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#WeeklyGameMusic: Servants of the Mountain (Final Fantasy X HD Remaster)

Posted on October 26, 2020 by Taro Omiya

In a bit of a twist, we visit this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic to a rearrangement of a mainline Final Fantasy game that wasn’t originally composed by Nobuo Uematsu. Servants of the Mountain, originally composed by Masashi Hamauzu, is perhaps an underrated gem that doesn’t get called out very often. This remix also gets a helping hand from Junya Nakano to give Final Fantasy X HD Remaster the fresh coat of pain it needs for modern hardware.

Final Fantasy X story is…rather confusing. It begins with the sports star, Tidus, heading out to a thrilling match of Blitzball, only to be swept up by a gigantic monster named Sin (…subtle). From there, he gets thrown with a group of aquatic scavengers to pick out some machine parts, then gets swept up again to the calm Besaid island. Thoroughly disoriented, he gets laughed at by the locals when he claims he’s from Zanarkland, as according to them, that civilization has perished a long time ago and only exists in folklore. In the midst of all this craziness, he’s invited by Yuna, the local’s summoner, to join her pilgrimage. He agrees, given he really doesn’t have much better to do, and Besaid was giving him a depression pretty quickly, anyway.

Interestingly, Final Fantasy X uses a turn-based combat that doesn’t utilize time like past entries. Instead, the player decides what moves to make to all party members during one turn: in doing so, an indicator regularly updates who will make which attack first. Naturally, all moves, both by players and enemies, are executed accordingly. This allows the player to easily swap out their party members in the middle of any turn, given each character specializes in exploiting a specific enemy weakness. Otherwise, exploration is the usual Final Fantasy fare: find keys, open doors, activate switches, trade items, etc.

Final Fantasy X was originally released on the Playstation 2. It’s HD Remaster was bundled together with its sequel, and is available on Windows via Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 3 and 4.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Peper Steak (OFF)

Posted on October 19, 2020 by Taro Omiya

We’ve highlighted Mortis Ghost’s OFF in the #WeeklyGameMusic before…over five years ago. Since I consider that a long enough time to return back to the topic, let’s talk about the most memorable track in the game, Peper Steak by Alias Conrad Coldwood. It’s perhaps the most bizarre JRPG battle music I’ve heard to date.

OFF is a freeware RPG Maker game that takes the popular turn-based JRPG narrative and completely deconstructs it. The nefarious plot starts with you, the “puppeteer,” to take control of the Batter and “purify” the world. After all, if the game tells you specters are evil, then surely eradicating them is the right thing to do, right? So begins the Batter and your journey as you explore a universe composed of four basic elements: metal, meat, gas, and plastic. With it to (not) assist you are some of the most pathetic and scared NPCs to grace text on-screen, as you and the Batter takes down each guardian of this universe.

OFF uses a time-based battle system where the party attacks after their cooldown time is over, obviously taking inspirations from older Final Fantasy games. Since enemies can attack your party while you are making decisions, naturally, the game encourages you to make quick decisions. Otherwise, the usual RPG Maker fare applies: exploration is largely grid based in a stark, minimalist world. Objectives frequently involve the usual RPG tropes, including finding keys, trading items, entering codes, etc. Oddly enough, the game does feature an overworld…but mysteriously, is only one screen large. While purely there for aesthetics case, it does make the player start to question the intentions of Batter’s journey…

OFF is a free PC game that was originally written in French. A translated version is freely available at Starmen.net.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Little Jack (Skies of Arcadia)

Posted on October 12, 2020 by Taro Omiya

Power through this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic with a energy-boosting track from the SEGA Dreamcast classic, Skies of Arcadia, developed by Overworks! The wonderfully adventurous track, Little Jack, composed by Yutaka Minobe and Tatsuyuki Maeda, is one of the earliest tracks that plays in the game, especially when your party ventures off of your own floating home island, and into the skies on your own sky ship. A fantastic introduction to get you pumped in this retro, turn-based JRPG.

I’ve previously covered Skies of Arcadia in an older post (before the 2020 blog post series refresh), but to help everyone catch up: in this game world, you control the sky pirates, Vyse and Aika, to explore all the floating, airborne islands across the vast skies. That’s right, there’s no planetary ground in this fantastical universe! The plot kicks off with the duo rescuing Fina from the scrupulous Valuan army. Upon returning to their Robin Hood-like home base, Fina reveals that her mission is to collect the Moon Crystals, powerful magical crystals that comes from the six moons, before they fall into the wrong hands. Immediately sensing adventure, the three teenagers team up to recover these crystals.

While Skies of Arcadia shares a lot in common with any retro turn-based JRPG — maze-like exploration, HP bar for health, MP for magic — one of it’s more unique features in its normal battle system is the Skill stat. Unlike all the other meters, Skill is shared between all party members in the field, and is the primary resource consumed for dishing out the most powerful attacks. Recovering skill can be done by sacrificing a character’s turn with Focus, and/or simply letting the party’s turn end. A large majority of the player’s decision-making will focus on how to best allocate Skill points during battle to balance hitting hard, and defending.

