Since Thanksgiving is fast approaching, here’s a game music themed after the Native American’s (or arguably, African’s) instruments. Here’s the theme from the game, Skies of Arcadia: Kingdom of Ixataka, composed by Yutaka Minobe and Takayuki Maeda. This tune is only one of many drastically diverse cultural tracks the game has.

As you can probably tell from the video below, Skies of Arcadia is an old turn-based JRPG about…sky pirates. The game starts with the Blue Rogue (basically, Robin Hood’s crew) assaulting a wealthy Valuan ship. The captain’s son, Vyse and his tomboy friend, Aika, rummages through this expensive ship to find a shy girl named Fina held hostage. Once rescuing her and stealing a few treasures, Vyse, Aika, and the rest of the crew travels back to their own floating pirate island to learn more about why Fina was kidnapped. Although Fina initially refuses to answer their questions, circumstances forces Vyse, Aika, and Fina to leave their home island. It’s here the Fina reveals her role: she has to collect the Moon Crystals, powerful magical crystals that comes from the six moons before they go into the wrong hands. Vyse and Aika, of course, agrees to help her, and travel across the vast skies in search of of these crystals, bumping into new and undiscovered civilizations.

Skies of Arcadia is a rather complicated for a turn-based JRPG. There’s 3 meters to consider: the health meter, magic meter, and Skill Meter. The latter is a requirement for each character to use magic or special attacks. The skill meter slowly recovers after each turn, or after focusing, so it’s a very disposable unit of energy. In addition, every weapon the character wields has an elemental property, allowing one to switch between 6 different elements. Like Pokémon, each element has it’s strength and weaknesses against each other. In addition, using one elemental property over others causes the player to learn magic affiliated to that element faster. Even more complicated, there’s also a totally different battle system called Ship Battle, where you fight against other pirates and naval forces. On top of it all, there’s plenty of different unlockables, including Discoveries, Wanted List, Moonfish, and more.

Skies of Arcadia is, unfortunately, very confusing. With random enemy encounters, the game also shows its age. Despite the Dreamcast graphics, though, the art style in this game is truly diverse and exciting. Unlike many modern games, where the enemies and allies are oddly segregated and uncooperative, Skies of Arcadia has a lot of different civilizations themed under different culture. Ixataka, as an example, is themed under Native Americans. The Valuan Empire is themed under ye olde gentlemen during the Industrial Age. Perhaps the most exciting civilization is themed under the Japanese/Oriental culture. With so many varied characters, the skies in Skies of Arcadia truly feels vast and wide open to new ventures and exploration.

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

P.S. Also worth noting, Skies of Arcadia also has a really creepy and disturbing final boss.

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Here’s a hip tune: Kakkoi! It’s from an award-winning indie iPhone game, Edge. Despite its Japanese title and style, though, the track is composed by a French composer, Romain Gauthier.

Edge is a simple game that involves rolling a cube through an obstacle course, and into the goal. Initially created for the iPhone, you drag the touch screen to guide the cube. There’s a few catch in this game, however. True to the title, the cube can roll and hang on edges, allowing it to climb up one-step staircases, and clinging on moving platforms. Additionally, power-ups are scattered throughout the course to speed up the cube, and increase your score.

Despite it’s fun and simple gameplay, Edge has a dark history. Edge came out as one of the many games produced during the advent of the iPhone, and was widely considered as one of the first “serious” game for the device. It gained quite a popularity…until someone filed a lawsuit against it. Tim Langdell, founder of Edge Games, sued the developer, Mobigames, for creating a game with a title containing the word, “edge.” It became apparent that the same person also sued EA for Mirror’s Edge, as well as EDGE game magazine. Yet, unlike the other two companies, Mobigames was too small to fight, and they were forced to remove the game from the App Store. Mobigames have re-released the game multiple times under different titles, including “Edge by Mobigames” and “Edgy,” but both were removed from the App Store.

Fortunately, the US and the European courts has ruled that Tim Langdell and his company has no rights to sue others for using the word, “edge” in its title. After one year of lawsuit handling, Edge finally re-appeared again on the App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. In addition, it has appeared on Playstation Minis for PSP, and on Steam for PC and Mac.

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Extra!

Title: The Shameful Last Minute
Game: Edge
Composer: Romain Gauthier

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Another song with lyrics, here’s Still Alive from…Mirror’s Edge, written and sung by Swedish singer, Lisa Miskovsky. What, you thought I was going to post the song from the first Portal game!? Sorry, but I’m too hipster for that I already posted a Portal 2 song, and it’s my policy to stick with only one music from each game series.

Anyway, Mirror’s Edge stars a courageous lady named Faith, stuck in a clean but heavily monitored world. Censorship is so bad, many political figures and activists resorts to using Runners to send their message. Faith is one of these runners, and her role is simple: deliver a package or mail as swiftly and as secretively as possible. As per usual, there are always conspiracies in an oppressive society, and Faith herself gets stuck in the middle of it while doing one of her deliveries. Gun fire ensues.

