Good evening adventurers.

OLL Knights, the quizzy spin-off that asks the question “Why are One Life Left talking about videogames?” makes it into is third week with another astonishing panel.

Who’s that sitting among the Red Mushrooms? It’s Ron Festejo, Noodlfroot game designer, ex-Sony wonderkid and all round good egg (mushroom?). What majesty will he produce in Knights’ popular game design challenge?

Look, over there, skating on a green shell! It’s Mike Channell, Official Xbox magazine wizard and triathlete out-of-training. How will he cope with Six Degrees of Peter Molyneux?

And there, underneath the yellow stars! It’s Hollie… Bennett! Ex-of-Destructoid, now of Namco, scorer of points and seductress of communities. But will she still be smiling after Ann’s news round?

These questions – and more – answered within this all new episode of One Life Left Knights. Enjoy!

[NB THIS IS VERY LATE. BLAME STE, WHO WAS PERFORMING ADMIN DUTIES IN LIEU OF OLL’S CARETAKER, AND HAS REMEMBERED JUST HOW MUCH WORK THAT IS]

Love,

Team OLL

xx

Welcome dungeoneers!

It’s rather quiet in the OLL Castle at the moment. Luckily we have our weekly jousting/quiz contests to keep our spirits up. This week is no exception. Shall we see who are our brave knights this week?

The Red Mushrooms are represented by Matt Lees from the Official Xbox Magazine. Will he be able to get through the Knights’ Challenge without needing to sidestep left or right or ask “Where am I?”.

Spellcasting “G I B B A G E” is Dan Marshall from Size Zero Games. Surely the Yellow Stars have never had a finer champion. Except for last week. And maybe the next few episodes after this one.

Andrew Smith from Spilt Milk Studios took on the mantle for the Green Shells. Can he finish the whole episode without his skull breaking apart slowly because he didn’t get any food in his knapsack? (“That’s too many Knightmare references” – Caretaker Ed)

Cheerio!
Team OLL x

It’s time for OLL Knights to be unleashed on a waiting world. First off we’ll start with a warning – this podcast contains lots of Parko.

As well as Parko, we have some SSCs* in the form of Dave and Nicky from Nintendisco and Mark Walton from Gamespot. We decided that we needed to choose which of the three teams were the best so we pitted them in a ingenious gaming quiz.

Who will win? You decide. Oh no, wait. We’ve already decided. All we know is that when Simon’s top comes off, we’re all losers.

Cheerio!
Team OLL x

* Super Special Contestants

Happy New Year listeners! Hopefully you had a good festive period, and welcome to a hastily-put-together end of season special. Our Super Special Guest was Dan Clark from Mealtime Strategy, and he coped rather well with our poor attempts at punning food dishes from video games, as well as our Christmas hangovers. Our contributors were suffering too, so none of them; presumably they’re all still burning off those Christmas calories using that Zumba game that Daria is always mentioning.

Whilst this is the last episode of the season, we announce our special GDC show and also OLL Nites/Nights/Knights (we’ll work out the spelling soon). We also would like to invite you all to the next Wild Rumpus event that will be held on Thursday 2nd February at 93 Wild East. Come and be pushed over by Team OLL in person!

Cheerio!
Team OLL x

Tracklist:
guitarface – videotape (I think)
martin_demsky – chipdigy
MisfitChris – FakebitMUCh
Something by Copy (didn’t catch the title)
an0va – My Machines

That’s 13 tracks of wonderful exclusive (and inclusive hopefully) video game music to enjoy.

Here’s some quotes from the One Life Left team. About it:

“Where’s the track from Muse then, Derek? Other than that easily worth an unbeatable 7/10″ – Simon Byron

“I like the way the CD spins, it makes me feel dizzy.” – Ann Scantlebury

“This is even more musical than our celebrated Videogame Karaoke.” said a perturbed Ste before adding “Whoa! Whoa! Stop putting words in my mouth.”

