Tramlines - Sheffield music festival

Well, I just made it back home after the first night of the Tramlines free music festival.

I went out tonight and...

* Visited the Kid Acne exhibition in the Millenium Gallery (mostly I went into there because it was cold outside and warm inside but it turned out to be a cool exhibition). There's a lot of his street art around town. I really like his drawings, especially his warrior women dotted around the place, but hate the slogans he's painted around town. Especially on Paternoster Row. There used to be some cool art on one wall - which was his own - but he painted over it with "You'll thank me one day". And it's rubbish in comparison! :(

* Went to a pub called Henry's because my colleagues had told me that our friend (another ex-colleague) was playing there later. I bought a drink and sat about 9ft from the stage (a very small and slightly wobbly stage), and I heard:

- a lady called Emily who was really excellent, and seemed really sweet and nice and friendly, and somewhat shocked at how much the audience liked her. Which was A LOT. :) But most of her songs were about being angry at someone, and she was certainly expressive about it!

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She was much better than on her myspace recordings! She said she's playing Soyo tomorrow, then taking a break from gigging for a while to record an EP with a record label. :D

During one of the songs, one of my friends - Ali - was on the phone and there was a quiet moment in a song and all anyone heard was "I'M IN THE BEER GARDEN - IN HENRY'S". Everyone laughed and eventually she did too. At the end of the song everyone in the place was laughing, and she thanked everyone in the room.... EXCEPT HIM.

XD

And the next time started off with lyrics that were along the lines of "you don't care and you never listen" and everyone was in stitches.

XD

Carried on like a pro after that, pretty super awesome. :)

- the Don Barrel Gents. A two-piece guitar group who are cool and always good to listen to.

http://donbarrellgents.co.uk/

I used to work with Lee, the one of the two who doesn't sing and likes tuning his guitar. Even if I didn't know Lee, I'd still like them. :) The one of the two who sings has a really unusual way of playing his guitar - he uses it as a percussion instrument sometimes, and Lee does twiddly bits. :)

* Then I went out to the area in front of City Hall and saw Heaven 17 perform "Temptation"!

Well, they had a set starting at 9pm but we decided to stay and listen to our friend... well, no-one could remember more than one song, so we figured if we arrived at 9:45 we'd get that song. And our plan worked! :D

It was better than the original, but... well, the original is a good song, I like it a lot, but the vocals were a bit out of tune, and they've got better since. :)

So they played that and everyone jumped around and cheered, and then they performed "Being Boiled" (which is a Human League song)... and that was it. The guy who's lead shouted "Up the Owls!" and there was a lot of booing, but maybe it helped make everyone clear off sharpish. :P

And then I came home. A friend mentioned they plan to meet up a The Shakespeare tomorrow to attend Lee's gig, but I have no specific plans I am dedicated to at the moment. There's tons going on, and I can only be at one place at a time!

I can hear live music coming from outside still, I guess it must be at the Riverside Cafe. I am too tired to venture any further though.

Capcom, oh Capcom...

It's funny... almost seems like a lot of Japanese companies that used to be kings of the video game world about 10 - 15 years ago have kind of imploded in recent years... destroying themselves from within.

In recent times, Capcom have:

* Implemented DRM on certain downloadable PS3 games so you need to be connected to the playstation network in order to play them, even games with no online features. See: source. This is because they don't like people "sharing" games by logging onto more than one PS3 with their account and downloading the game so it can be played on both consoles. Really didn't work out well when PSN was taken offline for several weeks.

* As far as I know, they're not going to publish any more Ace Attorney games in English. :(

* Implemented Evil DRM for the new Resident Evil spin-off game on 3DS, where you can't restart the game over from the start. Source. This is because they make no money on 2nd hand games and don't like that. So you can't ever replay the game you bought from the start. If there's any point where you mess up and want to start over and do it better you can't. If you want to go back and replay the early parts of the game with the knowledge of what you know in later stages to see how it pans out, you can't.

* Took some characters out of Marvel vs Capcom 3 that people were really looking forward to, just so they can sell DLC..... but that's turned into another version that comes out in a few months time. To make loyal fans buy the same thing twice.

* Streetfighter IV DRM

and now.... cancelled Megaman Legends 3, which I was kind of looking forward to; I liked the PS1 Megaman Legends games (and the Tron Bonne game... actually I just like Servbots!)

And they blame the fans for not creating content for the game.

There are various online campaigns running at the moment; fans begging for the game.

I'm thinking if Capcom don't want to continue the project, and the original creator has jumped ship already, it's a bad idea to force them to make it just for the money. They might just take the name of the thing you liked, put a "3" on the end, and release something heartlessly created - derivative but without the magic. And then people will spend money, but they won't like what they've bought and will complain even more.

I can't think of an appropriate equivalent in videogames at the moment. I'm thinking we'd end up with Bat out of Hell 3. But with Servbots.