Skies of Arcadia was originally released for the Dreamcast. It was later ported to the Gamecube as Skies of Arcadia: Legends.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Whetfahrt Cheesefunk (Bit.Trip Presents…Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien)

Posted on October 5, 2020 by Taro Omiya

You’d think a jazzy composition wouldn’t work too well on a game that requires paying close attention to the music’s rhythm, but the auto-runner Bit.Trip Presents…Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien (phew!), developed by Choice Provisions, throws away all common sense and just makes it happen. Whetfahrt Cheesefunk, composed by Matthew Harwood, takes a nice, soft swinging beat, and crescendos it to a deliciously chaotic composition. An interesting decision for a game that demands every single fiber of the player’s attention, lest they get hit, and be forced to replay from the beginning of the level.

The game’s album is available on Bandcamp, by the way: choiceprovisions.bandcamp.com/track/whetfahrt-cheesefunk

Runner2 is a bizarre side-story the happens between two Bit.Trip series entries, Runner and Fate. In short, series villain Mingrawn Timbletot fires a laser at Commander Video, thus whisking him away into a new dimension…the 3D realm! Tired plot point aside, this leaves Commander Video doing what he already does best in Bit.Trip Runner: keep running right in hopes of finding an exit out of this world.

While an auto-runner in the same vain as Canabult, Runner2 has multiple levels with a clear ending, collectibles, and even boss battles. Naturally as the music would imply, the audio design is the primary highlight of Runner2, making it a stand-out among other games in the same genre. Obstacles and collectibles are deliberately placed to create a sense of rhythm and memorization one would expect from music games. On top of this, each successful action is awarded with a note that, stung together, creates a procedurally generated music matching with the composition already playing in the background. In essence, the player gets to feel like they’re composing music.

Runner2 is available on Windows, OS X, and Linux via Steam; Playstation Vita, 3, and 4; iOS, Xbox 360, and finally, Wii U.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Tarrey Town (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild)

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Taro Omiya

Relax with this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic, and let your worries wash away. Even when exploring a post-apocalyptic universe, Nintendo still provides some unexpected optimism with tracks like Tarry Town, composed by quite a large team of composers and sound designers, including Hajime Wakai, Manaka Kataoka, Yasuaki Iwata, and Soshi Abe. As the game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild demonstrates, it’s still possible to rebuild anew from the rubble of the past.

Much like past entries, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild begins with our hero Link being awakened from sleep. But this time, instead of a nice comfy bed, he gets up…from what appears like a high-tech cryogenic chamber. To add to the confusion, it turns out he’s amnesiac. Upon stumbling into an old man, the stranger helps Link catch up with some shocking details: he, the chosen hero, has failed to fulfill the prophecy. With the hero deftly defeated by Ganon and his army, the Hyrule kingdom has succumbed to his destruction. Fortunately, Zelda managed to temporarily seal the great evil, putting both into a century-long slumber. With only these scant details available to him, Link must travel across the vast, now-unfamiliar lands, and devise a plan to defeat Ganon before the seal loses its strength.

Taking notes from other open-world games, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an Action JRPG that involves making use of whatever Link can find around him. This often means that Link steals food, weapons, arrows, and armor from other people, both living and long deceased (though it appears the living town folks don’t mind). In his large pockets include the Sheikah Slate, a handy tablet that can create useful tools out of thin air, including bombs, pillars of ice, and magnets. It furthermore doubles as a map, where useful mini-map markers can be manually placed. The game often starts like a survivalist experience, but it won’t take long for most players to master the elements of the game, and take on some of the most powerful monsters it throws at you.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is available on the Nintendo Switch and Wii U. No other ports exists as of this writing, but a sequel is in works.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Discothéque Rouge, After Hours (Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine)

Posted on September 21, 2020 by Taro Omiya

Need a little more chiptune in your life? The absolutely talented Chipzel has you covered with this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic. Her remix of Discothéque Rouge, After Hours, from Pocketwatch Games’s multiplayer heist game, Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine is some of the tastiest gems out their to savior. Enjoy it…while it lasts…

They can’t keep us locked in! Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine begins with a group of criminals breaking out of prison, and sneaking out. The triumph is short-lived, however, when the company realizes they’re penniless and wanted. After much deliberation, the party comes to a decision: escape to Monaco, by every means possible. Thus begins their long journey of gathering more criminal connections to assist their freedom.

Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine is an award-winning cooperative heist game. You and three other skilled thieves infiltrate heavily guarded buildings to — what else? — steal everything valuable. The innovation kicks in when every player realizes they’ll need to share information between each other as they deal with each character’s limited vision and hyper-specialized abilities. It’s pretty normal for something to go wrong during the heist: alarms triggering, guards taking notice, etc. After all, much of the fun is trying to figure out how to deal with the escalating situation amongst your group of friends.

Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine is released on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Switch. It’s also available on Steam.

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