With another year comes the renewed fervor caused by the Electronic Entertainment Expo. With surprises and disappointments often associated with the industry show, the Check Your Hud staff decided to make a few predictions about what they want, think, wish for the show to feature, as well as a longshot just for kicks.

One simple word can describe the state of Piracy within the free market: Sealand. In 2007 founding members of the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay started a campaign to free themselves of the ‘tyrannical’ international and domestic copyright laws by simply circumventing the whole issue in it’s entirety by buying its own sovereign nation.

Ok, I realize I have gone over the evolution of the theme from the Final Fantasy series in this segment previously but with this article on Final Fantasy V, it will be the first proper look at a Uematsu composition…

With another passing year comes another flood of every one’s favorite game genre: The Sandbox Game. In the wake of Grand Theft Auto IV last spring does a new batch of games bring new and “innovative” ideas to the table, and more importantly do they have the potential to be good?

While I have taken issue with certain titles and their “liberal” use of licensed music, it remains for many franchises as a necessary part of the industry….but does it have to? With the release of MadWorld on the Wii earlier…

When looking at the release calendar for the year, it can become a bit daunting and depressing when thinking about just how many shooters for consoles there are. Now don’t get my wrong, I love a good first person shooter,…

As I have made previously clear in the earlier Music Monday segment featuring the “alternate” soundtracks to both Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana (as The Brink of Time and Secret of Mana+ respectively), I am a huge fan when…

For Music Monday this week I was lucky enough to interview the creator of the genius remix album, Ocarina of Rhyme, in which some of the most memorable music of the N64 era is smashed together with rhymes from some of the best MC’s around. The mind behind the album, TeamTeamwork, was nice enough to answer my questions, as well as providing an exclusive track not heard on the original album.

Resident Evil 5 is a fantastic game. That being said, the game is not without it problem and ultimately feels like it needs to be viewed through rose-colored glasses in the wake of it’s genre defining predecessor (ie Resident Evil 4). RE5 puts you back in control of series veteran Chris Redfield taking part in another ill-fated mission which, in the grand tradition of Resident Evil games, predictably goes to shit as soon as possible. Setting the game in Africa has been a major point of controversy surrounding the release of the game with the supposed racist and stereotypical imagery that it perpetuates, however Capcom ensures a veritable mixing pot of races to dispose of throughout the game, and ultimately a zombie is a zombie, nothing more.

When you begin to examine the history of video game music on the PC, one piece of music is synonymous with both identifying a generation of games as well as the gamers that played them. I am of course speaking of the theme music from the 1993 genre defining release: Doom. When thinking of musical themes from games there are few that can even come close to the memorable nature that the song from E1M1, or as it is titles “At Doom’s Gate,” seems to capture. With the driving drums and guitars, the track just screams for the player to run as fast as possible, leaving a wake of destruction through the level. Sure the theme from world 1-1 of Super Mario Brothers is one of the most recognized songs in video game music, but it pales in comparison to the pure blood lusting motivation that E1M1 supplies.