goes in the system itself,
B. I felt like an idiot trying and failing for several minutes to get the Memory Card in properly, and
C. this may just be because I'm used to DS, but MAN does the PSPs screen seem enormous.

Nitpicking, yes yes. I'll get used to it. Also finally tracked down Metal Slug Anthology and Taito Legends 1. Old games are go-go-go!

I'm kind of envious... that color is absolutely gorgeous. 

Well, I bought Uncharted earlier this week (rented it via Gamefly, beat it and loved it so much that I chose the "keep it" option for $35). I'm going to rent Tales of Vesperia from them next but because I loved Abyss so much (and heard Vesperia is even BETTER), I'll probably end up keeping it too. It'll be nice to play a next-gen RPG that hasn't left a poor taste in my mouth.

I preordered the special edition of Tales of Vesperia.  The Steelbook case doesn't much interest me, but I don't want to miss out on the music CD.  I hope that the Grand Fonic Hymn is one of the included Abyss tracks.

The wrinkle is that I don't have an Xbox 360.

Did the same thing with Megaman X4 when it hit Playstation. Didn't have a damn PSX then . . .

<italics>LEVEL-5

Catfish's Maw

You're reilly, rlly weird