January 17, 2012
Radiant Historia
I recently started following a LP of this game and I really want to buy it! But currently it is $80+ US on Amazon and with my long game queue, I will not be buying this game any time soon.
But besides looking like a fun game, the music is also great. Yoko Shimomura has always been one of my favorite composers and she does a good job entertaining the gamer with a limited number of tracks. I love her stuff because of the way she uses so much melodic percussion – pianos, bells, whatever. If I could ever compose one song worthy of her name, I would be more than satisfied. Alas my days of working on original music have dwindled considerably since high school.
But anyway, the best part of Radiant Historia is that it’s a good RPG for the Nintendo DS. I have only beaten one RPG for the DS and though I am a big Suikoden fan, Suikoden Tierkreis was definitely a “Suikoden lite”. When you can make a game that focuses on some fun battle mechanics and a good story, you don’t need a high-tech system. I suppose I could always play some of the Final Fantasy remakes on DS but I really don’t have the urge to replay those games. I guess when a game is so popular and you hear about it pretty often, you don’t feel as much of a need to replay it.
Also a bonus of Radiant Historia – none of the main party members actually annoy me! That’s so rare in a JRPG where there is a tendency to use stock characters (Tales games are the biggest offenders in my opinion, but probably because I have played so many of them). I suppose if you own this game, you can brag to me about it and make me feel even sadder that I didn’t manage to grab this game when it wasn’t so expensive.
December 30, 2011
2012 Goals
Alright, I’m keeping it simple for next year.
- I’m going to try to complete at least 20 sheet music requests.
- I’m going to try to add at least one song to the following games/series: Baten Kaitos, Eternal Sonata, Grandia, Legaia, Lufia, Lunar, Suikoden series, Valkyria Chronicles, Valkyrie Profile, and Xenosaga.
- This is probably redundant with #1 but I want to add at least 2 songs from games I haven’t done before.
In the previous post I put a poll for new series I should browse the internet for and work on. Please check it out and vote!
December 13, 2011
A Little Bit of History (aka Why is My Name Riulyn?)
About 11 years ago, because I am sure that only an 8th-grader and someone who grew up in the age of “Shrines” as common names of websites, I launched “Riulyn’s RPG Sheet Music Shrine” on Geocities. Yes, Geocities RIP. The very first song I transcribed was “Mint’s Theme” from Tales of Phantasia. I was such a newbie at web formatting. My brother had a HTML book which I followed. I made a few links, there might have been a table, and I put some meta tags for RPG sheet music in hopes of search engines eventually picking up my website. A few months into this adventure, I was getting so much traffic that my site would be down almost every day because of “too much bandwidth being used”. I think that was if 10 people downloaded my stuff within a month or something. My sheet music were printed out and scanned in as GIFs. Not exactly as clean and space-saving as PDFs.
So what I was really going to talk about was how I got into this sheet music business. It was a lot of my brother downloading some from the internet, playing other people’s sheets, realizing there was a lack of sheets for songs I wanted them for, and realizing that I had a knack for transcription. I even put up some Chrono Cross midis on the web somewhere (probably under mizlen or aizel). So when I decided to make some, I also wanted to share them. You know, I wanted to be internet famous haha…
Riulyn (pronounced REE-YUU-LIN) was a name I chose out of the multiple names I was creating for stories I was writing. 8th grade was also the time I was writing stories and posting them on Fanfiction.Net. I am not going to tell you my usernames there because those stories are really bad 
. But anyway, Riulyn was the main character of a RPG-like story I was writing. It was a story involving elements, magic, soul-bonding to mythical creatures, etc. The story with Riulyn as the star never made it to the internet, thankfully, but the sequel is there in some form.
So yes, 8th grade and trying to be all cool with a fantasy name, and Riulyn as my web name was born. Too bad I did not use it for anything else I have done on the internet, because there are a few other people who have this name which I am sure I brought to the internet first. I mean, I couldn’t just be “Riulyn” on YouTube! I used to be somewhat scared of the people on the Internet, hence using a variety of different names on different websites. But now I sort of rue the fact that I don’t have a unified web presence; I’m slowly building one but I think it would be cool now for someone to recognize me from a forum as the person with that sheet music website. Especially since it seems for now that posting fan arrangements and transcriptions of videogame music won’t get me sued anytime soon… Yes, back in the early 2000s it was a real concern. If you were one of the very first to download sheet music from my site, you would know my actual name! But I don’t plan to put that back on my sheets now; that’s only left for those special few 
September 20, 2011
Non-RPG – A Thrice Piano Cover
I think I mentioned at some point that I worked on some non-RPG music arrangements to get my inspiration back? Well here is something I cooked up. I still have problems playing it cleanly myself, so I end up listening to my own midi like a narcissist. But I like it. I think of this cover as a videogame-style rendition of the piece, because I can’t shake the videogame music transcriber out of my blood, I guess.
