“Billed as the “Ukulele of the Future,” the cleverly named Futulele does indeed deliver on its high-tech premise. This easy-to-use ukulele simulator lets you rock out Hawaiian-style, whether you’re keen on busting out your best Tiny Tim impression or strumming more serious four-string grooves. As a virtual instrument, Futulele does a good job of emulating the real deal — right down to the way you hold your iPad on its side like an actual ukulele to play.”
Check out the full review here at Mac|Life.
“Even if you have no clue what you’re doing, it only takes a few seconds of poking and prodding the screen to get grooving with Figure. Extreme accessibility makes Propellerhead Software’s stylish music-making app a fun toy to noodle around with whenever you’ve got free time to kill, but Figure’s real strength lies in that it’s powerful enough that you can just as easily take it on-stage and set the dance floor on fire with some seriously infectious electronic jams.”
I’ve been a huge fan of NES cover band the Minibosses for many years now, and it was incredibly fun to be able to sit down and have a long phone interview with guitarist Aaron Burke a little while back to chat about the band’s history, the game music cover scene, and their future. While a portion of our interview was for research for Geek Beat Manifesto, I worked a fair chunk of it into a Community feature for Nintendo Power on the band’s 10 year innversary. That appears in the August issue on page 94. Also, my first Play Back piece remeniscing about the charm of Final Fantasy Adventure on Game Boy appears on page 84.
“In 2007, Ubisoft made a big splash in the handheld music game world with a nifty little program that turned your DS into a fully functioning, virtual acoustic guitar. Jam Sessions was really more of a music making tool than anything else. It turned out to be a lot of fun for gaming musicians who got a kick out of crafting and performing songs on a handheld system, yet some players were left feeling a little lost due to the lack of any solid goals or gameplay in the title. Developer Plato has made a lot of changes for Jam Sessions 2 in an effort to beef up the musical making capabilities of the program while also offering a stronger gaming component to appease the average player who might not be as inclined to dig deeply into the song-crafting toolbox elements.”
“With every new generation of über-sexy, high-powered gaming consoles, another wave of outdated machines are inducted into the videogame hardware hall of fame – a graveyard of wires and small cartridges destined to gather dust on the top shelf of countless closets. It’s a grim fate for these once-beloved devices. But some old-school game consoles are being resurrected from the dead by the power of rock. Not content to let classic gaming gear from decades past go to waste, a tech-savvy array of underground musicians are digging out their retro consoles, dusting them off, and firing them up for a new purpose: to rock the living hell out of them.”
Nathan Meunier - Freelance Writer / Author / Indie Game Developer 