Dr. Robitnik's Mean Bean Machine

Today I want to talk briefly about a topic that is long overdue: Sega Genesis's Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine.


We've mentioned it a couple times, but I think this video game deserves its own post.


Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine is from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.  However, Sonic never appears in the game, but we do see Dr. Robotnik, Sonic's arch-enemy.

The setting for this game is on a planet called Mobius, where evil Robotnik is removing all of the happiness and music from the planet.  He is turning all of the bean citizens of the planet into robots, and your mission as the gameplayer is to save these bean citizens from the dungeon by playing DRMBM.  From the DRMBM wikipedia page:

Dr. Robotnik has hatched a plan to ensure that no music or fun remains on Mobius. To do this, he kidnaps the jolly citizens of Beanville and stuffs them into a giant robotising machine called the Mean Bean-Steaming Machine (hence the name, Mean Bean Machine), so that they become devious little robot slaves, as well as getting rid of them. The instruction manual states that the disappearing Beans are sent to the Mean Bean Machine, regardless of which character does this. The game ends after a face-off with Robotnik.

At first blush the game looks like Tetris or Dr. Mario.  Which is far from the truth.  As Hibernaut Bill Vehige put it, comparing a Robotnik player's game to a Tetris match is one of the most scathing insults in the game.  In Tetris, the goal is to clear lines of blocks. In DRMBM, clearing blocks is a method used to reach your goal to create chain reactions of  bean clusters; each group's elimination contributing to a cascade of clusters of beans that disappear in tandem.  Here's a video of gameplay (the concept is well-demonstrated around 1:22):

The game is based off of a puzzle game called Puyo Puyo.  We began playing it when we set up the studio and have taken it very seriously, even keeping stats on wins and losses and records against each other.  Anyone is welcome to challenge us in head-to-head competition, as we are the best band in the world at this game.

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Bass tracking complete!

Good ole Bill finished up all of our bass tracking this week.  It took him less time than it took for me to eat a J.J. Gargantuan  from Jimmy John's.  Check out a picture after the jump.

Just kidding, there's no studio photo, but what the hell, here's a recent pic...

It's a picture of Young William in a very well-known bar in South St. Louis.  With a pretty sizeable cockroach on the wall.

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Recording Drums Complete!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls:

For those of you who have been waiting for new cuts from the Hibernauts, your waiting days are numbered.  This past weekend, we entered the second part of our recording process.  Our first (and now complete) task was setting up the rest of our studio (dubbed "4050 Studios").  This tedious job, championed by our friends/engineers/producers/cohorts Dan Ruder and Dustin Schaeffer involved setting up and testing equipment. In the meantime, we had the opportunity to finish up some of the creative details of the record.

This past weekend we began phase two: actually tracking instruments.  One of the greatest side effects of recording in a studio set up in our buddy's house is that we were able to make ourselves very comfortable.  This past weekend was fun, and we all got to pretend like we were in day camp again, enjoying basketball, bar-b-que, jokes, and beverages.  We recorded drums this weekend, and thanks to Dan and Dustin's legwork, they sound great.   Now the primary drum parts are finished, which means that this blogger has the bulk of his work complete!

Continuing on with our phase two, we will begin to record bass and guitar parts.  Watch for pictures of the band watching basketball as a guitar player becomes increasingly frustrated that he is getting ZERO support.

One further note about this new record:  For those of you who come out to shows often (probably the only people who are reading this anyway), we hope that you'll be happy to hear that most of the material on this record is brand new -- more specifically, 75% of the content of this record has never been played live or been heard outside of a rehearsal or recording session.  Hopefully you are as excited about that as we are.

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4050 Studios

Hello again, true believers. I hope this finds everyone enjoying their 2009 and new president.

Just wanted to give everyone an update on what kind of trouble we're getting into these days as a fivesome.  With our new talent Chad Rogers and a bag of new songs, we decided some time ago to record our next album.  In order to have full control over how the final product turns out, we've decided to take advantage of our collective skills and do the recording ourselves (which conveniently fits into our limited budget).  After the jump take a look at some of the construction of the studio that is being erected just for this recording project...   

Let's call this set of Pictures "Phase 1."  Some of you may have been to the basement of 4050 Taft before (this Hibernaut actually lived there for about a year), so you may recognize the layout/paint job.

You can see here that the first thing we did was clean the basement studio.  We had to move all of our gear to the side in order to scrub the floor with acid and other industrial chemicals.  Please notice the painted walls, which was our last band project.

Stay tuned for "Phase 2." In the meantime, if you have extra money and would like to donate to this record, email me.  We're currently waiting in an ever-lengthening line for Obama Bailout Cash.

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