Music Archives - Page 2 of 7

#WeeklyGameMusic: Prime #4507 (Echochrome II)

Posted on December 7, 2020 by Taro Omiya

This week’s #WeeklyGameMusic may sound like generic elevator music, but is actually a world record holder. That’s right, we’re talking about the single longest video game track ever composed (as of this writing, year 2020, according to Guinness World Records), Prime #4507. This whopping 75-minutes long piece was composed by Hideki Sakamoto for the mind-bending puzzler, Echochrome II; a game developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) Japan Studio.

Echochrome II is a puzzle game where one uses the motion controls to move the light source and create a shadow path from a bizarrely arranged array of toy blocks for the artist mannequin, cast, to travel across. Depending on the angle, some blocks reveal interactive puzzle elements, including springs, holes, tunnels, and of course, the goal of the level. Much like the predecessor, the player has little control over how the cast moves, aside from making it stop and change directions; instead, much of the puzzle solving comes from the cast’s environment.

Echochrome II was released on the PlayStation 3. No other ports exists, as of this writing; though presumably, it can be purchased online from the Sony online store like other past Playstation titles for the modern console. As a complete aside, number 4507 is, indeed, a prime number.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Skate Park Shuffle (Create)

Posted on November 30, 2020 by Taro Omiya

Regulars of #WeeklyGameMusic know I often find some rather obscure game music pretty often. Here’s one from a little-known sandbox game called Create, developed by EA Bright Light. That’s right, we’re checking out Electronic Arts game music this week! Ian Livingstone’s piece, Skate Park Shuffle, is a bit corporate at the beginning, but soon mellows out to a rather calming (and more interesting) conclusion.

A bit like the The Incredible Machine, the most game-like aspect of Create involves the player to use the items and tools available in the pre-made levels to push, nudge, and navigate an object from point A to point B. Much of these levels take place in the 2D plane to provide a simpler interface, though lanes of depth can be added like LittleBigPlanet. And of course, much like LittleBigPlanet, Create allowed players to create and share levels online, though as of this writing, the servers has long been shut down.

Create was released on PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, PC, and Mac. As far as this writer can tell, there does not appear to be a way to purchase the game online easily, but the official game page is available here: ea.com/games/create

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Colors (Guilty Gear Strive)

Posted on November 23, 2020 by Taro Omiya

Finally, we cover heavy metal in this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic with Arc System Works’ upcoming fighting game, Guilty Gear Strive. Composed by Daisuke Ishiwatari and performed by Naoki Hashimoto, this admittedly Engrish song manages to capture the goofy and chaotic fighting style resident Guilty Gear surgeon, Faust has. Despite it’s brash and dark beginning, it’s a remarkably sympathetic piece that does a decent job of summarizing Faust’s character arc throughout the game series.

As a long-running series, Guilty Gear Strive has quite a long backstory to cover. To summarize as best as this writer can, Guilty Gear‘s universe exists into the far future where scientists have already discovered…magic. As one would expect of such incredible power, it ends up being used by the military to create “Gears:” biological weapons that takes a humanoid shape. Naturally, the robo-I mean, Gears overlord starts becoming self-conscious and takes down humanity. By the time Strive begins, much of the war between Gears and humans have passed, and a brief period of peace has been achieved. But the main ensemble of mostly-human characters hears the news that the original creator of Gears, Asuka, has turned himself in. Suspecting this is another part of his foul schemes, the cast gears-up for action.

Guilty Gear Strive is a classic 1 vs 1, combo-based fighting game, similar to Street Fighter series and the like. Just choose one of your favorite characters, each with their own unique moveset, and dish it out with another player or AI. Unique to the series is the game’s stark art style: at first glance, one could mistake it for a well-animated 2D Japanese animation. In fact, the game is completely in 3D, including the characters. Lastly, Strive is planned to streamline many of the complications born from added features in prior titles, thus hopefully creating a more beginner-friendly control scheme.

As of this writing, Guilty Gear Strive is still in development. It’s planned to be released on Playstation 4, 5, and PC via Steam.

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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: 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: 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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