My New Intro! Also: Wanna Win Stuff?

Hey hey, people! First of all, I made a new intro for my YouTube channel and/or Let's Play videos. It's all of a mere 25 seconds, but geez, did I work for those seconds.

The one thing I can't claim is the music. The track, "Past the Chase," is by Peter Hajba, perhaps better known as Skaven. He received some kind of "pre-internet fame," composing music with a program called ScreamTracker, for a group known as Future Crew.These music and animation tracks and demos would be distributed on BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems... yes, a mode of computer communication before the Internets! Amazing, huh?) all over the world. Skaven is still around, coming out with music (most not to my liking, unfortunately), and he has a Facebook page now. Networking is a bit easier now than it was in the early `90s. Just a wee bit.

I did edit the bits out of the track that I wanted to keep, and duplicated and reversed the ending. The voice at the beginning and end of the clip is mine, whispering. I amplified and robotified (is that a word?) the sample with a handy old program called CoolEdit 96. Yes, 96. It won't work on Windows Vista, so I had to hop on over to our XP machine from 2001, to edit all those audio clips. (They've since resorted to insisting on money for their audio editing software, and their latest iteration is known as Adobe Audition.) Someday I'll get around to using material that's from this century!

As for the video segments, the beginning and ending logos were made by using an online logo creator called CoolText. ("Cool" seems to be the theme here...) I also found some cool 8-bit alien pics on CoolText, and decided to enact some crude "animation," if you could call it that. I arranged the logos and alien pics in MicroSoft Paint, of all things. I synced them with the audio (more or less) by viewing the pics one by one in Windows Photo Gallery, pressing the arrow button as the sound clip would roll by, kind of like a flipbook.

Figuring out how many seconds I had of pure song, I threw in four short sequences from previous Let's Plays. These are from the following games (in order, natch): Dungeon Master, King's Quest II remake, Eye of the Beholder II, and Dragonsphere.

Below is the intro vid. Please let me know what you think! Or... if you like or hate it, and don't want to verbalize that, click on the YouTube logo at the bottom right-hand corner to go to the video page, and click Like or Dislike. But hey, constructive criticism is best.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

And yes, as the title suggests, there is an opportunity (or two) to win stuff! Not from this blog (though I would love to do so eventually). Here's the scoop:

iBuyPower, a company and website specializing in gaming desktops and laptops, is doing a Battlefield 3 bundle giveaway. They're giving away a signed copy of Battlefield 3 Limited Edition (signed by who, I have no idea), and a whole crapload of things that have the BF3 logo and burning soldier pic on them... such as a mousepad, an Imperator mouse, an XBox 360 controller, an iPhone cover, a Black Widow keyboard, and a messenger bag. 5 runner ups get the BF3 Limited Edition game. No, I do not work for iBuyPower in any fashion. I just find myself over there quite a bit, making up custom configurations and droooooling. I've never even played BF3. I just saw this cool deal, and figured I'd let you guys know about it. You can't even find it on their homepage (believe me, I just tried to look it up again), so make sure you use my special link to get to the contest page. The deadline for the contest is set for the end of February 14th, i.e. 23:59 PST, on that day. PLEASE NOTE: You have to have a Facebook account to enter.

Yes, I am "That RPG Chick," but I do enjoy FPS games as well (and I'm sure you've notiiced the Adventure Games posted here also). I have only played a handful of shooters, and no modern games at all (nothing past 2004!), but I'm working on that. `Nuff said.

There's another giveaway going on at Gary Hawkins' Gamesoup blog. A random t-shirt from Insert Coin Clothing will be given away (tailored to your size specifications) to the lucky winna! Insert Coin makes shirts and hoodies featuring fictional companies and places from popular videogames. (Too bad the Fallout 3-inspired shirt just says "Quantum," and not "Nuka Cola." That would've been killer!) Click here for more info on his contest. Gary's deadline seems to be February 16th (since he merely said he would announce the winner on the 17th's blog post). Thanks, Gary!

`Nuff said.