Team Teamwork, the people behind the Zelda hip-hop mashup The Ocarina of Rhyme are back once again and this time it’s all about mana, chocobos and one winged angels. Vinyl fantasy 7 mixes some of the most memorable Final Fantasy 7 tunes with some pretty neat hip-hop tunes (the cool kids still say neat, right?).

You can download the full album or listen to it online, prices start at $0, which is a pretty good bargain. My favorite is M.O.P.’s Ante Up mixed to the battle theme but I suggest you give them all a listen.

What game would you like Team Teamwork to mashup next? My vote’s for Megaman, or maybe Chrono Trigger.

[Vinyl Fantasy 7]

Miku fans rejoice, after the first 2 successful ‘live’ concerts by Hatsune Miku there’s, you guessed it, going to be a 3rd one. This time on March 9 of next year and it will be the first solo concert, completely Miku centered. Sadly they are sticking with the giant projector screen format instead of the holographic route. A pity, but I cant see the experience of going to see a computer program sing getting any less real.

[ANN]

Extremely slow news day today, instead please enjoy some Miku Christmas cheer!

File these under the ‘cool, but I’d never wear them’ category of anime merch. Strapya is taking preorders for these cool pairs of Dragonball headphones. At under $35 each you shouldn’t be expecting the best sound but you could totally plug them into an amplifier and turn the volume to, wait for it, over 9000. Come on I had to do it.

[ Strapya / Via Tokyomango]

Videogame music renditions is always cool but it’s not always exciting. Sure there were the days when whole orchestras getting together to play our favorite game tunes sent us on a journey of joy like we hadn’t ever experienced before… or since. But those day’s of flashy musical stunts couldn’t last forever, and so we find ourselves here. Listening to a hacked laser cutter playing the Super Mario Theme.

We’ve… come a long way I guess.

Tekken 6 isn’t the series’ best soundtrack. I don’t think Namco are ever going to touch the awesomness that was Tekken 3’s soundtrack. But 6 is certainly the most varied of the bunch sonically. Each piece is completely different in style and tone to the last. Many of them you wouldn’t associate with a Tekken game at all.

Amongst the various styles that the Namco sound team play with, “Fallen colony” is my pick of the bunch. It’s just a bad ass piece of music. Distinctly Japanesey, yet with many musical styles thrown into the mix. Live drums, kickin’ guitar solos, strings, chants, trumpets, percussions, drum ‘n bass, synths and several bars of awesome.

Dishing out cans of whoop ass to this song feels incredibly gratifying. More so if you manage to smash your sucker of a victim through the glass floor of the stage this music features on, and then juggle their arse up off the floor. Good times…good times.

Listen: Fallen colony

Tekken 6 OST
© 2007 Namco Bandai

For the mp3 players: Fallen colony

We’ve seen lots of people do their own renditions of Videogame themes but it’s much more rare to see someone do a remarkable anime music performance. Much more remarkable is it when it’s a whole marching band performing an anime theme!

Such is the case with Towson University’s TIGER Marching Band and their rendition of Cowboy Bebop’s Tank! a couple of weeks ago. You can almost imagine the geek fervor it must have taken to get the whole band to go along with it. It’s an arrangement for marching band so there are subtle differences with the original theme but this is something we definitely want to see more of!

We shouldn’t be shocked by the various guises, ways and fashions in which Hello Kitty gets pimped. You’d be harder pressed to find something she hasn’t had her faceless mouth all over. But still; Kitty finds ways to make us feel inner shame, sickness, disappointment, yet also a great deal of commendability for her knack for rolling with what ever is popular at any given time. Lady Gaga is currently the world’s ‘it girl’ on the music scene, and Hello Kitty is right there along with her. Do not knock the hustle of Hello kitty. Ever!

[Gaga daily]

One of my good friends is a Persona freak. He loves the games and owns every single PlayStation release of the series. A few days ago he’d got himself a copy of Persona 4. He was opening it as I was talking to him on the phone. “Oh, it comes with the soundtrack!” He put it on and as he skipped through the tracks, I caught a whiff of some J-Pop. “Stop. What song was that? Go back!” “My affection”. I have a soft spot for easy breezy J-Pop that are so sickly sweet and happy-go-lucky that it’s enough to make you sick and vomit an ice cream cone with a side of rainbow. And “My affection” has buckets of sweetness. All it took was the “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeeeaaah”’s and I was on the song like a fly on shit. It’s just a really nice song. It isn’t a main theme or a major centerpiece song or anything. It just plays when you’re wandering around a town! I love it. I’ll probably get too sick of it eventually. But for now, it’s my pleasure that I’m not even guilty about. The entire Persona 4 soundtrack is pretty spiffy. In the realm of RPG’s, many tend to forget there are other hot composers other than Nobuo Uematsu.

Now if you’d excuse me whilst I go sing my shit. “Your affectioooooooon! Your affectioooooooon! Take it for coffeeeeeeee!”

Listen: Your affection

Composed by Shoji Meguro
Performed by Shihoko Hirata
Shin megami tensei: Persona 4 original soundtrack
© 2008 Aniplex

For the mp3 players: Your affection

While we’ve featured much weirder self-shot videos from Japan this one excels in the sadness category. Here’s a man who wears not one, but three different skimpy girl outfits while playing slap bass to a Hatsune Miku song. A song about having small breasts and pondering if drinking milk would fix it. He then performs breast increasing exercises on screen with amazing prowess, it’s clear he has vast experience in self-treatment.

There are men who see a moe character and are overcome with a lust and longing for the little girl. This man? This man wishes to be the little girl.

Also, Nice Boat reference at the end.