The purpose of Livegamers monthly celebrity is to reveal the hidden skeletons celebrities might have, meaning what games do they play, why, and do they even play at all?
This time our Monthly Celeb is Robert ”Gaz” Stjärnström, the singer of world known metalband Machinae Supremacy.
”The Swedish metal act MACHINAE SUPREMACY has already made their place in history by being one of the first bands to successfully embrace and utilize the internet and filesharing to gain a huge fanbase before ever having signed a record deal, received airplay or any form of sponsored promotion. They’ve reached out to all corners of the world, from Israel and China to the USA and Australia, and today this website has over 100 000 song downloads every month (that’s roughly 650 gigabytes of music being downloaded monthly). Their unique blend of metal, soundtrack and video game music has earned them even more praise and elevation in the underground music scene, and today MACHINAE SUPREMACY receives fanmails from all over the planet on a daily basis.”
-www.machinaesupremacy.com
Robert Stjärnström FactFile
Nickname: Gaz, or Starbaby
Occupation: game music producer
Age: 29
Horoscope: Taurus
Gaming platforms: Wii and DS.
Idols: Joss Whedon
Motto: Always overkill everything.
Howdy Robert. Thank you for letting us interview you. How’s it hanging?
Awesome. Just awesome. 🙂
Machinae Supremacy has had influences from various videogames and uses lots of SID-sounds. When did gaming take over your heart and what was your first gaming platform?
My mom bought a C64 for me when I was a kid. That was a year or two before I discovered Nintendo. But I was a fairly early convert, you might say.
You are known of using samples from old games and also making a version of the main theme of Gianna Sisters. Are these songs / samples picked by random or are they from the games you have been a fan of?
Some of the games chosen are very dear to us, but we have chosen some of the games for our medleys simply because of their music. It doesn’t make us less ”true”, does it? 🙂
Machinae Supremacy is quite a underground thing in Finland, still your gigs fill up the bars. Do you think that is because of the filesharing or is it just cool to listen to underground music?
I think Machinae Supremacy wouldn’t be anywhere today without filesharing and our website releases. I’m not sure if people think about ’underground music’ in that way, though, with that level of awareness of what is and what is not undergruond, but I totally get that it feels cool to listen to stuff that other people don’t know about. That is something I enjoy a lot myself. But I would also like to think that people think Machinae Supremacy is cool because of our music and style, not just because of how we’ve reached out into the world.
If you have to choose 3 games where Machinae Supremacy would play the main theme, what games would they be?
Metroid Prime 3, Unreal Tournament 3, and Grand Theft Auto 4. It’s not too late is it?!!? ;P
How much do you pay attention to in-game music?
A LOT. I simply can’t let it go. 🙂
Have you played Guitar Hero games on Xbox or Playstation? How do you feel about them as a musician?
They’re a lot of fun. It would have been nice if you could do more complex things, like Improvisation and Jam session or whatever, but that still might make the basic game idea too complex. Me and Jonne reviewed the first Guitar Hero for Swedish GamingEye and we gave a pretty high rating, so we’re definitely fans.
Do you consider yourself to be a game-a-holic?
Not really. Not anymore. I used to, but now I know that I don’t have as much time, so I try to focus all my game time on something that is really worth it.
And what games do you play?
Basically any game that you get to kill things in. I’m not sure if that’s a genre, but that is what I love the most. Killing monsters and people and whatever. And guns. You probably need guns to kill the monsters, too, I’m not all that into swords and anything like that.
On average, how much do you play in a week?
Right now, almost nothing. I play some DS when I get the chance, but since I finished Twilight Princess I haven’t found a Wii game I’m really interested in. And I won’t get an Xbox befora GTA4 comes out.
What gaming hardware do you have?
At home right now there is only a Wii and a DS. I own a PS2, but I haven’t seen it for years. Friends keep borrowing it among themselves, among other reasons to play Guitar Hero. 🙂
Is there any consoles in your tour bus, and if there is, what do you play on them?
Currently our tour bus is fairly small, so there’s no room for anything more than individual DS:s. Currently, my DS heavily features Megaman ZX and Ultimate Spider-Man, that is, when I don’t read scanned comic books on it, which I also enjoy quite a lot.
Name the all-time Top 3 games
Metroid Prime 1, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Jet Set Radio Future. I know maybe I should have thrown in some of the old classics in that list, but in all fairness I think these three games are better than any of my old favourites.
What game do you expect the most at this moment?
Metroid Prime 3.
What do you generally think about gaming. E.g. Is it comparable to real sports in any sense?
Wow, difficult question. I think gaming, just like sports, is generally a good thing but like all things, if you overdo it it can affect your life in a negative way. I’m not really a big sports fan, to be honest, so to me it would seem that games give you a lot more varied experiences than sports (new worlds, new enemies and new gameplay, instead of the same field with the same teams time and again), but you miss out on a lot of excercise that way, obviously. 🙂 Plus, of course, in games you get to kill people. They don’t let you do that in sports (yet). ;D
What do you think gaming is going to be in the future?
I think there’ll be more physical interaction, like Nintendo has shown us with the Wii and the DS, outselling their competitors with ease. As gaming becomes more mainstream and suffers less from the ”nerd”-stigma that it has in the past, the range of games offered will be widened to include everything you can think of. I wouldn’t be surprised if we soon see work-out games intended for stay-at-home housewives, or possibly even martial arts games that feature full-body motion capture suits.
What are your favourite competitive games?
The one I’ve played the most is easily Counter-Strike, I must admit. I used to be pretty good at it, too. Other than that, I had a long run of Unreal Tournament. If you want to look back into the realm of total old-school, I’d say Ice Climber. As soon as I get another Wiimote, I’m downloading Ice Climber on Virtual Console.
Have you visited Livegamers or PCGamers?
Sorry, no. 🙂 I suppose I will, though… After this. 🙂
Care to send regards to our readers?
Battle the forces of evil with no remorse. And be excellent to eachother. Peace, out.
Please check out www.machinaesupremacy.com for great metal blended with videogame music!
Thank you Robert for this interview and hope to see you on gigs in Finland soon!