The good old days of Super Mario Bros. and Contra

Memories are like gases, they try to occupy all the empty spaces they find, esp. in your head. Until yesterday, my head was filled with lots of stuff; work, house-hunting, committments, deadlines, etc. So much occupied that you can compare it to Eden Garden on the eve of India-Pakistan World Cup Final (pun intended) !!

But yesterday, I got some time to relax. (Some time to release the gas you'd say!) Stayed at home on a Saturday and planned my long-overdue trip to home. My hometown is in Rourkela (Orissa) although I spent eight golden childhood years of mine in Bhilai (Chhattisgarh). One of my nappy-buddies (actually we were a little older than that) Pratyush, is back from US for a month and I hope to meet him when I go back home. Whenever I think of that golden time it reminds me of all the fun we (me, Pratyush, Chinu and a whole bunch of friends) used to have when we were kids.

Summer vacation meant non-stop masti which included comics, cycling, cricket and most-importantly Video Games. It was the early 90s and Quake or Need For Speed inventors were probably still graduating. It was the time of sweet old Cartridge Games played on Samurai Consoles (even Nintendos were luxury at those days). I can bet I have played almost all the games of that era. Just to name a special few, Super Mario Bros., Contra, The Jungle Book, Islander, Spartan, Double Dragon and a xillion others.

But I lost my virginity (of playing video-games) to the ultimate game called Super Mario Bros. The player takes the role of Mario, or in the case of a second player, Mario's brother Luigi. The objective is to race through the Mushroom Kingdom, evade or eliminate Bowser's forces, and save Princess Peach. The Mario Brothers' primary attack is simply jumping on top of ("Stomping") their enemies, which kills the mushroom traitors and sends the turtle soldiers into their shells. Mario and Luigi can then kick these shells into other enemies, which will conveniently dispatch them; but conversely, kicked shells can bounce back off walls or other vertical obstructions and hit them. Some enemies can be killed only by shell impact; stomping them will hurt the Mario Bros. Jumping on enough enemies in succession or kicking a shell into enough enemies in succession (combos) results in double points earned with each enemy killed, eventually (after eight successive times) earning Mario or Luigi a 1-up - an extra life - another chance to pass the level. Mario and Luigi can also obtain 1-ups through finding 1-up mushrooms or even by collecting 100 coins.

If you know this sequence "Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A", you know what game I'm talking about. Yeah, its Contra!! The most deadly and enchanting games of all times. The trick (Konami Code) I mentioned above helps you get 30 lives for you and your partner (there's a different trick for Super Contra though). The Contra series essentially defined the run and gun computer and video game genre. The games, which are a combination of platform and shoot 'em up, consist of a player-controlled human protagonist who employs rapid-fire rifles to destroy enemies. While there is more emphasis put on shooting than jumping, the player must be able to use jump to gain the right angle to destroy certain enemies and avoid getting shot. Avoidance is essential, as it only takes one hit to kill the player.

The majority of the games in the series are presented strictly in a side-view perspective, with some of the levels scrolling vertically; however, different titles have experimented with different replication of the same basic gameplay. Super Contra, however, had overhead levels, similar to titles like Commando; the player could not jump in this perspective but could strafe instead. The Contra series has a reputation for being exceptionally fast-paced and difficult. It is thought to take an extremely skilled player to progress through the game using only the three lives and continues provided.

The other games I thoroughly enjoyed playing were The Jungle Book (extremely adventurous), Spartan (Kung-fu action), Double Dragon (adventure and action), Super Mario Bros. 3 (love it) and many others.
Sometimes I just wish that I could fly back to those old times where I used to have so much of fun! But as they say 'Time Spent on Video Games is not wasted' (I hope my mom is not listening !!). So until next time... :-)

Organizing your Music for iPod

I used to consider myself a cleanliness freak (like Monica Geller of F.R.I.E.N.D.S fame) ; atleast when it comes to keeping MP3s and JPGs in my laptop. But after I bought an Apple iPod, I realized how messed up my music collection was. Songs were poorly named as SUMME~69.mp3 or even worse Track1.mp3. Nirvana's song All Apologies was tagged under the genre Blues while a gazillion others had no artist whatsoever.

All these attributes (meta-data) that is stored in these MP3 songs are called ID3 tags. There's a whole Wiki page explaining what it is. To a lay-man, these are the attributes that your iPod uses to arrange music, based upon the Genre, Artist or Album. Even if you are a music buff, it'd be a herculean task to update all your music manually. I gave up after Googling attributes for just 2 or 3 songs and manually editing its tags. It was such a pain !!

So instead of googling the attributes for the songs, I decided to search tools on the net that'd make my life easier. Here in this post, I'll explain how you can organize as well as enhance your giga-bytes of assorted MP3s.

I found tools such as MusicBrainz Picard and TagRunner which when used in combination, makes a lot of work easier for you. Picard is a free-ware while TagRunner is a share-ware and needs to be bought after a brief period. However this useful social-service site helped me 'crack' a way out. Search for 'TagRunner v2.0.0.16' and download what they have to offer. Replace the exe file with the one already installed in TagRunner directory, and you are done!

Firstly, I suggest you to keep a separate place-holder for your 'tagged' music, so that you don't end up having duplicate MP3s. For this change the settings in Picard (File -> Options -> Directories) by selecting the shown check-box and entering the new place-holder path.

There are various other options that you can set like the naming conventions, ID3 Tag versions, etc. Select your entire assorted music collection and leave it upto Picard to take care of it. This can be done by selecting the directory (File -> Add Directory). Leave it to run for as long time as it needs (probably overnight). It will look up various sources in the internet and arrange your songs based upon the Artist and the Album. Some of the MP3s may remain untagged, so don't worry about them. Once everything is done, select all the Albums and click 'Save track/album' as shown below. You will also get to know the missing songs of the albums by clicking on the expandable 'Albums' button here.

Now since your music collection is getting sorted out, its time to add correct tags like Artist, Genre, Year of Release as well as Lyrics and the Album Art. To do this you need to use the other software I mentioned - TagRunner. Open it and add the newly sorted directory in it (Add -> Add Folder (Recursive)) and click 'Next'.

This will search for various necessary Tags, Lyrics and Album Arts. Once all the songs are done, save it and exit.

Now you can import all these songs into iTunes and put it in your iPod. You will see a clean and organized music world now !! Enjoy !!