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MTV Music Generator
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Graphics & Sound:
There are basically two different types of graphics involved in MTV Music Generator. The Interfaces and the Music Videos. The Interfaces are somewhat utilitarian when actually making a piece of music, but are more whimsical for the Multiplayer Music Jam sessions. In either case, the interfaces are fairly straight forward. The music creation menus are a slight departure from customary Windows menus, but make enough sense to be easy to pick up on. The Music Jam interface is all game, splitting the keyboard up among up to four players... or allowing for a much less cramped internet play. The second type of graphics to be found in MTV Music Generator is the computer generated music videos. Using cues in the music, MTV Music Generator can create amazingly beautiful light shows, reminiscent of Cthugha, or early completely computer generated music videos.
As for the sound, there are some good examples included with the program, but beyond that, the quality of the music is completely dependent upon your skill. You can play around with the sounds and the pretty colors, watch auto-generated videos for your audio cds, create original music, or make a remix of your favorite artists' songs. The high performance software is in there. It's up to you to learn how to use it. (Oh, and it's also up to you to contact and secure permission to use any audio clips from their respective copyright owners.) |
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Gameplay:
The most interactive game-like part of MTV Music Generator would have to be the multiplayer Music Jam mode. Even this mode doesn't have any scoring system. It's merely a way for you to jam with a few friends, in your room or across the country. The light show aspects of Music Generator are cool, to be sure, but are merely eye-candy. The most valuable part of Music Generator is it's sequencing abilities. It is basically a music sequencer built for fun. Music Generator makes playing around with samples easy to do, creating riffs a simple task, and even comes with a fairly large library of different riffs covering everything from vocals (samples) to drum beats, to rhythm, melodies... even sound effects. You can create a pretty decent song with the ingredients that come in the box, or you can use a microphone, .wav format samples on your computer, samples from cds, midi instruments (not included... duh), along with a host of easy to use software tools to refine these, and create a new song with nothing but original sounds.
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Difficulty:
Learning to use MTV Music Generator is not a very difficult task. Making wonderful music that everyone will fall all over themselves to get their hands on is not as easy. Simply enjoying the pretty colors of the automated music videos accompanying your favorite music is pretty much mindless. In other words, MTV Music Generator has something for everyone. The results can be a few good laughs with a few good friends, or some truly amazing audio tracks that could very realistically make it onto a (local college) radio station, and possibly help launch your new alias as "DJ Fill-in-the-Blank." Or not. It takes little to get into it, and can make some pretty good results if you play with it enough. At any rate, without a scoring system, who jams the best is a matter of your opinion versus theirs.
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Game Mechanics:
MTV Music Generator is not really even a game. If it is, it's one of those 'non-competitive' games in which no one loses. What Music Generator is (fer sure) is a cool, fun utility for creating music and playing around with graphics and sound. It supports 3Dfx, ATi, Matrox, nVidia and 3D labs graphics cards, and requires only one CD for network play. If you're familiar with the critically acclaimed PlayStation version of MTV Music Generator, imagine the same thing, without the memory limitations, with added 3D accelerator support, and a lot more input options, including the use of midi instruments/devices and LAN/internet play capabilities. They haven't made any blunders in making the PC version, so it's essentially a winner (like the PSX version), with a lot of extra goodness on top. A must have for music enthusiasts of all levels.
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-Geck0, GameVortex Communications AKA Robert Perkins |
Minimum System Requirements:
Win95/98 or Windows 2000, Pentium II 266 CPU, 32MB RAM, 16 bit DirectX compatible Soundcard, DirectX 7.0 compatible 3D graphics card with 4MB RAM, 4x CD-ROM, 275MB HD Space
Recommended Specification: Win95/98 or Windows 2000, Pentium II 350 CPU, 64 MB RAM, 16 bit DirectX compatible Soundcard, DirectX 7.0 compatible 3D graphics card with 8MB RAM 8x CD-ROM, 300 MB HD Space |
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Test System:
Win 98, AMD K62 400MHz, 64 MB RAM, Voodoo 3 2000 PCI Video Card, 8x CD-ROM drive, Vortex PCI sound card, keyboard, Razer BoomSlang 2000 PCI |
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