Triple Panel update! Screwattack, The AVGN, and Overclocked Remix

January 3, 2009 on 8:18 pm | In News, PS3, XBOX 360 | 2 Comments

Day three featured some pretty fun panels, featuring Craig from screwattack.com, James Rolfe a.k.a the Angry Video Game Nerd, and the crew of OverClocked Remix, best known as the creators of the soundtrack for Street Fighter HD Remix.

Craig from Screwattack.com took the stage first and jumped right in to taking questions. There were a lot of questions thrown out about how Screwattack works as a business, and a few questions about Craig’s gaming history as well. One audience member asked about Craig’s favorite game, which launched Craig into a story of when he was a kid and would save up his allowance and headed to Pizza Hut with his friends “for cheesy bread and Street Fighter.” Craig expressed his love for the SNES classics, naming the system “the best console of all time.” He also talked about the origins of his trademark hat (”Organically glued to my head”) and his “Stuttering” nickname (”I stuttered a lot as a kid. I don’t anymore, but the name stuck.”)

Craig fielded a few questions about the inner workings of Screwattack, talking about the popular feature Video Game Vault (They play all the games, of which there are more than 600!). There was a little discussion about Handsome Tom’s leaving the site (a huge controversy this past year), but Craig finished the panel by re-emphasizing the community aspects of the site. “When people think SA, I don’t want them to think, ‘That’s Stuttering Craig’s site.’” he said.

The AVGN asked for audience members (all fans) to vote on their favorite Nerd moments, for consideration for his Top 10 Nerd moments coming out later this year. “Whip or Shizz?” “Kill all babies or the Joker’s ass?” Everyone knew the jokes by heart, yet arguments over rankings were inevitable.
One Heated debate: which was better, Kyle’s flashback, or the pause music from BattleToads?

…You just have to know. What, you ask, was the number one choice? Well… you’re just going to have to wait for the video to find out.

Then James took some questions from his captive audience. Some samples:

5 favorite bands? Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, AC/DC, Metallica, Led Zepplin.

Favorite video? Mario 3, because “for once I got to play a good game.”
Favorite games? “Super Mario World, Zelda: a Link to the Past, Super Metroid. The SNES had the best stuff.”

Where are you going from here? “Feature film.” “Stick with me, I’ve got something in the works.”

What about the next AVGN vid to be released online? “Michael Jackson’s Moonwaker.”

Asked about a video’s production, James said there’s a lot that goes into it. “They don’t have to look too professional because it’s just supposed to be me in my room, you know? I use desk lamps and stuff.” He uses a pretty professional mic for recording but he likes the intimate nature of his voice-over track. James talked about what goes into the editing process, from synchronizing game footage to color correction to matching time codes. “When all that’s done, that’s when the editing starts.” That’s the price for having high-quality videos, you know.

OverClocked Remix

Panel members:David W. Lloyd a.k.a. djpretzel, Larry Oji a.k.a. Liontamer, Shael Riley, Andrew Aversa a.k.a. zircon (directed OC ReMix’s Final Fantasy VII album), Jillian Goldin a.k.a. pixietricks, Vinnie Prabhu a.k.a. Palpable, Christopher Getman a.k.a. Mazedude, Scott Porter a.k.a. OverCoat
OverClocked Remix appeared at last year’s MAGFest, and since then they’ve exploded into the public consciousness for their work on Super Street Fighter II Trubo HD Remix, the first major game release to feature an entirely fan-made soundtrack. They couldn’t avoid chatting about it on their 10-year anniversary.

As the story goes, the soundtrack for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix was negotiated when Capcom approached Shael Riley and told him how much they liked their urban remixes of the original Street Fighter II soundtrack, the community’s Blood on the Asphalt album. Instead of sending a cease and desist, Capcom hired OCR to produce the new soundtrack. The team at Capcom worked closely with the OCR guys to make the soundtrack for the XBox 360/PS3 game, working alongside the folks at UDON to make the game’s art. The OCR guys read aloud a few of the emails between Capcom and the remixers, and there were some laughs due to some of the funnier requests Capcom made. “We love the cello part in Akuma’s ending theme for the original Street Fighter. Could you add that?” Capcom asked. OCR responded: “There is no cello part in the original Akuma theme.” Not to mention Akuma wasn’t even in the original Street Fighter to begin with.

“Before we had the game in front of us, we were all stressed.” The gig came at a particularly good time, too, as the game was having development troubles with delays in UDON’s art pipeline. Since other newsworthy initiatives planned for OCR’s website in 2008 had to be delayed, “HD Remix saved our ass… Now we have our sights set on 2009.”

The panel, like the AVGN panel was extremely informal: that was a conscious choice for this year.
Their next album, Summoning of Spirits, honors Namco’s Tales RPG series and will be released later this month after this year’s MAGFest. OCR is still hard at work on new projects for this year: Donkey Kong Country 2, a best-of Zelda theme remix, and a Final Fantasy IV project. The panel even let the audience in on a special preview of the FFIV album, featuring clips of the various remixes. This is definitely an album to watch.

~Joe Newman

Check out each site included the panel by clicking their logo above!