Remember...The New Radicals

Back in the late nineties after I had just graduated high school and was bouncing between California and Arizona, not really sure what to do with my life but having so much fun along the way that I didn't really care what the future held, I remember one particular band that really contributed to the soundtrack of my life: the New Radicals. Blending upbeat pop and rock with a little bit of funk, the New Radicals album Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too hit the airwaves with a passion and caught my attention with their song, "You Get What You Give", a tune that pushed the idea of not giving up on your dreams but also took a stab at celebrities and real issues that were playing in the world at the time such as health insurance and cloning. The music video for this song was by far one of my favorite, showcasing a bunch of teenagers taking over a mall and terrorizing the adults there. Who doesn't fantasize about running rampant in a mall?!

Most of the New Radicals' music was known for taking slams at Western commercialism, religion and corporate entities, but what I really pulled from their songs was the idea of being your own person and not conforming to everyone else. I think the most intriguing tune that I found on the album was the title track, "Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too". Scoping out the lyrics cover that came with the CD, you'll notice that the lyrics that were written for the song are not the lyrics that are in the song. Instead, there is a trance-like pop melody with words I could never really figure out. Didn't bother me though. The song was played in my CD player in overkill when I was living a careless and adventure-filled life in California, and really put a capstone on what I believed to be some of my greatest memories for that period in my life.

I miss the New Radicals. I've always questioned what happened to them and doing some quick google searches or diving into Wikipedia, you'll find that Gregg Alexander, the frontman for the group, ended up leaving the band after the first album to work on other projects. A little fun fact is that Gregg coproduced "Game of Love", the popular song that Santana and Michelle Branch teamed up to do in 2002.


I don't think anything really beats the late nineties in terms of music, and I think the New Radicals earned their place in my memory. When youth was restless, the sky was the limit, and there was nothing to hold us back, their tunes displayed a sense of rebellion, of fun, and of originality.

Remember...Perfect Dark

 

For my first Remember... blog post, I thought I would bring to everyone's attention one of my favorite video games of all time: Perfect Dark.

In May 2000, a couple years before Rare sold its soul to Microsoft, the company came out with this awesome gem for the Nintendo 64. On the heels of its previous FPS hit, GoldenEye - which had released three years prior - Rare raised the bar in Perfect Dark with enhanced AI, unique weaponry, and an exciting storyline that took players across numerous levels with many different objectives that depended on what difficulty level you were playing on.

The game itself was one of the few to require the expansion pack, a hardware upgrade that was created to boost the memory of the N64 from 4MB to 8MB. There were other games that took advantage of the expansion pack but didn't require it to play the actual game. Perfect Dark can be played in multiplayer without the pack but requires it to embark on the solo gameplay.

The story begins on Earth, in the near future, and centers around Joanna Dark, a highly skilled operative for the Carrington Institute. The Institute is an R&D organization on the surface, but is really a clandestine espionage corporation which has an alliance with an alien race known as the Maians. The Carrington Institute is at odds with dataDyne, a defense contractor that has created ties with another alien race known as the Skedar - more brutal than the Maians, which they happen to be at war with. Joanna is sent on numerous missions to help stop the Skedar and dataDyne from completing their plans for world domination.

Aside from stellar solo gameplay, the game sported what I believe to be one of the best multiplayer platforms known to console. With the ability to customize the whole multiplayer experience from maps, weapons, and music that become unlocked via solo play, to the simulants whose customization includes appearance, skill level and even personality, Perfect Dark changed the face of multiplayer forever. I still sit around my 32" television on a regular basis owning my friends and family in a good game of multiplayer.

However outdated some may think the game has become, I think Perfect Dark still pushes the envelope when it comes to attention to detail and storyline being expressed in a video game.The developers even went so far to include their own faces on a lot of the characters and simulants and even hid a wedge of cheese in EVERY level of the game. It is rumored that this was originally supposed to be part of a time trial, where after you get every piece of cheese, you would unlock a super weapon, but the programmers apparently ran out of memory space to include it.

Perfect Dark has since expanded into the world of fiction with two novels, Perfect Dark: Initial Vector and Perfect Dark: Second Front, and a comic mini-series known as Janus' Tears.  There was also a Perfect Dark game on the Game Boy Color, and they have since come out with Perfect Dark: Zero on the Xbox 360. All of these take place before Perfect Dark on the N64, acting as prequels of sorts.

If you own an N64 and haven't checked out Perfect Dark, I would highly suggest you do so. You can find copies pretty easily at your local used video game shop or online. Perfect Dark will always be at the top of my favorite games list, sitting back and having drinks with Half Life 2 and Final Fantasy VII. Good times.