Stalling composed the music for all the Warner Brothers Cartoons, and experienced something of a critical renaissance in the 90s, with multiple compilations of his WB work being released. Here are links.
The Carl Stalling Project, Vol. 1
That said, we still don’t have an answer to the key question: Is any of his music in the game? Do we at least get the main Looney Tunes theme?
I had forgotten this game was even coming out until I saw your article on Fidgit yesterday. I picked it up at work and played it last night, albeit only briefly.
My initial impressions aren’t very positive. I don’t like the note charts at all. I find it very difficult to tell what it is they want me to do at times, and the feedback you get from distance between the dots seems very imprecise to me. I like the idea, I even like the upper screen shenanigans that Tom didn’t seem to care for, but not sold on it at this point.
Aww, rats, I hope this doesn’t turn out to another instance of some weird thing only I like. I figured this would have universal appeal, but I see now it’s not doing too well on Game Rankings.
D. Monkey, I think you’re being too hard on the way the music goes out of tune when you mess up. Note that you have to actually miss the note to mess up the music. Just as in EBA, as long as you’re within the parameters of an acceptable hit (which are relatively generous, IMO), you won’t affect the music track.
Misguided, it can be tough to suss out which parts of the music you’re supposed to follow, particularly on the harder difficulty level. Just remember that it’s not a beat-oriented game (I know: duh!) and that you’re supposed to be following the, uh…I don’t know what they’re called…the “strokes” of the music. Man, I have no idea how to say this, since I don’t know the first thing about music. But you know how Beethoven’s 5th goes DUH-DUH-duh-DUH? You’re supposed to hit a number on each “duh”, regardless of the spacing between them. Listen for it instead of watching for it, and it’ll come much easier. It’s just like you imagine a conductor’s baton should work instead of how it actually does work. Lordy, I should probably just delete whatever it is I’m trying to say here, since I doubt I’m saying it and you probably already know it anyway…
The way I’m playing is sticking to the selections I know best, and sort of practicing at them. I haven’t gotten any A’s on the middle difficulty yet, but I’m really digging learning them well enough to score B’s across the board, at which point I’m really going to nail some of them down. Starting with the really cool Bach Toccata and Fugue. I love the feel of that one.
And, yeah, those remixes are pretty terrible in an ‘Oh, my ears!’ kind of way.
-TomNo, I definitely get what you’re saying. I had that in mind while I was playing. I know the different selections pretty well, but it seemed like many of my strokes were slightly “off” ( sort of like people complain about the offbeats in EBA during the Maroon 5 chart.
As I said, I only played with it briefly, and I’ll certainly give it another go. At first blush, though, I found it much less intuitive to hit the notes correctly than EBA.
Has anyone played Nodame Cantabile DS? Some Japanese manga thing that is a classical music rhythm game. Not as good nor as challenging as OUENDAN!!! or EBA, but the music screws up when you do. Sounds like this Looney Tunes game.
Forget that, where’s Raymond Scott?
No “Powerhouse” = no sale