More useless video game trivia.

Website · #181

terrifying

#182

Two of the banners in the first stage of Metal Slug 2 read "I have diarrhea" and "I need medicine" in Arabic.

#183

This may or may not have actually been intentional, but imma post it anyway bc I'm pretty sure it was.

[MEDIA=youtube]PWbTkl_XJkg[/MEDIA]

0:36-0:55 of the New Pork City theme in Mother 3 sounds harmonically and melodically like a variation of the underwater theme from SMB: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zc28zcBIX7U

#184

In NetHack, there are at least 48 different ways you can be turned to stone and killed by a cockatrice, including:

Having your HP fall to 0 due to its attacks.
Being petrified by one of its regular attacks (normally has a 1/30 chance of happening).
Attacking it with bare, ungloved hands.
Kicking it without wearing boots.
Headbutting it without wearing a helmet.
Picking up a cockatrice corpse without wearing gloves.
Eating a cockatrice corpse.
Eating a cockatrice egg.
Being hit by a monster wielding a cockatrice corpse as a weapon.
Throwing a cockatrice corpse directly over yourself while not wearing a helmet.
Attempting to examine a cockatrice corpse while blind and ungloved.
Losing your gloves to a destroy armor spell or scroll while wielding a cockatrice corpse as a weapon.
Riding an animal that steps onto a polymorph trap and gets transformed into a cockatrice.
Slipping and falling down stairs while overencumbered and wielding a cockatrice corpse as a weapon.

#185

The Sheikah text displayed on the distilling stones (where you upgrade your Sheikah Slate) in Breath of the Wild reads "MASTER USING IT AND YOU CAN HAVE THIS".

#186

Choosing the "Impossible" difficulty level in Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors for the Sega CD will result in Lou Reed appearing, killing the titular duo, and then explaining to you what the word "impossible" means.

#187

[QUOTE="Apollo the Just, post: 1627300, member: 30977"]This may or may not have actually been intentional, but imma post it anyway bc I'm pretty sure it was.

[MEDIA=youtube]PWbTkl_XJkg[/MEDIA]

0:36-0:55 of the New Pork City theme in Mother 3 sounds harmonically and melodically like a variation of the underwater theme from SMB: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zc28zcBIX7U[/QUOTE]
If you don't mind some pushback, AJ, I'm pretty sure this is just a prototypical waltz chord progression.

#188

^ I don't mind pushback but I also like proving that I'm right so I will be back tomorrow when I have my laptop with a PowerPoint presentation complete with visual and audio

mushroom · #189

[QUOTE="Valigarmander, post: 1627789, member: 30663"]Choosing the "Impossible" difficulty level in Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors for the Sega CD will result in Lou Reed appearing, killing the titular duo, and then explaining to you what the word "impossible" means.[/QUOTE]

"This is the impossible level, boys. Impossible doesn't mean very difficult. Very difficult is winning the Nobel Prize; impossible is eating the Sun."

#190

Super Metroid composer Kenji Yamamoto also voiced Spore Spawn's growls.

#191

Super Metroid's other composer, Minako Hamano, voiced a scream for Samus that would play whenever she dies, but it was cut for sounding "too sexual".

I REALLY HATE POKEMON! · #192

If the clip exists that'd be a cool hack.

#193

The Japanese name for moogles (mooguri) is a portmanteau of mogura ("mole") and koomori ("bat").

#194

[QUOTE="Marilink, post: 1627822, member: 23215"]If you don't mind some pushback, AJ, I'm pretty sure this is just a prototypical waltz chord progression.[/QUOTE]

HEYYYYY IT'S ME, UR PAL AJ, WITH AN UNNECESSARILY RIGOROUS AMOUNT OF PREPARATION TO RESPOND TO THIS

))))

this got significantly longer than expected so for a tl;dr just look at the spoiler'd picture and click on the soundcloud link below it for a visual and audio demonstration of my point

So, you may be right about the commonality of the chord progression. However, there is a very very specific and iconic harmonic technique that is shared by both. More on that later, because most importantly, when transposed to the same key, literally every single note of the SMB Underwater melody is found, in order, in the melody of New Pork City -- INCLUDING identical musical runs between phrases.

