Brother/sister (no, not really) duo The White Stripes will be making their Rock Band debut next week via a track pack featuring three of their songs. For the handheld rhythm gamers, No Doubt and Dropkick Murphys are also on the way to Rock Band Unplugged's in-game music store.

To this day, Yasunori Mitsuda's work remains among the best music known to gaming. In case you didn't know, Mitsuda's the guy behind the accompaniment of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. Now, the crew of OverClocked ReMix pays tribute to the composer with the re-imagination of his work on Xenogears.

Homebrew coder Slappy has released Quadrax, a logical homebrew game based on Quadrax IV: The Secrets of Pyramid  for the Nintendo Wii. The latest update now features much improved graphics, a new minimap, music and more.


Download: Quadrax v0.2

The Hollywood Music Awards hailed the greats of mainstream and indie artists once again, and thankfully, giving video game music a slice of the pie. Inside are the winners for "Best Original Score," "Best Original Song," and "Outstanding Music Supervision" of the video game category.

Tantric's Gameboy emulator (GB/GBC/GBA) Visual Boy Advance GX 1.0.1 is here, featuring a couple new improvements. You'd be glad to know that GBA games now run at full speed, among other things.


Download: Visual Boy Advance GX 1.0.1

Viacom, the parent company of MTV, is all smiles these days. Its investments on Harmonix's Rock Band (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii) is paying off big with great sales figures from the game's hardware (bundle) and software ends. The company is optimistic that more great things are to come in the near future. Details in the full article up ahead.

The Game Developers Conference is gearing up not only for conferences and lectures but parties as well. We know that these game developers play hard and party even harder. General events are lined up for the whole week. Find out more on the events after the jump!

The Wii seems to be more revolutionary than at first thought. Jimmy Lesondak (a.k.a. DJ!, pronounced DJ Shift 1) has come up with a brilliant new way to use Wii technology: WiiJing, the art of blending music using the Wiimote.

Messing around with Wii hacks from the internet, he came to thinking of how it can be used to control his DJ Traktor software. After some manipulations, he came up with the WiiJ hack. As we reported before, the hack has even been demonstrated to mix four tracks at once.

Manipulating two Wiimotes he can mix, mash-up, and add sound effects to songs. Launching a song is done by just flick-starting, or whipping the Wiimote forward. Not only does it make this easier for DJs, but this would actually free them from having to stay behind their booths.

"It feels more like it's attached to you as opposed to you trying to manipulate it," Lesondak says, "I can look around and hear what's going on and then change it or do whatever by pressing the buttons on the controller without having to think about where my hands are going to move."

He's already been "WiiJing" throughout clubs in California, which has been an instant hit and has sparked fans from the music industry as well as the video game industry. For his club music he even mixed in retro game music with modern dance music. It's attracted game-centric events where people come decked out in full costumes. In his San Francisco concert, two guys came as Mario and Luigi.

Lesondak chose to spread it as shared software with right as owner, seeing as most of the ideas that came by the arts of the DJ have always been shared. Lesondak's site even has tutorials on using the software.

There's nothing like videogame music, really. From the simple mono thumpings of Space Invaders, made specifically to sound like a rapidly-beating human heart, to the epic, mountain-shaking chorus of an orchestra as you slay your very first colossus - it evokes a level of emotion that no other music form can even hope to emulate. It's an experience that's meant to be shared, definitely.

Video Games Live, an immersive concert event currently taking the world by storm, hopes to do exactly that, performing at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Not for one, but for two performances (June 29 and 30) of nothing but classic and contemporary video game pieces any fan will surely recognize.

While the fact of VGL actually playing at a national monument alone is already big news, the even bigger breakthrough is that it's going to be the first time video game music to be performed at a live audience in Washington DC - and co-creators Jack Wall and Tommy Tallarico can't stop gushing about it. The latter even gave a hint as to who would be strutting down the red carpet at the event, saying:

We've already started inviting as many local politicians and their families as possible. It's important for us to show everyone how incredibly creative, artistic and significant video games and the culture surrounding them have become.

Politicians, you say? Here's hoping a particular someone actually made it into the guest list, so he sees (and hears) how games aren't as bad as he makes them out to be. It's a long shot, but there's no harm in dreaming, is there?

You can check out the read link for more info about this spectacular event.

 

In an age where casual gaming has become too big a market to ignore, web-based puzzle games and mini-games of the casual persuasion have lacked much of the deeper elements of the more serious games: the storyline. In order to introduce the appeal of games with depth, nDreams, a developer company encompassing StoryGamer and Parody Games labels, has officially announced their first title to achieve that single purpose: Venus Redemption.

The episodic title, backed by a storyline of novel proportions, will be authored by interactive fiction pioneer Kate Pullinger of "The Piano" fame, with additional help from BAFTA-nominated writer Gordon Rennie. The story will be directed by Jane Campion, while the musical direction and score will be handled by game music veteran Tim Wright of WipEout fame.

The game heading to the PC, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo Wii will target female gamers aged 30+, and further details on the game will be revealed on July 5 (after Independence Day), pegged by nDreams' founder Patrick O'Luanaigh as "Redemption Day".

O'Luanaigh was formerly creative director of SCi and Eidos. He also concluded the announcement as saying:

We can’t wait to present Venus Redemption to the world. After many months of development and exhaustive gameplay focus testing, we believe that it will prove a breath of fresh air for the casual game sector, and in particular for female casual gamers. With the technology behind Venus Redemption, we can now rapidly develop immersive and visually impressive story-based casual games that will run on almost any PC.