Mirror’s Edge is a first-person parkour game. Unlike most first person games, you can readily see your own arms and legs to better indicate the action you’re taking, as well as your positioning for tricky jumps. Many of the actions you take includes jumping, swinging, sliding, climbing walls, rolling, wall-walking, and more. Furthermore, guns takes a backseat, as they hinder your movement, and ammo are limited. Seeing is believing, so the video above has some gameplay to better describe the game.

Despite its highly acclaim, Mirror’s Edge has some of the strongest critics, frequently pointing out the difficulty of jumps and progression. Indeed, the game requires rather precise angles and timings on many jumps, and is certainly more difficult than the often compared Metroid Prime. In addition, the story was also heavily criticized for its cliffhanger ending. Regardless, it developed a strong cult following due to its innovation in gameplay (even today),

Mirror’s Edge is available for PC via Steam, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3.
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I know it’s Halloween, but I’m not aware of many spooky music that’s tolerable without context. Instead, I’m choosing a relaxing music from Braid: Lullaby Set, by Shira Kammen and Pam Swan. And hey, the video displays a burning city, so I guess that’s creepy enough for some of you.

Braid stars an unlikely hero named Tim. He’s a well-suited, necktie wearing character who can jump high and reverse time. He ventures through painterly stages to find the Princess who disappeared for a rather vague reason. Presumably, she’s kidnapped by a monster; others claim she left on her own accord. Regardless of reason, Tim has to gather the missing puzzle pieces to unlock the location where the Princess went.

Does the story sound a bit familiar? It’s true that Braid is a Mario-like puzzle-platformer, and it certainly makes a lot of references to the famous Nintendo game series. However, Braid is known for its extremely difficult puzzles, and jaw-dropping twist-ending that forces you to reinterpret the entire story. Some of its puzzles involve reversing time at a different rate, slowing down time within a certain area, walking to move time forward and back, and creating shadows of yourselves to conduct different activities. One puzzle even requires you to use the puzzle pieces you’ve collected to retrieve the last on in the course. Braid certainly requires a good amount of creativity and analysis to progress through the game.

It’s worth noting that Braid is yet another indie game developed by only 2 people: Jonathon Blow and David Hellman. The game is available for PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam, App Store, and Ubuntu Store respectively. Additionally, it’s available for download on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

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Extra!

Title: Downstream
Game: Braid
Composer: Shira Kammen

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Here’s another chiptune from Askiisoft’s Tower of Heaven, Stairway to Revelation by flashygoodness. It’s a recurring theme in the game, and fits perfectly with the Gameboy-like graphics the game portrays.

The game starts with Eid, a big-headed silhouette, entering the Tower of Heaven. Upon entering, an omnipotent voice grudgingly welcomes our hero, warning him almost immediately that the path is dangerous, and the the time is limited. When Eid completes a few trials (represented as floors), the amused voice forces him to carry the Book of Laws. As Eid climbs higher up the tower, the absurdity of the laws imposed by the book increases.

Tower of Heaven, though short, is a painfully difficult 2D platformer. Breaking any of the laws written in the Book of Laws causes instant death. These laws include, “don’t touch the side of blocks or walls,” “don’t walk left,” and my personal favorite, “don’t open the Book of Laws.” The laws points out the frequently unwritten rules in difficult platformers such as touching the side of platforms on mid-flight will lead to death, anyways.

Developed by 3 people (including the composer), Tower of Heaven is playable online at NewGrounds.
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Let’s venture into songs with lyrics again. Here is You Have to Burn the Rope’s Now You’re a Hero, by Henrik Nåmark. Yep, a music by a Swedish composer!

You Have to Burn the Rope is an action-packed game starring a nameless, bowler-hat wearing character who’s specialty is to throw axes. As he traverses through a long and windy tunnel, he finds at the end a beautiful dinner room with a giant, menacing monster: the Grinning Colossus! Our hero bravely chucks axes at the boss, but to no avail. The Grinning Colossus’ health regeneration prevents the hero from making even a small dent. Desperately avoiding the bullets shot from the boss’ eyes, the hero finds a cryptic engraving on the wall: “You have to burn the rope!” As if he understood perfectly, the hero grabs a burning stick off the wall, climbs to the ceiling, and acrobatically burns the rope that’s holding up the chandelier. With the support gone, the chandelier falls onto the Grinning Colossus, bringing about its terrible demise!

If you couldn’t figure out from the title or the description above, yes, the game is a joke. It poignantly points out an impractical commonality in many action games: defeating a boss requires tactics that seems to completely ignore the abilities you’ve worked so hard to master. Once the boss is defeated, Henrik’s song plays, creatively noting the game’s sarcasm.

Despite it’s short gameplay, You Have to Burn the Rope actually had a brief following. Fans wrote in-depth reviews and guides to play and finish the game, frequently praising it for its complexity. Developers like Michael Ancel praised the creator for its “creativity.” It was even awarded as a finalist for 2009’s Independent Games Festival for Innovation.

You Have to Burn the Rope is playable online at Kongregate.
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