#WeeklyGameMusic Archives - Page 8 of 26

#WeeklyGameMusic: Blue Sky Town – Dol Dona (.hack//G.U.)

Posted on March 30, 2020 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music. Today’s track is Blue Sky Town – Dol Dona, composed by Chikayo Fukuda. It’s a pleasant town music from Bandai Namco’s mega-long multi-media series, .hack, specifically, the .hack//G.U. trilogy.

Before there was Sword Art Online (SAO), there was .hack. That’s right, this game, manga, and anime series all takes place in the fictional MMO Action-RPG, The World. Dull naming aside, much like SAO, players start falling into a comatose state, both in-game and in real-life. Unlike SAO, the devs blame it to a computer virus, presumably spread by malicious players. The G.U. trilogy stars Haseo, who seeks for revenge after his close friend catches this comatose spell.

.hack//G.U. is a single-player action-JRPG series. Unlike, you know, real MMORPGs, .hack//G.U. is a story-driven game with no character customization, and A.I.-controlled party members. The party explores randomly-generated dungeons: battle initiates when a monster gets close to the party, constraining them into a tight circle. Perhaps the more unique side of the game is how narrative plays: there are email logs, marriage simulation, and other MMORPG-like communication methods to suck the player into its universe.

.hack//G.U. is available on PC via Steam, PS4, and PS2.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Give Me a Chance (The World Ends With You)

Posted on March 23, 2020 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music. This time we’ll cover Give Me a Chance, composed by Takeharu Ishimoto and sung by Ayuko Tanaka and Mai Matsuda. It’s a composition from the cult-hit Square Enix game, The World Ends With You, an almost trading card game (TCG) JRPG and a banger soundtrack.

You can tell The World Ends With You is created by the same company famous for their Final Fantasy franchise when it stars an anti-social, brooding teen named Neku. This insufferable jerk eventually learns to get better when he’s suddenly pitted in a life-and-death game about fighting sound-based monsters and lazy grim reapers using a deck of shirt pins. To survive this terrifying game, this loser must make a sacrifice arbitrarily chosen by the game master (in this case, his memory, of course) and pair with a partner to fight together with. Did I mention this all makes sense in context?

Anyway, where The World Ends With You best shines is its real-time combat. Originally developed for the Nintendo DS, this game utilizes nearly every single feature in the portable console, including — get this — the closing-the-lid sleep function, as part of combat. Unfortunately for this blogger, his introduction to the game was on iOS, so he’ll describe how the combat works there instead: The World Ends With You TCG-like battle system operates by having each pin execute when a specific touch or swipe gesture is made. Multiple pins in a deck may share the same gesture; the pin placed on the top of the deck gets prioritized first, until it hits a cool-down state, in which the rest of the pins takes effect. Partners can also be summoned, using yet another gesture assigned to them: this helps build both a combo meter, and a super attack. It’s super fun, and I highly recommend checking it out!

The World Ends With You is available on Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Nintendo DS.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Ascension (Dear Esther)

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Taro Omiya

Around five years ago, I used to post video game music with the hashtag, #WeeklyGameMusic. To be honest, I’ve been really wanting to revive the series again, so here it is: new week, new game music. While I originally stuck to only one music per franchise (this series is about introducing the highlighted game to the reader as much as its music), it’s been so long since the last post, I’ll be resetting my past queue and allow myself to revisit some old franchises I’ve already introduced in this blog series. Anyways, where else to start then Dear Esther‘s Ascension, composed by Jessica Curry.

Dead Esther is most well-known for kicking off the often derided Walking Simulator. Despite its criticism, though, I do believe the indie developers, The Chinese Room, answered a genuinely interesting game design question: what happens when the player is given conflicting information while they attempt to progress the story? How will they react when the story contradicts what one observes, and even itself? The game randomly choosing pre-written narration is a central part of the player’s experience as they make an attempt to piece together the clues they’re given. And, at least as a game designer, I find that fascinating.

Dear Esther is available on Steam for Windows and Mac.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Men’s Hair Club (LISA: The Painful RPG)

Posted on March 14, 2015 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

So, quick note: I’m going to be holding off on posting #WeeklyGameMusic, as I’m now hard at work on finishing Not a Clone. So today is a special treat: Men’s Hair Club by Widdly 2 Diddly is a bizarre chiptune composition that sounds awfully like dubstep. Sounds weird? Oh, man, you’ve seen nothing, yet! The game the composition is for, LISA: The Painful RPG, is an incredibly surreal, Earthbound-inspired adventure that has frequent mood changes, absurd scenarios, and a very, very disturbing set of unavoidable situations.