August 25, 2011
More Site Stats – Update on Percentage of Soundtrack Completed
These were the top 8 closest to completed soundtracks from March 2010.
- Chrono Cross = 25%
- Xenogears = 20%
- Xenosaga = 18%
- Lufia 2 = 17%
- Tales of Phantasia = 17%
- Final Fantasy VII = 16%
- Legend of Mana = 16%
- Tales of Symphonia = 14%
These are the top 8 percentages as of my last update (August 19, 2011).
- Chrono Cross = 33%
- Tales of Symphonia = 23%
- Lufia 2 = 21%
- Xenogears = 20%
- Xenosaga = 20%
- Legend of Mana = 18%
- Tales of Phantasia = 18%
- Final Fantasy VII = 16%
Pretty much what happened was that I’ve been cranking out the Tales of Symphonia sheet music and, judging by my request list, I will continue to crank them out. Also, I haven’t been working on much Final Fantasy series music besides the requested FFCC: Echoes of Time stuff since there’s plenty of those sheets already on the web. Like my request policy, since so much of that is available, I’m not going to be spending much time working on those songs.
August 19, 2011
Hiatus vs August Productivity
Guess what won? Yes, I don’t know what it is about August, but it seems to be a very good month for my current outside interests and not for my lab work. What happens in August?
- Summer vacation for a lot of people, so the atmosphere at the lab is very relaxed
- I have started a new project both this summer and two summers ago, so work days are usually “paper-reading” days
- My close friend who distracts me from videogaming (not a bad thing, really) usually is off somewhere at this point
- I sleep less this month. I have time to sleep, but I’m just not physically capable of it?
- The sport I am heavily into is pretty low-key in August, aka professional tennis, and college sports haven’t started up yet
Anyway, I still feel like I’m in a good place. I am a serious introvert so even time away from my best friends is good for my sanity. I get lonely after a bit, though at least we can talk via Internet. I have very little need for physical affection or talking to people in real life, which is probably why I am the worst at maintaining casual friendships. It’s either a really good friendship or a friend/acquaintance. I suppose at least I’m not as shy as I used to be.
Plus creating stuff makes me happy. My cooking skills are pretty much zilch, and while I still do plenty of knitting, I am not making stuff to put up on the Internet or share with other people. Though I suppose arranging music the way I do is more about figuring out the “code” than creating something new, which goes along with my enjoyment of solving puzzles.
August 4, 2011
A Bit More Creativity Needed Here
So the vacation to China was overall a good thing despite some bad luck with planes (at least no canceled flights, but lots of delays). It’s kind of interesting to go on a vacation without most of the things that tie you down to your everyday life. I didn’t have my laptop and my music files, my videogames or free access to the Internet, etc. I always feel like vacations like these always reset my mind, in some way.
Upon returning to my rather uneventful life, I wandered over to OCRemix and since I’m such a big Suikoden series fan to see if any new Suikoden remixes had been posted there since I last checked. Unfortunately there hasn’t been anything. I know the site is very selective and such, but when a cult game like Xenogears is continuing to get stuff (then again, the music for that game is a lot better for the casual fan than Suikoden stuff), I was just a bit sad. And now with the recent news that the Suikoden team has indeed been disbanded and 5 years since the last main storyline game, the series is pretty much dead.
Anyway, since I’ve had Suikoden music and randomly Cosmo Canyon from FFVII stuck in my head, particularly “An Old Irish Song” from Suikoden I which I have already made a simple arrangement of, I have been trying to create a fancier, awesomer arrangement of that song. I really am not a good composer myself and really should brush up on music theory, etc., before I get something to type up. And I really should stick to what I do best, which is transcribing stuff. My ability to identify pitches is probably my only actual musical skill, especially since I’ve started making arrangements that I can’t even play myself…
So yeah, in summary, I want to do more with my arrangements but I probably won’t. I’m also in a Suikoden mood so when I get back to working on those “simple” arrangements, I’ll probably do some Suikoden stuff. I just started replaying Suikoden Tactics on a whim and should try to arrange one of those songs, maybe.
June 30, 2011
Hiatus
So I am off to China for a few weeks, leaving next week. I have other things on my mind right now like playing videogames, reading books, and learning some Serbian. I figured I might as well say that I am hiatus though I have been for a month or so already
I’m sure I’ll be back. My love of videogame music is not going to disappear and my hearing shouldn’t any time soon. I’m always going to try to figure out notes no matter what type of song it is, just because I can’t help it. At some point I’m going to get the itch again to work on some sheet music, but right now I guess I’m waiting for the desire to come back. Also I am easily distracted by almost everything. If I have learned anything in the past few years, it’s that I’m much happier when I just let myself engage in whatever looks most appealing at the time. That’s probably why I suck at socializing and maintaining friendships, ha ha…
