It's the Off-Topic Internet Sightseeing Tour!

[nocturnal YL]

Let's see… I'm not exactly qualified to translate this, but here we go:

「斑鳩はいらない」は語弊[1]があり、「シューティングに金は出せない」ですね。
Saying that "we don't want Ikaruga" would lead to misunderstanding [1], and it's more like "shooting games don't make money".

プレイ可能バージョンを持ち込んでも門前払い[2]。
Even if one is to bring in a playable version, it'll be rejected without question [2].

自社で資金調達できなければ「斑鳩」が世に出る事はなかった。
If we can't get the funding within the company, there is no way Ikaruga can come out.

同時期に「シルバーガン」の某機種版が「リジェクト」で実際に世に出せなかったり、、、あ、昔話の笑い話ですよ。
In the same period, a certain console's version of Silvergun gets "rejected" and effectively couldn't make its appearance… Ah, that's a tale of a long time ago that we'd laugh at.

[1] 語弊 (ごへい) = a way of speech that can easily lead to misunderstanding: dictionary.goo.ne.jp/jn/81588/meaning/m0u/

[2] 門前払い (もんぜんばらい) = rejecting a visitor without seeing them: kotobank.jp/word/門前払い-647249

[Nester the Lark]

Ah, thanks so much, YL! Hope I didn't put you on the spot. I just wanted a general idea of what the tweet was saying.

The recent activity on Treasure's twitter gives me a slight glimmer of hope that maybe they're not basically dead. Then again, maybe Masato Maegawa is just messing around.

[nocturnal YL]

No problem!

I went to check the actual Twitter page, and found that the last post (the one that shows a bunch of Mega Drive games) mentioned that they tried to get a publisher to sell Ikaruga, but all proposals were rejected. So the line "we don't want Ikaruga" was from the potential publishers, and the post is bascally telling why they published Ikaruga themselves.

[Nester the Lark]

Ah, I see.

I believe Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun are the only IP that Treasure own outright. That's why they released Ikaruga on PC for Steam back in February 2014. At about that time, they did an interview mentioning that fans would probably like to see Radiant Silvergun also, but that they'd rather make an original game for Steam. Since then, they have neither announced anything, nor developed anything for any other publisher.

In March 2016, Mark MacDonald from 8-4 mentioned on a podcast that he had heard Treasure no longer developed games, and was simply a license holding company.

So, it seems kinda significant to me that the Twitter account suddenly has activity again. It may not actually mean anything, but it's nice to see them stirring.

Frankly, Treasure seems like the kind of developer that would thrive in the indie space. Especially since Treasure-inspired indie games like Freedom Planet and Noitu Love: Devolution were pretty successful. It's interesting that they haven't gone the crowd-funding route yet, but I guess it's not really their style.

[nocturnal YL]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWH9wdc37C4

Putting Sonic & Knucles on top of another Sonic & Knuckles cartridge. You don't get anything special, and the system simply ignores the bottom cartridge.

[nocturnal YL]

This isn't a game, so I don't know where else to put this, so I'll use this space.

It's 31 August in Japan, which means that is the 10th anniversary of Hatsune Miku. For anyone who don't know what the fuzz is about, see the official page.

Remember this?
VOCALOID2 初音ミクに「Ievan Polkka」を歌わせてみた / Otomania
(View without Niconico account)

This year is a pretty meaningful milestone for its fans. Although new producers like LamazeP and Nayutalien have been making excellent songs in the last few years, most of the earlier, more influential composers have moved on to work for commercial labels or make other types of music. Gone are the days of extended stories told in a series of songs like Kagerou Project and the Seven Deadly Sins series, or multimillion hits like Melt.

Until now.

For Magical Mirai 2017, Legendary producer Hachi was asked to write the theme song of the concert. Taking inspiration of how Niconico felt drastcally different compared to a few years ago, Hachi imagined the scene as a desert, and composed a slow song (because he thought a fast song would invoke a "Huh? That again?" feel) to go with the theme.

Sand Planet / Hachi


The response was immense. It became the VOCALOID-based song with the fastest-growing view count. In Niconico alone, it hit 1 million views in just 6 days, 2 million in less than a month, and at the time of writing, it's at 2.3 million. And that's not even counting YouTube views, reuploads and remixes.