Here’s a reminder of what it sounds like:

Here’s a bit more info on the artists:

01.  Blue Hearts – Devil’s Blue Eyed Son
The Blue Hearts are a Brighton based ‘Neon Rock’ group whose style is highly influenced by the soundtracks of Ennio Morricone. This track was inspired by Red Dead Redemption
thebluehearts.co.uk

02. Derek Williams – Let’s Play Video Games
A special bonus track as it’s the only one we have rights to distribute from the first cd. See final track for artist details.

03.  Last Miles of Galaxy – Malfunction
The musical project created to raise awareness of the unfortunate explorers who disappeared whilst traversing our galaxy in the year 2233 and the one man rumoured to survive. Or so we’re given to believe.
Lastmilesofgalaxy.co.uk

04. Manda Rin - Typeface (Chip Shop Remix)
Formerly of indie pop group Bis, Manda is now a solo artist in her own right. This is an exclusive
remix of a track from her debut album My Dna
planetmanda.com

05.   H Pizzle - Rambo Ravine
AKA Kevin Barrett who grew up with the soundtracks of NES games. Since discovering how to create 8 bit music he’s been creating music within the spirit of Konami and Capcom games of the era. 8bc.org/members/hpizzle

06.  Bearcraft – Hero Man Gets to the Castle (Tomorrow’s Dad Remix)
The Electro Indie project of Dicky Moore, which here combines a folk themes and 80s gaming – Our hero gets to the castle battles minions defeats the final boss and gets the maiden. The debut album Yestreen is available on hottwerk records.

Bearcraft music

07.  Decktonic - Zora Mode
The project of Christian Montoya, musician and DJ whose use of the Korg DS10 results in ‘dance floor rocking’ dance music. This track takes inspiration from the Legend of Zelda series of games. thisisdecktonic.com

08. Weird Gear – Black 7
A psych meets detroit techno three piece who play their synthesisers completely live with no sequencing. Black 7 is the story of a supercomputer trying to take over the world
Weirgear Myspace

09. Supreme Ultimate Fist – Knife Trance (One Knife Left mix)
The musical alter ego of Steven Poole, the acclaimed author of Trigger Happy – The Inner Life of Video Games and Unspeak. This is a remix done specially for this compilation.

supremeultimatefist.com

10.  Euan Lynn – Riot
Describes himself as “Like the Ramones dying a futuristic death” and utilises a gameboy in the
creation his reggae-indie-punk chiptunes.
facebook.com/euanlynn

11. Vile Electrodes – Fatal Error
A london based three piece synthpop act with a love of analogue synthesisers and fetish fash­ion. This is an exclusive new track only available on this compilation.

Vile Electrodes on Soundcloud

12.  Downstate - Quiet Thought Process
A skinny british geek currently living in Shanghai who makes humble electronic warblings with a laptop, some half broken Casios, homemade pedals and a glockenspiel. This track previously appeared on an episode of One Life Left but has been specially tweaked for this CD.

bandcamp.com/downstate

13.  Derek Williams – Game Over
Regular contributor to One Life Left since the show’s very beginnings, his Free Market Economy feature comments on the games market whilst backed with a new music creation each week. This track was inspired by failure in Halo.

facebook.com/freemarketeconomy

As a special Christmas treat, here is the last show of the year uploaded on a Monday for the first time ever this series!

We had Ian Willey and James Everard from My Note Games in the studio to help make the episode even more Christmassy by helping us learn how to play the recorder. We think you’ll find it was a huge success. If by success you mean ‘as good as Little Mix’.

Our four wise contributors were Derek Williams, Duncan Timiney, Doctor Avatar and Craig ‘the Rage’ McLelland (live in the studio!). Luckily we didn’t have time to include the Grinch Simon ‘Parko’ Parkin on the show. Daria is also on the podcast, but as the only woman we could think that was associated with Christmas was the Virgin Mary we decided to stop the Christmas analogies.

Truly it is the most wonderful time of the year. Except for when Peter Andre or Katie Price has a documentary on ITV2 or Living.

