Game Boy Advance Archives

Welp, this writer didn’t have a festive tune in their backlog of video game music, but this #WeeklyGameMusic, composed by James Hannigan comes close enough. To Catch an Owl is a video-game-original track for the book-to-movie-to-game adaptation, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, developed by EA UK. It’s a magical and celebratory tune fitting of the upcoming holidays, and manages to capture the movie soundtrack’s spirit.

Note: this writer does acknowledge the author of the Harry Potter series is notoriously transphobic. While the composer of this track is completely unrelated to J.K. Rowling, it should be stated that transphobia is immoral and wrong. This writer does not intend to promote such a position.

Within a few chapters of the fifth entry in the seven book (or eight movie) series, titular character Harry Potter and his non-magical cousin Dudley get attacked by the depression-inducing Dementors, well outside of the wizarding realm and within our realistic one. Thus setting the tone for what’s going to be a dark entry amongst the series, Harry uses magical spells Dudley can’t perceive to ward off the Dementors in self-defense. The problem? It’s illegal for an underage wizard student (which Harry himself is just into the fifth year of a seven year long career) to use magic in front of muggles, or normies by wizard lingo. This immediately kicks off a number of lawsuits Harry is forced to navigate, and while the ruling manages to fall into his favor, puts Harry into a legally precarious position as he enters Hogwarts wizarding school for the fifth year.

While story-wise, the video game adaptation of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix doesn’t stray from this story, it’s gameplay takes a much more interesting approach to the politically oppressive atmosphere the book presents. In short, Order of the Phoenix is an open-world game where players utilizes gestures on the right-stick of the controller to cast various spells. Said spells are used to handle various tasks given by minigames, or simple environmental puzzles to unlock new secrets in the labyrinthine Hogwarts. Exploration is key to both progressing the story and unlocking new abilities and upgrade to our hero as he navigates this magically dangerous place.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released for the (wait for it…) Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Wii, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation Portable, PC, and Mac (phew!)

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Another retro game to look forward to this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic. In a bit of a twist, here’s SSX Tricky‘s mix to the 90’s track, Song for a Dot by Space Raiders, which itself samples from There Goes My Heart Again by Fats Domino. Phew, that’s a lot to go through! Although the original music piece is pretty decent, this writer has a soft spot for the improvements EA Sports BIG made to better fit it’s hyper-fast, trick-driven winter sports game.

SSX Tricky is a (very 90’s) snowboarding game, where comically exaggerated international characters pits against each other to perform ridiculous tricks. And by, “ridiculous,” we mean, “physically impossible.” Performing a helicopter spin? Check. Doing the worm on the snowboard? Yup, check! Using the snowboard as a diving board? You betcha! To further push the arcade nature of the gameplay, performing tricks fills a boost meter than can be used to accelerate the character’s decent down the mountain even faster, for bigger air.

That said, a special mention goes to the game’s dynamic music mix. The soundtrack is programmed to change on nearly every action the player performs. The aggressive contrast between the tension of jumping high into the air and performing tricks — accentuated by the sudden ducking of the background music, leaving only the drum beats — to the release when landing said tricks — which brings in a bombastic fanfare and the return of an even louder melody — is an experience rarely replicated as well in any other game franchises. The whole thing is just an absolute joy to listen to.

SSX Tricky was released on PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, and Game Boy Advance.

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Tag: Game Boy Advance

#WeeklyGameMusic: To Catch an Owl (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

#WeeklyGameMusic: Song for Dot (SSX Tricky)