Other producers have also returned or continue making songs. For the 10th anniversary album Re:Start, we've got these gems:

Unknown Mother Goose / wowaka


Hibana / DECO*27



And, while this has nothing to do with recent history, here's one of my favourite songs:

アカツキアライヴァル / Last Note.


I wish there are more Luka songs. Actually, I wish there are more songs featuring Miku and Luka. I really like this pair.


And finally, you can't talk about Hatsune Miku without mentioning SEGA. Project DIVA FutureTone DX is coming out this November (not featuring many new songs, sadly), and Mikudayo and Mikunano are still very active as SEGA's promoters! They'll appear in meet-and-greet events in SEGA's game centers today.

[Nester the Lark]

(A couple of those videos are not available in my country.)

Interesting. I'm not super familiar with all the vocaloids. I've heard of Miku, of course, and a couple of the others. I had never heard of Kaito before, but I just checked out a couple of songs was impressed with how lifelike he sounded. I wonder why I haven't heard him used more.

Not that I listen to much vocaloid music. I must admit, a lot of it doesn't click with me, but I suppose that depends more on the composer/producer. I do like the idea of the vocaloids, tho.

And there is this one with Miku that I've always liked:

"Beautiful Lies"

[nocturnal YL]

Ah, right. Hibana is blocked from western countries because Sony Music has problems with it. Here's a re-upload.



I'm not aware of any other video being blocked, unless you're referring to the Niconico videos. Use nicoviewer.net/ for that.

Configuring Miku's voice to make it human-like seems to be a difficult task, although for some songs, having a robotic voice actually makes more sense, for example Hello, Planet (Project mirai version). Tuning Miku's voice is even more difficult in English.

And do definitely check out Mitchie M's music for human-like singing. Especially FREELY TOMORROW and Ai Dee.

KAITO actually belongs to an earlier generation of VOCALOID voice libraries, although he got an update (as KAITO v3) later and Crypton has expressed interest in making a v4 library (I hope MEIKO gets one too). As a character, he's probably the least popular among Crypton's characters (which is still saying something, since that makes him the second most popular male character after Len), and is mostly used to sing duets with Miku or MEIKO, or as a group will all six of them.

Also, I'm surprised at myself. I went from "huh? Nice..." to absolutely loving it in such a short time. All because INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS (it's always them) made a discount version of Band Brothers P in 2015.

[Nester the Lark]

Oddly enough, that's not the one that was blocked. It was actually the videos directly above and below it. The one above cites Sony Music, while the one below cites Exit Tunes.

You're probably right that a robotic-sounding voice works better with some songs than others. I tried to think of a song that would sound good with a vocaloid, and the first to come to mind was "Fireflies" by Owl City due to its reliance on autotune. (It almost already sounds like a vocaloid song.) Sure enough, there are a ton of vocaloid covers of it on YouTube, some better than others.

Here's one with Kaito that was decent:



Makes an interesting comparison.

[nocturnal YL]

Okay, let's try again…

Unknown Mother Goose / wowaka


Akatsuki Arrival / Last Note.



That's actually the first time I hear KAITO sing in English. And yeah, the cover actually sounds pretty good, and the original song's style helps.

[Nester the Lark]

Bottom one is still blocked. Although, I think I found some videos of it on YouTube.

If I got the right song, then here's a live version:


They sound pretty lifelike, here. Even Miku, who tends to sound synthetic no matter what. Maybe it's the acoustics of the live setting.

EDIT: Also found a better version of "Fireflies" with Kaito. The same person also did a Miku version.

[Da Robot]

After many years the NES prototype version of Sim City has been found. To lower you expectations the quality of the video is pretty bad.

Question, the SNES version of Sim City is still on the PAL Wii Shop Channel but has it come back to the NA version after being removed in 2013?

[Nester the Lark]

[nocturnal YL]

Don't know if this is the right place for it, but I made a Twitter account, mostly as a response to the Switch's new screen capture function. Expect occasional personal interest-oriented musings there.

[Nester the Lark]

It's a month late, but Jeremy Parish at Retronauts wrote a nice piece about Gunpei Yokoi for the 20th anniversary of his passing, and talks about how the Switch still follows his design philosophy.