By Kieron Gillen on October 18th, 2007 at 4:42 pm.
Okay. We said it had got as silly as it could go. We suspect we’re only just getting started, as an Idea struck Alec and I after we both found this…
By Jeremy of Anonymous Lefty. And then we realised that Jonathan Coulton has posted the lyrics and the chords of Still Alive over at his blog. Cultural Object A + Cultural Object B = Idea C.
We think people should do their own cover versions of Portal and post them to Youtube. No, really.
Seriously, it’s a great idea. We mean it. And while it’s never going to be as good as A Girl Flicking Her Hair Melodramatically In The Midnight Nevada Desert While Miming Total Eclipse Of The Heart, it’ll still be pretty neat. Also, if we get enough, we could work out how we could insert the MP3s in a RPS: PORTAL: THE MUSICAL patch into Portal to take the place of the technoid original music. Having – say – Darrtt hollering Still Alive while playing a Glockenspiel while you work out how you’re meant to do Level 18′s jumpy bits is, as far as I can work out, just about the only way to improve Portal. No, really.
Stop looking at me like that. Anyway – many thousands of people read RPS every day. Of them, many hundreds are musically talented. Of them, many dozens have too much time on their hand. And of them, at least six must think this is a good idea. Get filming and post your links in the comments thread. We compel it.
Those who are about to Rock: We salute you.
And to get your performance mood, let’s end on a song. Another take on Still Alive, found on Mr Coulton’s blog, of someone playing Still Alive on some manner of electric-in-game piano.
META.
(Er… we don’t really think people will do it. But we thought that we should create a forum of such ill-considered behaviour)
18/10/2007 at 17:43 Dan says:
Haha, both renditions were brilliant.
18/10/2007 at 18:41 The_B says:
Why has The Internet not yet shown us an actual Weighted Companion Cube cake yet? For the ultimate in exsistentiality. Or something.
18/10/2007 at 19:00 Zell says:
I think sneaking “Still Alive” into one of those drunken 2 AM karaoke party at some gaming convention or other would be our best bet — although scifi/fantasy fiction or tabletop gaming might find a similarly receptive audience. I’ll see what I can do.
18/10/2007 at 19:05 Alec Meer says:
If someone could make a Frets on Fire version, I would love them always.
18/10/2007 at 19:08 kid says:
“still alive” seems plain without GLaDOS…
18/10/2007 at 19:09 Hobbes says:
What we need to do is start a campaign to get Valve to release the track sans vocals. It would be very easy for them to do this, since they’ll have the masters.
Voila, instant karaoke, without inept web-musician types ‘interpreting’ the song.
Also, First person to re-skin a PC karaoke thing to look like the end credits wins a virtual cookie*.
* to collect your prize, please visit Google.co.uk and save your search preferences.
18/10/2007 at 19:11 Kast says:
“Why has The Internet not yet shown us an actual Weighted Companion Cube cake yet? For the ultimate in exsistentiality. Or something.”
0.0 Need flour, water, milk, eggs, butter, marzipan, cream, pink and purple colouring agents… yes, it can be done. It must be done!
Making it a cube could be difficult… could do one side, about a third of a half a side thick… *Muses on it*
18/10/2007 at 19:29 The_B says:
If somone finds a good cake recipie, we could have the bestest ever competition in the making…
18/10/2007 at 19:51 Nick says:
Just do it in 3 square layers, the icing part would be a challenge though.
18/10/2007 at 19:56 Thelps says:
In the second clip, are those the hands from Lawnmower Man? Could have sworn I’ve seen them somewhere before. Then again that looks like Gary’s Mod, so perhaps they’re featured somewhere in that and I just (criminally) haven’t used the wondrous ol’ thang enough.
18/10/2007 at 19:56 azz0r says:
Wheres the mp3? ;)
18/10/2007 at 20:40 dartt says:
Ah-hem-hem! Do-re-mi-fah-soh-lah!
*tunes guitar*
18/10/2007 at 20:42 Kelduum says:
If you are going to make a WCC cake, don’t forget garnishes such as:
* Fish shaped crackers.
* Fish shaped candies.
* Fish shaped solid waste.
* Fish shaped dirt.
* Fish shaped ethyl benzene.
* Pull and peel licorice.
* Fish shaped organic compounds and sediment shaped sediment…
18/10/2007 at 20:53 Aquatopia says:
What we need is someone to do the ABC notation for this song.
…what? For some reason I have a desire to play this song in LotRO.
19/10/2007 at 06:05 Brog says:
“A Girl Flicking Her Hair Melodramatically In The Midnight Nevada Desert While Miming Total Eclipse Of The Heart”
..that really bothered me for a while. Until I realised that this was in USA so the girl flicking her hair _wasn’t_ in the driver’s seat.
19/10/2007 at 09:26 Kwan says:
Aqua: I wish someone would too, I had to dig up my 10 year old keyboard to try and figure it out going with the videos and its pretty hard, being someone with no music experience whatsoever. Anyhow I managed to get the ‘Aperture Science’ bit down to this:
G G Gm E E Gm
Aperture Science
G G Gm E E, Gm D, E A
We do what we must, because, we can
E Gm G,
For the good,
That’s all I have so far, will work on the rest later tonight I guess
19/10/2007 at 10:02 Adam Hepton says:
STAY Alive? You desecrate the memory of GLaDOS with your slap-dash reporting, Gillen.
19/10/2007 at 12:18 Bozzley says:
Jonathan Coulton lists the chords on his blog, as the article says (and links to it as well).
It sounds nice when finger-picked on a guitar, but as stated above, it’s shit without GLaDOS :(
Although I’ve just given myself an idea….
19/10/2007 at 20:47 Matu says:
http://www.dpwiki.eu/aperturescience/ is another way to go. It should be possible to change the pitch of them and vary the speed, but I’m not that good.
20/10/2007 at 23:44 Theory says:
Here’s a link to what is easily the best third-party puzzle yet. :-)
21/10/2007 at 22:12 TheCakeExists says:
Weighted Companion Cube Cake: http://rec-roomninja.deviantart.com/art/Weighted-Companion-Cake-67652478
22/10/2007 at 00:56 The_B says:
And now The Internet is complete. Good job everyone, and we hope you have enjoyed the World Wide Web.
22/10/2007 at 00:56 The_B says:
And a slightly better one here