Michael Jackson's Sonic 3 Album

How on Earth did this slip past my radar? Back in the late '80s Michael Jackson signed an endorsement deal with Sega America, which produced the arcade and Mega Drive smash hit Moonwalker (1990). A fact that I've covered in a previous post.

With the success of Sonic The Hedgehog (1991), Sega's blue mascot, reaching its zenith with the release of Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (1992) (an essential Virtual Console purchase), Michael Jackson approached the Sega Technical Institute (STI), at one time an elite organisation within Sega America that developed acclaimed titles such as Kid Chameleon and Comix Zone, about scoring the soundtrack for the upcoming Sonic 3 (1994)!

Purportedly the completed score, composed, arranged and performed by Michael Jackson and the musicians who worked on the Dangerous (1991) recording sessions, was axed, at a very late stage of Sonic 3's development, due to the first public allegations of child molestation against the singer in 1993.

However, there's compelling evidence that some, if not all, of Michael Jackson's arrangements remained in the original release of Sonic 3 on the Mega Drive! Certainly the 'Dangerous sound' is unmistakeable and there's a hint of future projects HIStory (1995) and HIStory In The Mix (1997). It is worth noting that whilst Michael Jackson's official involvement was removed from all publicity and in-game end credits, his album session musicians, predominantly keyboard programmers, provided the final Sonic 3 score.

Bobby Brooks - engineer for Michael Jackson. Sequenced synthesizers and drums on Blood on the Dance Floor and mixed HIStory.

Darryl Ross - vague, ill-defined resume credit: "Darryl Ross is an accomplished producer, musician, songwriter, arranger and vocalist. Artists he worked with are Michael Jackson...".

Geoff Grace - arranger for Michael Jackson. Credited for arranging the music for Jackson's Dangerous tour.

Brad Buxer - performed arranging, keyboards, sequencing and more for Blood on the Dance Floor and Invincible.

Doug Grigsby - unknown credit on HIStory.

Of all Michael Jackson's keyboard virtuosos, Greg Phillinganes is notable by his absence! He has toured with Jackson and was a session keyboardist on his Sony solo albums.

Latterly Michael Jackson makes a cameo appearance in both Sega's Space Channel 5 and Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2.

Jedi Master of My Domain

We all know that new iMacs are on their way today. Therefore this post will be self-indulgent and focus on the very blog that you are reading!

Blogger introduced custom domain name support in January 2007! This blog has been online for over 3 years and, somewhat belatedly, I've finally registered a domain name:

http://www.generationstarwars.com/

Redirection from http://johnhood.blogspot.com/ is automatic (what's called a 301 permanent redirect). But apologies, in advance, for any technical issues in the short-to-mid term. I've not experienced any issues using the following browsers Opera, Safari, Firefox or IE 7 (in Windows Vista Home Premium).

Subscribers to my RSS feed - powered by FeedBurner - do not have to make any changes to their subscription! Matt Shobe, at FeedBurner, confirmed that my decision to change the source feed from

http://johnhood.blogspot.com/atom.xml

to

http://www.generationstarwars.com/atom.xml

was correct. RSS goodness is uninterrupted.

I'm feverishly working on ways to minimise the impact of a domain name change on my search engine rankings - old Google PageRank was 4 (on the cusp of 5), new PageRank is 0. However, I'd encourage anyone setting up their site, who intends to blog frequently and in the longer term, to register a domain name as soon as possible! Maybe even prior to your blog going live or increased marketing activities.

Lastly, remember to create a new sitemap for your new domain and remove the existing one as Google may remove your site(s) from its search engine - duplicate content is a no, no!

