Old Games: Encyclopedia Bombastica: Amplitude

Don't feel bad, Alex. We all become that cliche eventually.

Alex Navarro what a great choice! Absolutely adore this game and Frequency. So much style and addicting gameplay. Here's to hoping for a PSN/XBLA HD release!

Also, Quarashi was from ICELAND! Icelandic Beastie Boys for the fucking win!

I like watching Alex but I can't stand music games.

I played a TON of Amplitude, but I could never get past the guitar solo in the Blink182 song on Insane.

Man what a fantastic game. Best game of this genre for sure.

I think i know what freezepop song Alex is referring to. Should be Brainpower. But yeah, this game was so much fun. Still have a copy of it.

Ossum Sauce

I LOVED Frequency and Amplitude, the main reasons being No Doubt, Garbage and Freezepop music

hey Alex, great pick, shame there's no SOUND on the game since it's a RHYTHM game but sure

Man, I haven't been able to watch any video directly from this site lately. Sucks having to go to the youtube channel every time. Can't you guys put a direct link to the youtube version of a video somewhere on the giantbomb page. Or fix whatever's going wrong with the streaming, or the streaming of (region-locked?) ads, since I suspect that's where the problem lies. That would save me like five clicks.

I'm loving all the new Alex content though.

Awesome! Amplitude is the best!

THIS is one of the greatest games/franchises(?) of all time.

My favorite song from Amplitude

I love you contributing to this feature alex, that way we get to see you on camera more than once a year :).

Game is dope.

I agree the 90s unbeat in any catagory.

Quarashi: best icelandic hiphop ever!

As far as rants go that was pretty coherent. Also I tend to agree with everything that was said, but i'm not half as enthusiastic or knowledgeable about music than Alex seems to be. I kind of gave up caring once I got out of college ;(

@FonkyMucker said:

Whats going on Mecon?!?!

AHHH OH GOD NO

@melodiousj said:

Don't feel bad, Alex. We all become that cliche eventually.

Whenever I see someone my age shit-talk "today's music," I feel compelled to ask them at exactly what moment they became their parents. Some accept it, most rationalize it.

@Alex said:

Sorry about the audio levels, guys. I think I got the vocal mic where it needed to be, but the music ended up pretty quiet. Still experimenting over here! It should be more hearable when I'm actually playing the songs, hopefully.

I don't know if this was being streamed live, or how much experience you personally have with recording stuff like this, so forgive me if I'm going over ground you already understand, or is not particularly useful (as in a live cast environment where everything's mixed together as you go).

The easiest way to get your audio levels right, is simply to record both the game feed and your microphone feed seperately. Use something like Audacity to record your microphone, and make sure to put a "sync point" at the start of the video. What I generally do, is hop into a game menu, and when I hit up, down, whatever, I vocalise that, so it's very easy to sync the tracks up in an editor afterwards, and of course the seperate tracks makes leveling things out a synch. A bit of mic noise removal, compression, and some leveling and you're sorted!

Finally, depending on the way you do it, you might find that to cancel out game audio coming through your microphone audio feed, you need to wear some earphones.

Anyway, this info helps, if not you, then perhaps someone in a similar situation reading this comment :)

Where are the bands? Where is the beautiful song writing of yester-years with with structure beyond ABABABA? Where are the harmonies? Where is the musician-ship? The skill of the human hand upon the guitar?

@OneKillWonder_ said:

@Lorbst said:

Quarashi: best icelandic hiphop ever!

Totally...not that I know of any other Icelandic rap artists. I think I may have listened to whatever Tiny did after they split once or twice. Quarashi was undeniably awesome, though. I really miss the hell out of them.

I <3 Amplitude. Harmonix was/is amazing.

@Alex Not sure where you're coming from on the lack of bands, dude. Maybe it's because I worked as an indie radio DJ for like two years so I got a shit ton of exposure to it, but there are still a whole lot of bands making rock and electronic music, as bands. Granted, the top 40 tends to stick to non-rock nowadays, but since when hasn't the top 40 been full of a lot of pop fads that no one will remember or care about in future decades?

And hell, even the mainstream still has bands and rock music. Radiohead are still a massive thing, Arcade Fire enjoyed a ton of success, Foster the People got overplayed like crazy, and yeah it's not like the 90s where every other thing was a group riding the success of grunge or pop-punk or whatever you call garbage like Limp Bizkit, but then, would you really want it to be? I mean, the ubiquitousness of rock music during that era is basically what brought groups like Nickelback about in the first place.

