Tag: Sega

#WeeklyGameMusic: A Song for Eternal Story (Phantasy Star Online)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

Following up with a SEGA music from last week, we’re moving right along to their lesser known IP, the Phantasy Star series. More specifically, the first online-connected entry in the long-running JRPG sci-fi franchise, Phantasy Star Online (PSO). Fans of this game from the Dreamcast and Gamecube era could probably immediately guess which track I’ll be introducing for this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic: the iconic title music, A Song for Eternal Story, by Hideaki Kobayashi and Fumie Kumatani.

Phantasy Star Online begins with a start of a new hope. With the home planet ravaged and inhospitable, your civilization journeys across space in an effort to discover a new planet to call home. When one of these colony-carrying spaceships, Pioneer 2, receives a message from Pioneer 1 of an excellent candidate they dub, “Ragol,” the former immediately beelines to the new destination. By the time they arrive, however, communication with Pioneer 1 — which up to this point has been regular with updates on their progress colonizing Ragol — suddenly ceases. Readings on the planet indicates a sudden large explosion occurred on the newly built city just before Pioneer 1 went silent. Suspicions high, the Pioneer 2 government asks for highly qualified soldiers, “Hunters,” to scout the planet and discover what dangers might lurk in this lush, unexplored land.

As a Diablo-inspired action-JRPG, Phantasy Star Online greatly diverges from past entries’ turn-based roots. A typical play session involves taking the following steps:

  1. Form a party of a maximum of four real players in Pioneer 2, which acts as the lobby.
  2. The leader of the party picks a quest from the quest counter. This prompts the game to procedurally generate a dungeon, themed under the environment the quest takes place in.
  3. All party members meet at the Ragol teleporter (after making preparations, of course) to start the dungeon-crawling adventure.

Combat in PSO is in real-time, where the player can customize their button inputs on what attack or spell to execute when pressed. The weapon the player equips dictates what action they can assign to their input pallet (weapons can be quick-swapped with a simple menu). Finally, the player’s class — chosen during the character creation screen — determines what weapons they can equip, thereby limiting what actions they can take. Given the game was originally designed with dial-up internet connection in mind, some technical limitations were enforced in the game that appear archaic to online games today. For example, players walk very slowly, and are unable to jump in PSO, making melee-heavy characters incapable of hitting flying enemies, and forcing them to rely on their gun-trotting or magic-wielding allies to handle the job.

Phantasy Star Online was originally released on Dreamcast, Gamecube, and PC. While official servers for the game has been put offline for quite a while now, the fan-supported PSO: Blue Burst Ultima Server is still online as of this writing. Of course, the other route is simply to check out the game’s free-to-play spiritual sequel, Phantasy Star Online 2, available on Xbox One and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store; which after 8 years since release, is still getting content updates as of this writing.

Leave a Comment on #WeeklyGameMusic: A Song for Eternal Story (Phantasy Star Online) | Categories: #WeeklyGameMusic

#WeeklyGameMusic: Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 (Sonic Mania)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

Time to go old-new school, with retro-new game, Sonic Mania, developed by Christian Whitehead, Headcannon, and PagodaWest Games! OK, if I’m not making too much sense, here’s a simpler way of phrasing it: let’s enjoy this remix of Chemical Plant Zone theme by Tee Lopes, the track originally featured in Sonic 2. The new track, Chemical Plant Zone Act 2, is just as bopping as the original was on the old SEGA Genesis game!

Dr. Eggman (…or Robotnik, for purist) is at it again! After detecting strong signals from Angel Island, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles investigate to find the mad scientists and his robot army steal the Phantom Ruby gems. In an attempt to retrieve them back, the games suddenly activates, warping all the involved characters to past levels. You know…the usual Sonic plot…

Of course, the meat of Sonic Mania is it’s faithfulness to past 2D Sonic titles. Created by fans, for fans, Sonic Mania combines some of the best parts from each past entries. This includes adding unique twists to the momentum-based platformer, such as new power-ups, remixed boss battles, new environment hazards, and more. Played a 2D Sonic game before? You’ll be right at home here!