LISA: The Painful RPG stars Brad, a gruff, middle-aged man adept in martial arts, and with a broken past. One day, Brad wakes up from his pain-killing drug trip (aptly named “joy”) to suddenly find a crying baby girl. Claiming it’s his “second chance,” Brad brings the girl back home with his friends and raises her in secret. Did I also mention that Brad lives in a post-apocalyptic world where all women has died? Right when his adoptive daughter, Buddy, grows to her tweens, a breakout occurs, with Buddy kidnapped and one of his friend slaughtered. Angered, Brad immediately ventures out to find who kidnapped Buddy, while a confused tipster Terry follows along.

There’s a good reason why “Painful RPG” is in the title of LISA: The Painful RPG. The game starts off as a side-scrolling adventure, where Brad can jump up or down cliffs. Unlike most platformers, Brad can not initially jump across gaps; the ability is later unlocked with an item. Walking into other grown men or monstrous abominations will often initiate a turn-based RPG battle, where Brad can use his martial arts via WASD while Terry…does something. Unpleasant decision-making is this game’s main jam, though, as Brad is frequently forced into making some terrifying choices. Would you sacrifice an arm to keep a vital party member alive? Would you go through a Russian Roulette just to get a powerful ally? The world Brad lives in is vast, darkly funny, and absolutely brutal.

LISA: The Painful RPGis available on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Main Menu (Epic Mickey)

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Now that love is over, it’s time to return to an old classic (made new (but is now old (this is so confusing))). Epic Mickey could be described as Warren Spector’s darker remix to the classic Mickey cartoons, and its music follows suit. James Dooley’s composition has such a classic Disney charm to it, yet manages to be more ominous than its inspiration. A fitting re-arrangement to a game that looks at Mickey’s less kind, devious personality.

Epic Mickey‘s story is a simple one: darn old Mickey screws up big time when he fiddles around with Yen Sid’s beautiful sculpture that, itself, holds many denizens such as Oswald the lucky rabbit. Out of pure curiosity, Mickey tries to create his own things using the magical brush, but instead creates a living monstrosity that tries to consume him. Panicking, Mickey chucks paint thinner at it and flees before Yen Sid gets back. Years later, and significantly more famous, Mickey completely forgets about the incident until Blot, the monstrosity, manages to take Mickey while he’s asleep into the demented world named Wasteland.

Epic Mickey is a 3D platformer that revolves around an unusual tool and weapon. Mickey’s paintbrush can throw both paint and thinner, something that he uses to both construct and destruct the world around him. This proves to be important when Mickey needs to construct new platforms, or break down a wall that’s in the way. The paintbrush can also be used for combat, with paint turning enemies to allies, and thinner practically destroying them. Much of the morality plays around which type of tool you prefer to use, and as a result, a few story elements may change on your play habits.

Epic Mickey was original developed for the Wii. No other ports exist.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: 陽の当たる場所 (水平線まで何マイル? -Deep Blue Sky & Pure White Wings-)

Posted on February 14, 2015 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Cover Art — Cover art from https://vndb.org/v972

Note: sadly, the music file has been taken down, and I’m unable to locate another source yet.

With love up in the air, I had to look for something special. And now, I’ve found it…in a obscure Japanese visual novel called Suiheisen Made Nan Mile? – Deep Blue Sky & Pure White Wings –!? Regardless of its hentai origins, this week’s music is incredibly catchy. I’ll forgive you if the moment you’ve played Where the Sun Shines, a lovely tune by Yasuhisa Watanabe, you started dancing.

So, forgive me for the scarce information, but this is what I can gather about Suiheisen Made Nan Mile? through a few Google searches. The game is a regular visual novel that focuses on a simple slice-of-life of an average Japanese high school club. You play as Sorata, an average student and a member in astronomy club. As it turns out, the student council deems the club unworthy (which, unfortunately for the lazy club members, is a logical conclusion), forcing the members to come up with a ridiculous plan to redeem themselves: compete with the aviation club to pilot electric gliders for a world competition. And so, their flight begins…

Unfortunately, I was not able to gather what kind of visual novel Suiheisen Made Nan Mile? is. That is, typically, visual novels can be divided into one of the two categories: choose-your-own-adventure like Katawa Shoujo, or stat building like Long Live the Queen and Hatoful Boyfriend. Given the (very) few reviews out there that mentions that honing in on which girl (and a guy) to date tends to be easy lends me to believe it’s the former type of game, but I can’t be too sure. What I can confirm is that, yes, this is another erotic Japanese game (unlike Long Live the Queen and Hatoful Boyfriend), though a tame one at that. Much like Katawa Shoujo, sex scenes are treated as an end reward rather than a pornographic journey. Additionally, since the settings is set firmly in a non-magical world, there aren’t any tentacle monsters or other bizarre fetishes. Lastly, replaying the game with the same starting choices actually leads to new branches in the story as well, increasing the replay value. This does, yes, include more sex scenes.

Suiheisen Made Nan Mile? – Deep Blue Sky & Pure White Wings – was released on the Playstation Portable and PC. It is, as far as I can tell, a Japan-only game.

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