Music Jam 2016 Critique

Hello penguins! Welcome to my critique of the Music Jam 2016. I know I'm late, so I should begin my discussion as soon as possible.

The art of the latest Music Jam party is amazing. While a decent amount of the art is returning, a lot of it is remade or new for this party exclusively. Since there are many categories of rooms in this party, I'll discuss them all.

First, we have new rooms. this includes all rooms that are made new for this party. My favorite of these is the Beach.

It has some really nice art design. The Orca Straw looks really fine and well-polished. The design on the Lighthouse (which is a remake of the design from the Music Jam 2012 Lighthouse) is a really good recreation and works really well. The interview set looks really good, even though it looks like it may be copied and pasted with a bit of recoloring.

My least favorite of the new rooms is the Snow Forts.

This room is okay, but it has one isue that annoyed me for the entire length of the party- the stage does not have any shadows. That's the only issue I have with this room. If that isn't a testament to how good these few new rooms are, I don't know what is.

The next group of rooms is old rooms. The old rooms are very few, which means we get a bunch of new content. The old rooms chosen are good. We get the Backstage, Casa Fiesta, Coffee Shop, Pizza Parlor, and some of the rooms on the Music Cruise. My favorite reused room is the backstage.

This room was certainly a surprise. It's slightly modified in a few ways too; you can no longer buy instruments, and the door leading outside shows the night sky now. It's good to see this room reused; I really like how it was designed and there's a ton of details.

The Coffee Shop is also a good example of reusing rooms correctly.

This room was originally for the Hollywood Party back in 2013. I think it fits; the general aesthetic and color scheme work well for the Music Jam. The room uses a lot of blues and purples, just like the original Music Jam Coffee Shop from way back in 2008 and the newer one used from 2009 to 2012.

Music Jam 2008 - Coffee Shop

Ultimate Jam 2012 - Coffee Shop

A bad example of reused rooms at this event would be the Bridge from the Music Cruise.

Despite the fact that the rest of the party was at night only, the game designers neglected to realize that they left the daylight cycle on for the Music Cruise. So while a majority of the rooms are in the evening, the ship can be experiencing morning, afternoon, evening, or night. This was a big oversight and completely kills this room in particular. I'm clearly not a programmer, but I feel like it would be very little work to remove the daylight cycle. This is a big issue.

Another big issue with this party is that part of the island is experiencing the evening while other parts are as bright as day. Rooms like the Ski Village, Cove, and Iceberg are victims of this. In total, they would have to replace the SWFs of 7 rooms or so. If they had used the files from the Fashion Festival for those rooms, I doubt anyone would even care. But it's the same issue we experienced with the SoundStudio Party back in 2015. It's just lazy and it should have been fixed; but they went out of their way to make it worse by adding a gradient to the Beach and Forest showing that only parts of the island are lit in such a manner.

Being the Music Jam, you'd think it would have some good music, right? Well, you'd be correct. All of the music in this event match the context pretty well. A good example of this is the Beach. The track that plays is not new, nor was it designed for a previous Music Jam. It was made for another event, but it sounds orchestral; and orchestral music is the theme for the Beach. It's a good way to reuse content while making it seem new by putting it in an entirely new context.

This party has a lot more to do than some of the previous events such as the Finding Dory Party and the Zootopia Party. Many of the parties in 2017 were based on very specific things; Zootopia is about the movie. The world of the movie was rich and diverse, so I think they could have expanded further than they did. The Finding Dory Party however.... Most of Finding Dory takes place under the sea from what I understand. It's hard to make a lot of rooms based on Finding Dory without it getting stale quick. I know I got sick of the underwater room after a few weeks.

Turns out it's called the Reef. I guess you learn more every day.

The Music Jam, however, has more interesting rooms. They all look different and diverse; and most importantly, there's tons of stuff to do in all of them. The Forest has a rock stage. The Plaza has a big red carpet event and a limo. The Snow Forts has a pop stage with Cadence and the Penguin Band. The Town has Times-Square type billboards on the buildings. The Dock has the Casa Fiesta and the Music Cruise. The Beach has the Orca-Straw. All rooms have something new and interesting added to them that makes them unique. No room is bland or uninteresting. (Okay, maybe the Arcade's decorations weren't very special. But that's one out of 22 or so.) It feels like each decorated room has its own purpose, like they were designed to be played with in a very specific manner. And for that, I commend the art team.

And finally, the collectibles. Does this party even have collectibles? Of course it does! It has mascot backgrounds- 2 of them. You can collect one for meeting DJ Cadence and another for meeting any individual member of the Penguin Band. And that's all.

Wow. That's a disappointing amount of collectibles.

What would have been cool is if they had put free item boxes around the island in rooms that normally aren't that interesting- The Arcade, the Ice Rink, and the Mine Shack, for example. This party would have been much more interesting and much more appreciated if they had done so.

So that's what I thought of the Music Jam 2016. So how does it rank? Well, you'll see when I release my new ordinal scale at the end of the month. Until then, see ya later!

Sources: Club Penguin Wiki Archives

Casa Fiesta! The Musical

Hello penguins! Today I will be telling you about an old song that appears as if nobody remembers its existence.

In 2008, Club Penguin decided to make a new theme song for the returning Winter Fiesta party. This led to the creation of 229. 229 is most well known today as the Ski Village music from the 10th Anniversary Party, but that track was actually not played in that during the Music Jam 2011. The real song that played is titled 292, and is actually a bit creepy in parts. Listen to it by clicking the song ID or by clicking the following link:

This is the link.

Do you like the song 292? Between that and 229, which one do you prefer? Goodbye!

