Not all conductors who work who go on tour with famous singers such as Weird Al Yankovitch see video game music as something worthy of performing in concert halls, but Eric Roth certainly does. After working with his father, Arnie Roth, on the Distant Worlds: Music from FINAL FANTASY, Eric started A New World: Intimate Music from FINAL FANTASY, a chamber ensemble concert production, in 2014, and currently works as the producer and conductor.
While Distant Worlds focuses on grand, epic renditions of classic Final Fantasy music for a symphonic orchestra, as the title suggests, A New World takes on a much more intimate approach, offering its own unique take on the Final Fantasy music we know and love.
As a big fan of Final Fantasy music since Final Fantasy VII wowed me in the late 90s, I was thrilled to have the chance to speak with Eric about how A New World came to be, the process of translating Final Fantasy music into a chamber concert format, Eric’s personal favorite song from the program, and more!
Today’s post is courtesy of Anne from the Cat Obsessed blog. We have the same name and love for animals, so you know she’s gotta be cool! Check out her site for all kinds of cuteness, from Hello Kitty to kitty-themed cosmetics. For now, read on for a slightly different perspective on Final Fantasy XV! – Anne
Episode 33 of Chic Pixel Plus may be slightly shorter than normal, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have lots of things to say! Not only do we cover a new manga in Manga Book Club, but App Attack makes a grand return with Final Fantasy Grandmaster. Be sure to listen all the way to the end of this one (of course you always do, right?!), because Sarah has one hell of a strange tale for this installment of Nippon Neighborhood Watch.
00:06:08 – Neko Atsume English version
00:08:00 – Nier Automata gameplay trailer
00:10:38 – #NatsumeMonth
00:12:44 – Manga Book Club: Ryuu no Gakkou wa Yama no Ue
00:25:36 – The Perfect Insider episodes 2-3
00:34:06 – Concrete Revolutio episodes 3-4
00:44:15 – One Punch Man episodes 3-4
00:51:45 – App Attack: Final Fantasy Grandmaster
00:58:48 – Nippon Neighborhood Watch
Opening ♫ – “Nameko no Uta” by Haruka Fukuhara Closing ♫ – “Boom Boom Dollar” by King Kong and D. Jungle Girls
Happy Sunday, and thanks for checking out my newest column, Sunday Spotlight! I’ll be using this space to highlight other bloggers, creatives, and otherwise cool people that I think you should know about. If you’re a fan of the kinds of things you see on Chic Pixel, you’re definitely going to want to check out the folks I’ll be showcasing here!
This week, I want to tell you about Final Fantasy Recipes, an awesome Final Fantasy food blog that isn’t quite what you’d expect. Instead of modeling food after the characters and icons from the Final Fantasy series, this blog instead seeks to create recipes that might reflect what the inhabitants of those worlds actually eat! As the Final Fantasy Recipes about page states, it attempts to serve as a bit of an anthropological survey of the Final Fantasy games. How cool is that?!
From the Festival of the Hunt Stew to the Narshe Spiced Wine, each recipe comes with an image and quote from the game that inspired it. I haven’t had a chance to try one of the recipes out for myself yet, but I am really impressed by this different take on game-inspired cuisine. I’ve got my eye on the Zozo Pub Soup – it looks relatively easy to make, but still sounds quite delicious!
Let me know if you end up trying any of Final Fantasy Recipes‘ recipes! Are there any other game-inspired food that have made their way on to your dinner table?
Chic Pixel Plus is officially 25 episodes young, and that can only mean one thing… Onward to season 2! Anne is joined by her brand new co-host Sarah O’Donnell of For Fox Sake to give you all the details on the new show layout. We really hope you like what we have in store!
Topics this week include coffee, Final Fantasy IX‘s 15th birthday, the Death Note drama, Show By Rock, Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade, and what anime we plan on watching this season. Be sure to listen to the whole episode for details to win one of three Crunchyroll 48 hour all-access passes we have to give away!
Hello again. Sarah here! At long last, it’s time for my write up on the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Eorzea Café in Akihabara! Sorry to keep ya’ll waiting. I’m going to do my best to write up a detailed explanation of how to get the most out of the experience.
The café itself is inside a larger building, so you’ll have to keep an eye out for this display (it ran alongside the Otomate café).
For the sake of brevity, I’m going to assume you know how to get the tickets and am going to skip to the part where you arrive at the café. (If you want step-by-step instructions on how to order the tickets and redeem them at Lawson’s, let me know! If there is enough demand I will do a write up with step-by-step instructions, including screencaps.)
You’ll want to arrive at the café around 15 minutes before your reservation, and you’ll notice that you’ll be with a group of other people that will be dining at the same time. When you give your tickets to the person at the counter (there’s only one counter that’s situated between both the Eorzea and Otomate cafés), they’ll hand you a menu and an order sheet for food and drinks. This is so that you can decide what to order while you wait to be seated.
They will also ask if you have a point card, which we didn’t. Since the reservation is under one name, the points would only apply for that one person even though two people are dining (this is important to note only for diners who have their own point cards and want to save them separately).
Some impressive looking replicas of weapons from the game (bonus moogles!)
Once you are seated, the host will explain how the ordering system works. Basically you have a span of 2 hours (!) to leisurely eat, drink, and play the game itself. I highly recommend spacing out your orders as best you can, otherwise you may find yourself actually bored at times. So get drinks first, then a food item, maybe another round, some more food…That’s what we ended up doing. If you are seated at a two-person table there won’t be room for much food anyway.
On episode 21 of Chic Pixel Plus, I bring on regular extra Elliot Gay (@ryougasaotome) to talk about the most important game topic of our generation: kusoge. What are kusoge? Are they so bad they’re good, or just plain bad? We talk about all that and more, plus, related news!
Games included in the discussion range from the Drakengard series to Friday the 13th, plus we get in some Seaman, Vangaurd Bandits, Disaster: Day of Crisis, and Dirge of Cerberus: FFVII talk as well.
This podcast was recorded early/mid-June and is going up quite late, much to my dismay, so while I talk about Puzzle Month, we’re actually already in the midst of JRPGJuly! Sorry about that!
Opening ♫ – Life is Beautiful, Deadly Premonition
Closing ♫ – Seaman commercial