Sonic Mania is released on Playstation 4, Switch, Xbox One, and PC via Steam, Microsoft Store, and Origin.

Leave a Comment on #WeeklyGameMusic: Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 (Sonic Mania) | Categories: #WeeklyGameMusic

#WeeklyGameMusic: Little Jack (Skies of Arcadia)

Posted on 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.

Leave a Comment on #WeeklyGameMusic: Little Jack (Skies of Arcadia) | Categories: #WeeklyGameMusic

Weekly Game Music: Escape from the City (Sonic Adventures 2)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

New week, new music.  Since last week was an onslaught of indie games, let’s go with a more main stream and more well-known song this time.  Here’s Escape from the City, composed by Jun Senoue and sung by Ted Poley and Tony Harnell.  It’s a speed-inducing music played during the first not-that-bad-3D-Sonic-game, Sonic Adventures 2.

Sonic Adventures 2 tells a story told from the good guys and bad guys perspective: the bad guys — Shadow, Dr. Robotnik, Rouge (sort-of-bad-girl?) — attempts to prepare a planet-sized laser gun (and even successfully obliterates the moon) while the good guys — Sonic, Tails, Knuckles — are wrongly accused of threatening the good citizens and tries to find the culprits.  Mixed in with talk of ancient technologies, lots of furballs, and a bad guys who is just misunderstood (and have amnesia to boot), and you’ve got one camp story.

Sonic Adventures 2 is a platformer with 3 different objectives and controls, represented by one of the six characters.  Sonic and Shadow both play as a generic platformer: find the goal by jumping a lot and attacking enemies.  Tails and Dr. Robotnik plays as a bipedal tank game where both fires their guns via a target-detecting laser system.  Finally Knuckles and Rouge also plays like a generic platformer with a different mission: searching for 3 chaos emeralds scattered in each stage.

Sonic Adventures 2 was released on the Dreamcast in 2001.  It was later ported to the GameCube, PlayStation 3 (via PSN), and Xbox 360 (via XBLA).

Leave a Comment on Weekly Game Music: Escape from the City (Sonic Adventures 2) | Categories: #WeeklyGameMusic

Weekly Game Music: Last Movement (Enemy Zero)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

New week, new music.  I just realized haven’t introduced any music from horror games (unless Killer7 counts as a horror game), so here’s our first one from the famed British movie composer, Michael Nyman.  Last Movement is a simple composition that gives you a sense of drifting away.  A fitting music to the Sci-Fi horror game, Enemy Zero, that is also set in a place all too easy to get lost in: space.

Enemy Zero is part of an odd game series, collectively called D, where the only thing recurring between each game are the characters.  Not even their memory or personality carries over to their sequel.  The player takes the role of Laura Lewis, a pilot of AKI spaceship, who is quite unfortunately affected by amnesia after waking up from a malfunctioned cryogenic sleep.  The cause of the rude awakening turns out to be an invasion of carnivorous aliens who are invisible.  Equipped with a device that alarms its bearer of the approaching enemies, and an unwieldy laser pistol, Laura makes a desperate escape from the slaughter house the spaceship is becoming.

Much like Killer7, Enemy Zero requires the use of sound to detect the location of the enemies.  The story-heavy game uses a Doom-like first-person perspective.  When you hear an enemy approaching, you have to charge your pistol before firing at the right moment.  The frustrating controls adds to the surprise horror of hearing an alien screeching at you as it pounces.  Coupled with the dark and claustrophobic maze-like hallways, Enemy Zero does everything to make you feel uncomfortable.

Enemy Zero was released on Sega Saturn in 1997.  It was later ported to the PC in 1998.
[social_share/]

Leave a Comment on Weekly Game Music: Last Movement (Enemy Zero) | Categories: #WeeklyGameMusic