Thanks to the Club Penguin Wiki Archives for use of music files.

The Water Park

Hello penguins! I will now be showcasing a popular room from a past Summer Party in Club Penguin.

The fourth and final takeover of 2013 was sure interesting; it was a combination of the Music Jam 2011, the Summer Kickoff Party 2007, and the Water Party 2008, and including new elements from the Disney Channel Special "Teen Beach Movie". The Water Party division of the party featured obviously the party room Epic Wave, and also included the Waterpark.

The Stadium was transformed into a pool with water slides for this party. This room was quite popular, and is a favorite of many. Standing on any of the three gray arrows will take your penguin down the water slide and into the pool below. 

Do you like this room? Would you like it to return? Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what item was available in this room. Goodbye!

Thanks to the Club Penguin Wiki for images and information.

Operation: Tri-umph Party Review

Oops, I messed up my schedule so now I have two party reviews in a row. Oh well.

Hello penguins! Today I am going to be talking about Operation: Tri-umph, also known as Operation: Doom. I sure am late posting this, so let's get started.


First of all, I am going to talk about the rooms. During the first week, only the Snow Forts was decorated. I do not think this is a good idea, nor did the community, and I am fully aware of why; This room isn't very good.

The dance floor does not look okay. It has these awkward ellipses in the middle that make the floor look odd; I'm glad they haven't done it since. The satellite sticking into the ground appears like it's facing completely in the opposite direction.... for some odd reason. I do like how the flags have been turned into disco balls, though. That's cool.

In week three, my favorite decorations were released.

I like the Plaza, but I don't know why the Pet Shop, Park, the three hotel rooms, and the Underground Pool aren't in gray. Oh well. I like how the items available in this room are in a briefcase instead of a crate as the last two were.


Now I am going to judge review the music in this party.

The first track, 1105, is quite obnoxious. It has a ton of screaming in the background, and it gets annoying very quickly. It is quite repetitive and repeats itself after less than a minute, 55.353 seconds to be exact. It never comes to a complete stop; it is quite definite where it begins and ends. The buildup seems to have just 5 or 6 notes used multiple times. Somewhere near the middle of the track, there is a portion that just plays twelve notes, made up of four different piano keys, while the artist repeatedly presses the same button on an 808 drum really quickly, which bothers me quite a bit.

The Town Center's music, 1109, is a remake of Track 297 from the Fall Fair parties, and is quite fitting with how much buzz the Town Center recieved in the second week of this party. It includes the buzzing of small vehicles in it, matching how it encourages playing around with little cars and stuff; not to mention that the most popular cars, the Wheelers, are from the Fair 2011.

And finally, the Cave Maze's music, 899, is welcoming and fun. It starts off slowly, but gets better as time goes on. It begins with some odd (possibly string) instrument, which plays two measures four times, but then it turns into an epic tune reminding me of the Festival of Flight for a few seconds and then encores the two measures four more times. After this portion of the track, a magnificent xylophone part is played and really reminds me of the Adventure Party 2009 and a bit of the Temple of Fruit and the Underwater Expedition from 2012. This xylophone part is definitely my favorite part of the song; I am a bit disappointed that it isn't present for longer.


The items were quite controversial for this party, and now I'll explain why.

This party has no new free items, but instead has 3 returning free items and 18 new free items for members only. They tried to boost sales for memberships, so they spent their time remaking a few old free items as members only, when they should have just let them be. The worst of these is probably the Music Jam Cap (ID 1266). Said cap, which was re-released for the 10th Anniversary Party, is for all players; yet the Dance Battle Cap (ID 21077), which is completely identical, is for members only.

Besides that, a few of the items, especially in the Town Center, seem just a tad improbable. For example, a large spoon will serve no purpose unless you run a site such as mine or PengFeed.

I know it's been said a bunch, but I wish they would've made at least three items for non-members.


And now, the most important factor of every party, the playability.

While we didn't get many things to do in the first week of the party, a lot more content was released in the second week. The Town Center has some really nice, fun things to do. We can play on the roads and the baseball diamond while we are super small.

The third week, the Plaza rooms were released, and this set was definitely the best. It had the maze returning from the Cave Maze event from May 2015. A lot of people reacted as if this was a bad or stupid thing, but I think it is quite wonderful. It gives newer players the opportunity to play a maze, and it adds to the otherwise small amount of events to do at this event. In doing this, they also give older players the chance to complete the maze, had they forgotten to log in for a few weeks in May 2015. I would say that the playability in this party is hit or miss.


The storyline for this event is simple and basic. Herbert decided that to make the penguins less of a nuisance, he would build a dance party at the Snow Forts. Second, he would use a shrinking machine to make all of the penguins really small. And third of all, he would take the color out of 2 and 1/2 rooms on the wonderful island of Club Penguin. To stop Herbert's evil scheme, the penguins had to find the main controls for the machines and shut it down. This is all well and good, except for a few questions: What would hosting a dance party do? I'm not completely sure. How would shrinking penguins make them less of a nuisance? Why didn't Herbert make any big machines like the Popcorn Bomb and the Sun Blocking Ray? This plan seems as he Herbert has stopped trying. In retrospect, this story sucks.


This party was a bit of a let-down. It had a few decent decorations, and the music was overall okay. The items weren't good, but it had a decent amount of things to do for a few days. The biggest problem was probably the story. I'd give this party a 4/10. Goodbye!

I would like to thank the Club Penguin Wiki and The Club Penguin Wiki Archives for use of .SWF files to take screenshots of, as well as music files. If you would like to see the unedited, uncut version of this blog post for whatever reason, click here.