Older News - January-March 2003

Grandia Xtreme Signed OST Giveaway

To commemorate the launch of Noriyuki Iwadare's new English Website, VGMusic and CocoeBiz would like to feature the launch with our last signed copy of the Grandia Xtreme Original Soundtrack. Featuring twenty tracks of original music from the game and a vocal arranged version of the ending theme, this CD, which includes around 75 minutes of music, will for sure make a great addition to anyone's game music collection.

Entry Form

2 Comments

New QC Coordinator!

Congrats to Suds who has become the new Quality Control Coordinator. Suds will oversee corrections to the existing archive, as well as work side-by-side with the Update Coordinator to make sure submitted "newfiles" meet reasonable quality standards.

4 Comments

Noriyuki Iwadare's new English site

Noriyuki Iwadare has a new English website, located over at CocoeBiz.

In case you didn't know, CocoeBiz L.L.C. is the the official overseas retailer for Noriyuki Iwadare's works. Of course, those are not the only products they sell (see the Catalog page on their site, or coco74's eBay auctions). CocoeBiz is also the company that has been providing the prizes for the recent giveaways here on the Videogame Music Archive.

0 Comments

Grand Opening of a New Section!

That's right, something new, something exciting!
Over the years, many of you have complained that the FAQ is too long, that it's too much to read. Well, I have taken that criticism and produced something that all of you are sure to enjoy. I've created a new FAQ section, but I didn't include any words to go with it. It's all just pictures. Pictures of connectors and plugs and game cartridges and the backside of a NES rectangular controller, they're all here in The Gallery.
Keep checking back, as it's likely to be updated fairly often.

15 Comments

Final Fantasy - The Black Mages + SSBM Live Concert Music CD Winner

Congratulations to Eddie Zayas of Miami, Florida, the winner of our The Black Mages + SSBM CD giveaway, and thanks to the folks at CocoeBiz for their sponsorship!

Didn't win this time? We'll be holding another contest in a few weeks, so keep checking back for updates!

4 Comments

The PC Section

While I was gone, the rest of the staff deliberated about reopening the IBM PC section of the site.

We will not be bringing back the files that were once in it, however. In fact, we will not be accepting any files ripped directly from the games due to copyright issues we have experienced in the past.

One last note: The section has been renamed to DOS & Windows to more accurately describe its contents.

Update 03/16/03 11:49 PM:
The DOS & Windows section was brought back for a trial run.

It also should be noted that we do not accept music ripped directly from the games, even if it has been run through a convertor (in fact, especially if it has been run through a convertor). This is exactly why we removed the IBM PC section in the first place. If this continues to occur, we will end the test and remove DOS & Windows from the upload options.

18 Comments

Some later date

If you scroll down the news screen on the main page (although it may have been moved to the news backup by the time you read this), I said "I don't know if I'll return at some later date or not."

Well, all I can say is to look at the subject of this message.

18 Comments

Final Fantasy - The Black Mages + SSBM Live Concert Music CD Giveaway

Looking for the latest Final Fantasy album? The Black Mages album features Nobuo Uematsu's latest arranged works featuring many of the battle tunes from Final Fantasy I - X done in a rock/metal style. Also, up for giveaway is our last copy of the Super Smash Bros. Melee! Live Concert CD. So if you're up for some good music listenin', be sure to enter!

Entry Form

0 Comments

Bad RAM

One of the RAM chips in our server system went bad.

Rackshack finally tested the RAM.

Here's what the trouble ticket said:
Run 1 completed in 635 seconds (8 tests showed errors).
munlocked memory.
1 runs completed. 8 errors detected. Total runtime: 635 seconds.

They swapped the RAM about an hour and a half ago and restarted the system.

17 Comments

Make Your Voice Heard By Game Music Publishers

CocoeBiz is holding a survey to assess the amount of overseas demand for certain game soundtracks that never had a Japanese release or are extremely difficult to import. They have a small selection at the moment, but if you're interested in seeing soundtracks such as those from the Megaman X series, Devil May Cry, and others, be sure to take a look at their survey.

2 Comments

Its Hard to Brag About A New Job When E-mail Doesn't Work

The VGMusic webserver was offline Thursday evening through Friday morning due to our hosting service deactiving our connection temporarily due to billing issues. The billing issues have been resolved and we have been back online since 10:30am Eastern this morning. In related financial news, I finally got a job after job hunting for one year! I will be starting shortly as an environmental engineer at TRC, based in Windsor, Connecticut.

