It’s no secret that I’m a fan of new and interesting ways of interacting with music in video game form. That’s why I’m eager to share this video. It’s from another episode of The 1UP Show that was released a few weeks ago. It’s just the one segment of a full episode, but this in particular is what I wanted to share.

The video is of an interview with two developers of a Nintendo DS application called KORG DS-10. It’s a full-blown synthesizer for your DS that allows you to create entire songs that you can output to external mixers and even save to the flash cart. As I am a huge fan of 8-bit music and especially music that is generated using GameBoy systems (pornophonique, anyone?), this application is quite relevant to my interests! I have read in a couple of places that this will be coming to the States at some point, but in the video they are unsure. I don’t know who to believe, but I’ll import it if I have to. I’m pretty sure it’s coming out in July.

Cheap Games Database

This is a list of all of the cheap games we’ve featured in the blog. Every game is under $10 — many are even free! Here they are in order of price (low to high):

Synaesthete is an action-rhythm game created by four students at DigiPen. It was the winner of the Best Student Game award at the 2007 Independent Games Festival (IGF).

Synaesthete, at first glance, looks far more complicated to play than it actually is. It follows familiar principles that we have come to know in the mainstream rhythm games; watch for “notes” to descend to a certain point, typically denoted by a button, and then hit the corresponding button at the appropriate time. Missing a note in Guitar Hero, for example, will cause your music to skip and it won’t pick up again until you’ve gotten yourself back on track. In Synaesthete, however, missing a note does nothing to disrupt the flow of the music.

In Synaesthete you control an avatar called the Zaikman. The objective is to navigate the Zaikman through a series of rooms. Enemies spawn in these rooms, and Zaikman will be locked inside until he defeats the enemies. You help the Zaikman accomplish this by hitting “notes” successfully; this will fire energy beams at enemies based on his proximity to them. The Zaikman can be damaged and his health is indicated by a meter that is located just below your “note bar”. You don’t have to hit every note, but since the notes are your weapons, you don’t want to miss too many.
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