Cheerio!
Team OLL x

Tracklist:
FearofDark – Sleigh Ride
Cesque – Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
guitarface – Videotape

It’s our last show ever of the year on Monday, so what better way to celebrate it than with carols played on recorders.

The catch? We can’t play recorders. But we’re hoping a new iOS title ‘My Note Games‘ can teach us. In an hour. Whilst we also “do” the show, which we’re not capable of doing even when we are just doing it.

We’ll be joined by the makers of the game, who have pledged to get us Silent Nighting like the nerd recorder-playing equivalent of Bond.

What can possible go wrong?

Tune in live, Monday night, 7:00pm 104.4 Resonance FM for carol-crash radio.

We hit the ground running mid-theme on this week’s episode as the stream didn’t work. Luckily our hero was Resonance’s own Chris, who managed to retrieve this episode. And we’re grateful that we did as we have a Super-Special Guest in the form of Lewie Procter from Savy Gamer. We ask him about how to save money on videogames, but really we were more interested in finding out when the Rock Paper Shotgun Annual General Meeting was taking place. We plan on forming an ‘Occupy RPS’ commune outside the venue where these fat cats will be (actually we rather like RPS, it’s just an excuse to do some chants – chanting is the same as karaoke right?).

The excellent Derek Williams and Odds On OD return to our features and Daria changes things with the Command Market Economy, although the actual games in the chart aren’t that different.

There’s also more news about the traitorous and perverted Simon ‘Parko’ Parkin. Honestly, that boy is becoming a lost cause. To think, we stood up for him after his incredibly wrong Uncharted 3 score.

Cheerio!
Team OLL x

Tracklist:
Misfit Chris – Missile Command (from the Graveyard Tracks EP that can be downloaded http://misfitchris.bandcamp.com/)
Zef – Get Slow (Halfclock)
less3an – Flowers (nanoloop 2.3)

Okay so this doesn’t have a precise release date yet but I’d estimate a release around 15th of December. I know that’s leaving it a bit late but there have been a few technical difficulties along the way. Hopefully it will be out earlier. I’m putting this up to let you know what’s going to be on the CD. I’ll release some audio samples of it over the next couple of weeks.

As mentioned on the show this is a compilation of music inspired by video games but not specifically video game sounding. This is not a chiptune compilation, though such a style is undoubtedly going to make an appearance. I have indeed cast the net far and wide to include some brilliant artists. I’m quite excited to have The Blue Hearts on here with a track inspired by Red Dead Redemption. It’s a full on Ennio Morricone spaghetti western soundtrack song and not what you’d normally expect to be associated with video games, showing that their influence is not genre restricted.

Also exciting is that we have an exclusive remix of a track by Manda Rin, formerly of scottish indie popsters Bis. But really I love every track on this CD and I’m truly grateful to everyone who agreed to take part. It has taken around a year to collate them all and as you all undoubtedly know I had to stop producing FME features for a while to ensure everything came together properly. The results have been very much worth it. As much as I have been very tempted to go on about every track and how brilliant it is I’d better stop and just give a few more details about the product.

Here’s the full track listing for you:

1. The Devil’s Blue Eyed Son – The Bluehearts
2. Golden Axe - Gyratory System
3. Malfunction – Last Miles of Galaxy
4. Typeface (Chip Shop Mix) - Manda Rin
5. Zora Mode - Decktronic
6. Black 7 – Weird Gear
7. Riot - Euan Lynn
8. Knife Trance (One Knife Left Mix) - Supreme Ultimate Fist
9. Fatal Error - Vile Electrodes
10. Rambo Ravine - H Pizzle
11. Hero Man Gets to the Castle (Tomorrow’s Dad Mix) - Bearcraft
12. Quiet Thought Process - Downstate
13. Game Over – Derek Williams

Remember the previous compilation is still available for almost nothing and you can hear samples from it here

Keep checking by the blog for more details on the CD

That’s all for now

-Derek