I took the time to illustrate my point. SMB is transposed here to the same key as New Pork. Didn't bother with key signatures because this ****'s chromatic as **** anyway. New Pork is on top, SMB is in the middle, and the bottom is literally just New Pork copied and pasted and I removed everything that isn't just the notes from the SMB theme. And lo- they're all there:

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

You'll notice the first run is descending in the Mother 3 track whereas the SMB theme it's ascending, but if you flip one around, the runs are exactly the same. Identical notes.

It's not just a visual, though. I exported a quick sound file of the notes from New Pork City that emphasizes those taken from the melody of the SMB track to help you hear how the SMB melody is hidden but absolutely present in New Pork:

https://soundcloud.com/arcanaxix/new-pork-smb/s-S0vPF

Listening to this first, then going back to the New Pork City track, makes it clear to me that Mother 3's composition is an intentional embellishment of not just the chord progression, but this *specific* melody. The melodic rhythm isn't identical because New Pork takes a lot of liberties and does a lot of interesting chromaticisms, but what is of note here - to me - is that none of the notes that correspond to the SMB melody are just passing tones or unimportant notes; they feel like intentional parts of the melody. For example, many are the last note in a measure. It doesn't seem like a coincidence to me, they sound like the same song. It's practically a Theme and Variations.

Now, back on the harmony - ran out of juice for fleshing this out so long story short, the 3-measure sets are a very specific use of a diminished seventh chord with a shared root used as a passing chord between two of the same chord. So the first 3 measures are Chord - diminished seventh chord with the same root as previous chord - back to chord again. And the next 3 measures [after the runs] are New Chord - diminished seventh chord with the same root as previous chord - back to New Chord.

It's a technique I learned about in harmony class, and we specifically used the SMB Underwater theme as an example because it's a very iconic use of this technique, that is certainly found elsewhere but is - to the extent of my knowledge - not all that common in waltz composition. In fact the other example given in lecture was Carnival of the Animals ~ Aquarium, and my professor implied that the use of the same technique from Aquarium in SMB for an underwater level may have been intentional. Dunno if I buy that, but hey. Anyway. I'm not about to go listen to every waltz ever written and see how many of them have this harmonic technique present, though, so it may or may not be prevalent elsewhere. But it's uncommon enough that my professor thought its existence in SMB was a reference to a specific classical music piece, at any rate.

For example....... the Music Box House in Majora's Mask has a similar melody and chord progression, but it lacks this harmonic technique and the notes to the melody are not perfectly present in New Pork City. Whereas SMB's melody and chord progression are literally identical to NPC's, AND this very specific technique is present. They're the same composition, just one with embellishments.

(((The Music Box House **IS**, however, practically identical to the Merry-Go-Round in SM64. But everyone already discovered that one years ago.))

To sum, the fact that a) BOTH songs have an IDENTICAL harmonic progression (in different keys), including the use of a very specific harmonic technique, and b) BOTH songs have an ESSENTIALLY IDENTICAL melody (key word being essentially), and c) they're both Ninty and Mother 3 is one self-aware ****, leads me to believe that this is not a coincidence but an intentional reference in song form. It would be hard to accidentally and unintentionally YET PERFECTLY re-create every note in the melody of an existing song.

ok that took longer than strictly necessary anyway that about sums it up

#195

Dang, well done. I'm impressed.

#196

I AINT MAJORED IN MUSIC FOR NOTHIN

#197

Marilink SHOOK

#198

[MEDIA=youtube]8v_o8AWu2N4[/MEDIA]

Viewing the Cyberdemon's theme from 2016's Doom with a spectrogram will reveal pentagrams hidden throughout the song.

Antisocial · #199

In Super Mario World, you can control the power of your strokes by holding up or down while swimming. It's pretty much the only Mario game that has this feature.

I'm mentioning it because while I've known this since I've had the game, I've always had a feeling not a lot of others who've played it did.

Random User · #200

[QUOTE="Valigarmander, post: 1628821, member: 30663"][MEDIA=youtube]8v_o8AWu2N4[/MEDIA]

Viewing the Cyberdemon's theme from 2016's Doom with a spectrogram will reveal pentagrams hidden throughout the song.[/QUOTE]
It's very faint but you can also see "666" between the pentagrams.