13 Comments

Grandia Xtreme Signed OST/SSBM Live Orchestra Winner

Congratulations to Connie of Glastonbury, Connecticut! The winner of our Grandia Xtreme + SSBM CD giveaway and thanks to the folks at CocoeBiz and Noriyuki Iwadare for their sponsorship! Didn't win this time? Next line up we'll have another copy of the Super Smash Bros Melee Live Concert CD up for grabs; so keep checking back for updates!

In the mean time, Nintendo of America is hosting their own sweepstakes for the concert CD. They have one hundred CDs, so for those that are interested, be sure to enter!

0 Comments

New News System

The front page now has an integrated news system that works along with our ubb.threads forum script. You'll notice all the news here will now mirror the news shown on the Annoucements forum. It will now be much easier for the VGMusic staff to post news, and even better, it's now possible for visitors to make comments regarding a news posting. Please pardon the messy front page as we slowly transition over to this new system.

18 Comments

Sunday, February 2, 2003

File Count Log Now Available

For stat junkies

A file count log is now available. It is an automatic daily listing of the number of new-files and archived files, as well as the files in each archived section. We'll hopefully have some nice graphs of the data there sortly. In the meantime, indulge in the raw data.

(Mike Newman)

Saturday, February 1, 2003

United States Space Shuttle Columbia: 1980-2003

We salute you

The lives of six American and one Israeli astronauts ended today 200,000 feet over Texas at around 8 AM Central Standard Time. Our thoughts are with them and their families. The seven STS-107 astronauts may not have returned to Earth, but they are still with us in our hearts and minds.

(John Harvey)

Monday, January 27, 2003

Round Two!

Grandia Xtreme Signed OST and Super Smash Bros Melee Orchestra CD Giveaway

So you weren't the lucky one to win our last giveaway and did not receive a copy of the January subscriber edition of Nintendo Power (Bundled SSBM Orchestra CD). Well, now is your chance to hopefully walk away with two free CDs, not just one!

Cosponsored by our good friends at CocoeBiz and game music composer legend, Norkiyuki Iwadare (Lunar, Grandia, Langrisser, etc.); we will be giving away copies of the following:

• Grandia Xtreme signed by Noriyuki Iwardware
• Super Smash Bros. Melee Live Concert CD (Japan/Famitsu Edition)

Entering could not be easier! Just like our last giveaway, all you need is to fill out a simple form!

Entry Form

 

(Benny Hsieh)

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

New-files Cleanup: Updaters unite!

We haven't seen it this low in years

Due to the hard work of the Update Staff (Pong, Suds, Forteblast, and nZero), the new-files directory is now under 100 files for the first time in recent memory. See graph. Behold the magic of only one button (1-100) to click while you still can.

In other news, someone is suing us for denying them their first amendment rights. Supreme Court, here we come.

(Mike Newman)

Thursday, January 16, 2003

News Cleanup

News is brought back down to size

I've just cleaned out the huge number of news posts here on the front page and put them into the older news section. This has reduced the overall size of the news posts on the front page to just 10% of their size before the cleanout. This should keep 56k modem users happy and lower bandwidth use a small amount.

(39ster)

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

Another Announcement

We're still here. Really.

The remaining staff members and I would like to thank Powerlord for all he's done for the site. We'll miss having him around (until we find someone else to whom we can direct our questions, that is) but we'll not only manage, we've got some great things in store: At today's IRC staff meeting - the first we've had in recent memory - we discussed several ways to make the archive better... keep your eyes open. The Videogame Music Archive lives on.

(John Harvey)

Saturday, January 4, 2003

An Announcement

All Good Things...

I never thought that I'd be making this announcement, but here I am.

Due to some issues I'm presently facing in my life, I don't have the time to dedicate to working on this site anymore. I don't know if I'll return at some later date or not.

I have disabled my public vgmusic.com email address (powerlord@vgmusic.com). I can only be reached at my private address, which I am not giving out here.

P.S. I will still be acting as the Systems Administrator for the machine this site is hosted on, so I will still be around.

(Ross Bemrose AKA Powerlord)