The One

Looks like there's a bug (or three) with the latest Windows Live OneCare 2.0 Beta! OneCare Tune-up appears to run correctly, but upon completion reports innumerable errors! For example an unknown error prevented Disk Fragmentation (perhaps due to Boot Camp disk partitioning). However, when I log back in, it reports that the PC status is good. Initially I assumed that my Windows Vista Home Premium installation was at fault!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this story. My OEM (original equipment manufacturer) copy of Windows Vista Home Premium is installed, via Boot Camp, on Intel-based Mac hardware and presumably is not officially supported (if someone at Microsoft would like to clarify the company's position regarding Intel-based Mac hardware, I'd be happy to post). It is worth pointing out that product activation was successful. Therefore, if you're wondering whether or not to opt for the considerably cheaper OEM edition, I'd suggest that you go ahead, your bank manager will thank you.

I decided to post a query on The Windows Experience Blog. Brandon has kindly confirmed that this issue is affecting some (if not all) PCs too. I'll await the next automated update.

Overall Windows Live OneCare neatly integrates automated anti-virus and malware protection, updates, PC performance and backup services within a single easy-to-use front-end. Think .Mac, albeit splintered, during its infancy.

I doubt if I'll be using Windows Vista Home Premium enough to justify purchasing an annual subscription once the free trial ends. Should .Mac integrate Google goodies sans subscription (as early as tomorrow's new Mac announcements and evinced by current iDisk outages), Microsoft maybe forced to review its subscription-based strategy. This would be a win-win for both Mac and Windows users.

"Underwater, no one can hear you scream."

Nerd alert!

Spent a pleasant afternoon basking in the sunshine on Exmouth seafront and envisaging Transformers Seacons, an aquatic team of Decepticons that combined to form Piranacon (known as King Poseidon in Japan), harassing swimmers, jet skiers and kite surfers! Old habits die hard, blame Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and the recent media moral panic surrounding alleged Great White shark sightings off of the Cornish coast!

A monolithic menace. The diabolical combination of the five Seacons who comprise him. Master at undersea warfare. Few Autobots can outdistance him or escape his evil clutches. Destroys everything in his path with ghoulish glee. A troublemaker and malcontent. Rarely follows orders. Fellow Decepticons are unable to control him. Capable of creating colossal tidal waves over 300 feet high. Because of his incredible size, Piranacon's reflexes are impaired out of water. Armed with the Seacons' entire arsenal of firepower.

This evening I've been analysing site search statistics. And the top two search terms for this blog are:

1). Jennifer Love Hewitt
2). Scarlett Johansson

Hmm...

Prime Time

I've bitten the bullet! Transformers Movie - Leader Optimus Prime is on order from Amazon.co.uk!

For thousands of years, Optimus Prime and his Autobots have travelled through space in search of the Allspark. For all that time, the Autobot leader has held one goal in mind - to protect the universe from the evil of Megatron. For this massive, metal warrior, nothing is more important than freedom; he will sacrifice all for its preservation. He has fought for centuries, modifying his body into an unstoppable war machine, preparing for that day he knows is coming when he and Megatron meet for one final battle!

Get ready to rule the universe with this awesome Optimus Prime figure that features Advanced Automorph Technology! This Transformers technology is designed to enhance vehicle-to-robot conversion with partially animated mechanical triggers that activate the final shift to battle mode. See armor slide to protect vital points! Flip down the Ion Blaster in robot mode to launch the projectile! And press the button in vehicle mode for electronic horn sounds and lights!

A World Transformed

It is a world Transformed. Where things are not what they seem. It is the world of The Transformers. A world of Heroic Autobots and Evil Decepticons.

I'll presage this review with the following caveats. Transformers is one of my all-time favourite toy lines (an admission made in many a previous post)! The notion of a live-action movie, directed by Michael Bay, left me apathetic. I really enjoyed The Island (2005)!

Knowing that this movie was going to be big on excess, I hadn't foreseen that the regular Pepsi, I'd purchased in the cinema foyer, would be super-sized too! Fellow Star Wars fans may be interested to learn that a very cool Nintendo Wii redemption machine spouted sound effects and dialogue from our beloved saga! At first, I thought I was hallucinating - RD-D2 beeps and Obi-Wan Kenobi intoned "Trust your feelings!"