The issue today is more just that if you like genuinely good rock, you have to go farther out of your way to find it. Not a lot farther, though! For example, if you just want to settle for entry-level what's popular, you can check Pitchfork because they love making arbitrary lists of that stuff. And you live in a city in california, so even though I don't know shit about your music scene there, I can basically guarantee that on any given thursday/friday/weekend night you could go downtown (or to an arts district, or whatever) and find some decent bands playing live rock music for about 10$ or less at the door.

I find that when talking to people who get "old-man-ish" about rock music, their biggest problem with finding new stuff to listen to is that they often just aren't willing to adapt to a new band's sound, even when they don't necessarily realize that. Every group is going to sound distinctly different unless they're a cover band by design; even a band playing in a similar style to 70s classic rock is never going to sound exactly like Kansas or Journey or whoever else, but they often still get written off by people who by all rights should enjoy them. So really, the whole thing heavily boils down to an issue of being open and willing to try something even slightly new and different, and I'm pretty sure you're definitely still young enough for that.

That was a lot of words but I hope it helps. Also, support local music, everyone.

Great video of a great game! Too bad the sound of the game was so low.

Quarashi on the front page? Fuck yes! Baseline is an awesome, awesome song. I'd recommend checking out their full Jinx album if you haven't already. Really, really fun music.

Bands, Navarro. BANDS!

Alex, I think your point about this game and other older music games being fun in spite of the soundtrack is spot on, and definitely the opposite of what Rock Band turned into. It's the same reason I love the DJ Max games on PSP/VIta, but don't really care for the music at all. It manages to be lots of fun in spite of the soundtrack.

Maybe you could do a Gitaroo Man Encyclopedia Bombastica video as a followup to this? ;) I adore that game.

This is literally my favorite game of all time. I was top ten in the online leaderboards back when the online was up.

I still have an entire PS2 memory card full of insanely hard mixes that I gathered from the online arena.

This game had the most amazing rhythm game multiplayer ever in the fact that there was more to it than just playing the notes better than your opponents. You had to worry about your lane placement, effective use of powerups, and lane blocking. The best strategies involved timing your movements so you would block other players in the lane and erase their multiplayer. It was so much fun, and I would give any amount of money to play it again. Unfortunately, the servers are shut down.

Alex Navarro, truly bringing the noise.

Game seems great. I would play a new one of these.

One of my favorite PS2 games to be sure, I played a TON of Frequency and Amplitude.

I will still occasionally pop this in my Playstation 3 and rock out to Bowie's "Everyone Says Hi" remix and Freezepop's "Super Sprode." (Cheese smells so good on a burnt piece of lamb.) Thanks for the memories, Alex.

Best Quicklook ever, not of the game, but of the deterioration of Alex

Nice job keep em coming man

@Alex There are still a lot of great rock bands out there, Alex. Unfortunately, you just have to look a little harder to find them. I do agree with your point though, the music industry has become completely over saturated with dubstep and top 40 club hits. The music is fine for what it is... it just lacks soul. As a musician, and a life-long rock and roll fan, electronic dance music has always felt kind of empty to me. Bring back the bands!

Another great video, keep them coming!

@Animasta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy4eiAJDzS4

Ohh, god dammit I feel old... Thanks Alex.

I saw "P.O.D. vs The Crystal Method" and I had to click.

Ah hehe, I remember P.O.D.

Thanks for doing this Alex!

I love Amplitude.

Also, I think this is the first Encyclopedia Bombastica game that I've actually played.

I think rock music is still rad. Maybe not modern stuff, but rock...rocks.

Rambling nonsense? That's why I have a premium membership.

I do not care about this game at all but your rant on the state of music today is spot fucking on and absolutely made this video for me lol.

God I hate Weezer. Not for the music, it's not terrible but for the incessant amount of copy cats that came out trying to copy what puny a sound they had and their whole aesthetic. That said Alex, I would say it was probably Kid Rock who popularized the whole record scratching thing into rock music.

Yeah, this game is mad hard, not to mention while you speak.

Rock is so mediocre and horrible ever since Brittany Spears hit in the late 90's then you had the boyband bullshit that was the beginning of the end around that time rock really has lost it's edge.Sure there was and still is underground bands that are out there that are good but nothing like the late 80's to the mid 90's when there where so many unique style of bands to listen to.Now the bar seems so low anyone on youtube can get a record deal.It's really sad how generic and dull music has become in over the past decade I really hope rock makes a comeback the music industry more then ever needs a kick in the ass.

I just popped this and Frequency in the other day. They still hold up extremely well and the Remix mode was always my favorite.