Jason Cox’s career as one-man-band Xoc hit the big time in August last year when his debut – SMW, a cover of the entire Super Mario World soundtrack done using accordion, acoustic guitars, antique pickaxe, asscheeks, banjo, bike horn, cabasa, Canon Powershot, ceramic toilet mug, children’s drum set, claves, coconut thumb piano, cowbells, cuatro, doublespeed acoustic guitar, doublespeed banjo, doublespeed guitars, drum set, drum sticks, electric bass guitar (Yamaha RBX200), electric guitars, finger cymbals, gooseneck mic stand, handclaps, handmade maracas, jam block, jew’s harp, Korg MS2000B synth, lap steel guitar, maracas, matchbook, melodion, ocarina, pennywhistle, pump organ, PSS-270 keyboard, refrigerator door, ribbon crasher, Roland Groovebox, rototom brace, school bell, shakers, slide whistle, sportshorn, tacklebox, tambourines, triangle, turkey locator, Tyco Hot Lixx, ukelele, upright bass, violin, vocals, woodblock, wood flute, Wurlitzer electric piano, and xylophone – appeared in Edge magazine with the comment that “every track is both a pop gem and a testament to the lasting appeal of [Koji] Kondo’s compositions and XOC’s one-man-band prowess”.
Eight months later, the album -available for free on the Internet Archive – has clocked up in excess of 82,000 downloads, more than 60,000 more than any other open source audio.
Jason’s next project as Xoc was Videogame: The Movie: The Game: The Cover Album, an double album of covers and originals from a supposed pirate NES game, which, in turn was based upon a supposed movie from 1984 starring Jonathan Brandis, Jill Bennett and Ed Flanders. The concept features an 1,800 word summary, including the history of the movie, it’s producers, and reveals that “all three of the film’s stars would eventually go on to commit suicide”. It’s a mix of fact and fiction that goes into such depth it beggars the senses.
Again, Xoc was featured by Edge, this time on their website, where they called this work a ” twisted conceptual madness”, and Xoc’s “magnum opus”.
Over the period of just over a month, littlemathletics spoke to Jason about SMW, Videogame: The Movie: The Game: The Cover Album and a myriad of other topics, all through the magic of email.
Since meeting at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne in the late 90s media artists Roman Kirschner, Volker Morawe and Tilman Rieff have been working together under the name fur, a group that, in their own words “stands for the re-staging of computer-entertainment based on multisensory interfaces” – or, in other words, work to decontextualise videogames and other forms of computer based amusements by changing the way they are used.
By changing the interfaces used to interact, the creations of fur go beyond “visual navigation, manual control and massive single-user isolation” to become something completely new, not only within the world of videogames, but also within the world of art. Their most famous work is the PainStation, from 2001- a game of Pong within a specially designed cabinet that would whip and shock players hands, often causing tangible wounds, which fur describe as a ” a contemporary dueling system”.
The team won an International Media Art Award for the machine in 2003, the same year in which the machine was superseded by the PainStation 2, and that by the PainStation 2.5 in 2004. Since then, the six PainStation machines have been touring the world, displayed at exhibitions from London to Mexico City and just about everywhere in between.
Reaction to the machine on the PainStation website’s guestbook is varied, ranging from the good:
“Greatest gaming console the world has ever known. Me and two of my friends visited London last summer after our graduation. We ended up going to the V&A’s TOUCH exibit where we thankfully found the original PainStation. We couldn’t or at least I couldn’t get enough of plaing the game, I believed that I stood there playing various spectators for over two hours.”
To the bad:
“This is so DUMB… are people so bored that they want to get themselves hurt??? Then again, there are movies of dudes hitting eachother with things for FUN so i’m not that surprised people would also find this Painstation thing cool.”
And the ugly:
“Fuck off you stupid wankers, fucking sadomastic pricks, go strangle yourself with barbewire or something.”
littlemathletics recently spoke briefly to Tilman Rieff about the PainStation, the notions of games as art, and their plans for world domination…
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In 1996, Sega officially pulled the plug on their 16 bit console, known as the Mega Drive in European and Japanese markets, and as the Genesis in the American market. The machine had been a success, in general terms. During the 8 bit era, Sega had been at a distinct disadvantage to Nintendo holding less than 10% of the worldwide market. This had all changed by 1992, when, thanks primarily to the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise (and in particular Sonic 2) their market had grown to 65% of the worldwise console market.
This would all change again within only a few years though – Nintendo fought back with games like Donkey Kong Country and, combined with the failures of Mega Drive add-ons Mega CD and the 32X, had pushed Sega’s market share back to 35%. This, and the recent release of their next-generation Saturn console, prompted the company to officially cease support for the ailing Mega Drive. The final game available commercially in the American market was released in 1998.
However, August of 2005 saw the following reported in Tips and Tricks magazine:
“…a brand new cartridge for the Sega Genesis system: Beggar Prince is a newly-translated version of a role-playing game called Xin Qi Gai Wang Zi…”
For the first time in over eight years, the Mega Drive would see the release of an actually cartridge based game. Super Fighter Team, a San Diego based company known previously for their work bringing Taiwanese company C&E Inc.’s game Super Fighter to a western audience as a freeware game for PC. In continuing their business partnership with C&E, Super Fighter Team picked up the rights to Beggar Prince, a role playing game C&E had released for the Mega Drive in 1996.
"Beggar Prince first caught my eye because of how intricate and beautiful it is. Many role-playing games have been produced in Taiwan for the Sega Megadrive, but few of them are as fun to play as Beggar Prince,” says Brandon Cobb, president of Super Fighter Team. ” We were very lucky to secure the legal rights to Beggar Prince from our business partner, C&E Inc., with the purpose in mind to release the game much to the surprise and interest of Sega fans worldwide.”
The game was officially released for sale through www.beggarprince.com as of the 31st of December 2005. “Super Fighter Team is handling distribution directly through our website,” Explains Brandon. “Wholesalers are welcome to step up and offer their interests,and some have done just that. We especially appreciate the efforts made in Europe by some distributors, to secure bulk orders for customers who are more comfortable ordering off a website in their own country.”
littlemathletics spoke to Brandon and lead translator Yu-Chen Shih just after this.
Whilst talking to Brandon Cobb, president of Super Fighter Team, littlemathletics was lucky enough to be given the chance to conduct an exclusive interview with Yu-Chen Shih, the lead translator on Beggar Prince.