Not since Jurassic Park (1993) has an audience (myself included) been so willingly caught up in movie mayhem - like osmosis. This happened during Saturday evening's showing of Transformers at the Odeon, Colchester. Incidentally, I watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and For Your Eyes Only (1981) at this venue.

Unlike Steven Spielberg's deft (if no less commercial) decision to delay the dinosaur reveal in Jurassic Park for up to an hour. Michael Bay, aided and abetted by Spielberg's distrust of a generation exposed to instant gratification, thrusts us, tumbling, into the action!

Blackout, a monstrous Decepticon, and the first Transformer introduced, makes a bombastic entry; heralded by a cacophony of sonic booms that would delight even the most demanding fan of James Cameron tech noir. Keep your ears peeled for the classic Transformers transformation sound, taken from the original Marvel cartoon series, now amped up to deafening levels and with no signs of distortion. This sent chills of excitement down my spine!

There's much to enjoy not least the attention to detail lavished on the Transformers, themselves, by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). Whether watching charismatic lead Sam Witwicky (played by Shia LaBeouf) whose empathy with Bumblebee, an Autobot scout, recounts Elliott's friendship with E.T. (1982) or an Autobot titan emerge from a suburban swimming pool and step over a young girl carrying a plush My Little Pony (another successful Hasbro franchise, which shared names with Transformers and G.I. Joe. For example, Beachcomber, Cosmos, and Seaspray were both My Little Ponies and Transformers characters, and Firefly was both a My Little Pony and a G.I. Joe character).

There's humour too! And laugh-out-loud you will! Sam Witwicky astride his mother's bicycle and pursued by Bumblebee, brought the house down and could have been taken from any number of popular Spielberg produced movies such as The Goonies (1985) or Explorers (1985). Frenzy (the original toy was an audio tape cassette and one of the earliest Transformers I owned), an impish switchblade endoskeleton of a Decepticon, delights in Gremlins (1984) mayhem, droid-like discourses and an homage to John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). Diagetic and non-diagetic sound is used to underscore the comedy too.

Enter Optimus Prime. Of all the Transformers, Optimus Prime is held in greatest reverence (on a personal note my late mother bought me the original Optimus Prime - as a surprise gift - whilst I was off, sick, from school in 1984). No longer a Freightliner Cab-over-engine. Prime's alternate mode, a Peterbilt 379, replete with stylish flame decals, reminded me of Kenner's M.A.S.K Rhino toy (Kenner merged with Hasbro in the early 90's). When he gracefully transforms into a gleaming god-like mecha I gulped and wiped tears from my eyes!

Advertising aplenty! A movie about toys wouldn't be ironic sans product placements! And Transformers is filled to the max with Hewlett Packard, Apple and endless eBay expositions.

Aside from the usual gripes levelled at Michael Bay - disorientating camera angles propelled by dizzying editing and jarring slow-mo, which culminates in a palpable sense of nausea (taking the roller coaster metaphor too literally). All-in-all Transformers transported me back to a galaxy far, far away and left me smiling from ear-to-ear.

Bot-Bombast

This weekend I really can't wait to see the first live-action Transformers movie in Colchester, Essex! My generation grew up with Hasbro's inspired rebranding - with a lot of help from Marvel - of Takara Tomy's Japanese puzzle toys Diaclone and Micro Change. And Transformers, alongside their ingenious stablemates, Microman and Zoids, are amongst some of the most imaginative and clever toy lines ever conceived.

Critics may lambaste Hollywood for its voracious consumer-orientated ideology in the wake of Star Wars revolutionising merchandising - eclipsing box office receipts tenfold. I'm guilty of perpetuating the phenomenon, and dutifully aspire to George Lucas' and Steven Spielberg's adoration of toys; the term gadgets sweetens the pill somewhat. Movie-making is a glorious playtime, which can, at its best, also instruct and educate. Go on fellow deconstructionists, discuss.

So, Michael Bay, director of Transformers, it's over to you for some serious Autobot vs Decepticon bot-bombast! Review to follow.

Windows Live Writer

Switched back to Windows Vista! Why? I'm keen to give Windows Live Writer Beta 2 a test drive and there's currently no Mac OS X client (get your skates on Mac Business Unit (Mac BU)).

Microsoft has built a powerful desktop application blogging tool, which largely precludes the need to directly login to your blog account. Windows Live Writer can publish to Windows Live Spaces, Sharepoint, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Moveable Type, Community Server, and many other weblog services.

Windows Live Writer is by no means unique. There's an abundance of third party applications and widgets available for both Windows and Mac platforms. Yet, Windows Live Writer goes someway to consolidate rich publishing in one easy-to-use application. Setup is a breeze. However, I'd like to see more formatting options - such as justify - made available from the GUI. Of course you can switch to HTML and, manually, insert code yourself.

You can post directly from within Windows Live Writer or save drafts locally and/or online. A very useful trick it has up its sleeve; updated drafts, saved locally, will overwrite the online draft if you saved at both locations. Therefore you don't need to worry about reconciling different versions or accidentally double posting (a bane of bloggers everywhere)!

Happy Hogwarts Day

Today is the day that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is released. To mark this auspicious event, our local Sainsbury's store, in Pinhoe, is draped in the trappings of the franchise.

Harry has been burdened with a dark, dangerous and seemingly impossible task: that of locating and destroying Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes. Never has Harry felt so alone, or faced a future so full of shadows. But Harry must somehow find within himself the strength to complete the task he has been given. He must leave the warmth, safety and companionship of The Burrow and follow without fear or hesitation the inexorable path laid out for him.

In this final, seventh installment of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling unveils in spectacular fashion the answers to the many questions that have been so eagerly awaited. The spellbinding, richly woven narrative, which plunges, twists and turns at a breathtaking pace, confirms the author as a mistress of storytelling, whose books will be read, reread and read again.

Happy reading and do post your comments on the book!

Drawing the way of the Force

Star Wars Celebration Europe maybe over. However, Dorling Kindersley (DK) and myself are offering four lucky readers a chance to win exclusive signed copies of "Star Wars Complete Cross-Sections" poster prints, signed by artist Hans Jensen, and You Can Draw "Star Wars" book, signed by the author Bonnie Burton and artists Tom Hodges and Matt Busch.



Every fan's dream - step inside over 100 Star Wars vehicles. Open up the cockpit and peel back layers to reveal the weapon systems and construction secrets of over 100 Star Wars vehicles. Four fold-out pages take you right inside a Droid Control Ship, the Death Star, an Invisible Hand and a Republic Gunship in incredible detail. Discover everything you ever wanted to know about every key Star Wars machine from the "Phantom Menace", through to "Return of the Jedi". See inside the elegant Naboo starfighters and relentless TIE bombers and explore their background stories, history and even technical data. All revved up and ready to explore the universe?

Feel the force of the pencil, get creative and bring "Star Wars" to life on the page. Follow the expert tips, tracings, fold out pages and stencils and draw body shapes which pack a punch (or a lightsabre), inspiring action poses, spectacular vehicles, out-of-this-world clothes and futuristic equipment. Put R2-D2, Luke SkyWalker and Darth Vader on the same page and create scenes and battles from your own imagination - if you dare!

To enter for a chance of winning one of these coveted prizes signed by the author and artists, please leave a comment. Good luck. Special thanks to DK for supplying the competition prizes.

Explore the Star Wars galaxy through DK books.

About DK books
Since 1974, Dorling Kindersley has published an extensive range of internationally acclaimed titles in 51 languages for adults and children. As the UK's market leader in illustrated non-fiction, we pride ourselves on creating books that combine comprehensive information and superb design.

Over the years, as the world's leading family illustrated publisher, we have inspired and informed readers who find DK books to be educational, distinctive and of consistently high quality. We value this reputation and will continue to create reference titles that are, without question, exceptional.