Video Game Music Archives - Page 14 of 25

Weekly Game Music: Deep Red Pastures (Baten Kaitos Origins)

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. We start this year with a little-known JRPG game. The genre is full of audio surprises. Anyway, here’s Deep Red Pastures, composed by Motoi Sakuraba. It fits with the windy setting of the game, Baten Kaitos Origins.

Baten Kaitos Origins starts with our hero, Sagi, tasked to commit murder by his boss. Yeah….no, Sagi doesn’t fall for this one, but another unknown being takes care of the job for him. Sagi, of course, gets blamed for it, and has to uncover the case behind this problem to clear his name.

Baten Kaitos Origins is a card game, where every weapon, equipment, magic, and items are represented as a card. It’s quite an explorer-happy game where a card could be hidden at any nook and cranny. All battles are turn-based, where in each turn, the player has a hand of cards (and thus, moves) to choose from before attacking or defending.

Baten Kaitos Origins was released on the Gamecube in 2006.

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

Posted on December 30, 2012 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).

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Weekly Game Music: Setting Sail, Coming Home (Bastion)

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Taro Omiya

Third on my Christmas video game music rush has some lyrics! Set Sail, Coming Home is Darren Korb’s excellent combination of his 2 other music,Mother, I’m Here and Build That Wall, both featured prominently in the game,Bastion. In context, this song depicts the decision of taking on a new direction in life. It does a great job conveying a hopeful but mysterious and unnerving outlook on the future ahead.

Bastion begins right after a catastrophic event know as the Calamity, where every land is torn apart and nothing is held on solid ground. The player directs the Kid, while Rulf the engineer narrates every action he takes. They both work hard to get Rulf’s time-reverting machine, Bastion, back up and working.

Bastion plays like a top-down action RPG where the Kid switches between a variety of different weaponry, all with well-calculated pros and cons. At any one point, the Kid can carry two, along with 2 special attacks. The enemies you encounter are varied, and require different tactics to kill, thus requiring a lot of wit from the player to take out efficiently.

Bastion was released on 2011 for the Xbox 360. It’s also available on Google Chrome’s Webstore, PC, Mac, Linux, and Steam.

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Weekly Game Music: Reclaiming the Island (The Oil Blue)

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Taro Omiya

Second on my Christmas video game music rush is a much more mellow music from The Oil Blue. Reclaiming the Island by Jonathon Geer is a calming music for a game about digging oil, and retaining a level head as one operates a dangerous machinery.

The Oil Blue describes a plausible future where oil becomes scarcer, and people are making a mad dash at taking over islands and digging up for more oil. As an oil miner yourself, you have to keep track of where you’re going to dig, how you’re going to operate the machinery’s intricate buttons and levers, and finally deciding on the price for the liquid gold you’ve just mined. Money you make can be used to purchase new power-ups to increase the productivity of your mines.

The Oil Blue was released on the PC in 2012.

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Weekly Game Music: Mushrooms (Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP)

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Taro Omiya

Looks like I’ve missed 4 weeks from the massive crunch month I’ve had with developing SWARM! So it’s only fair I share 4 musics in quick succession. First one up is Mushrooms from a former indie rocker, Jim Guthrie. It plays when the Scythian eats — you guessed it — a mushroom in Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. A very hypnotic music, I assure you.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP tells a story of a warrior, only known as the Scythian, who accidentally awakens the evil spirit, Gogolithic Mass. Promising peace for the nearby citizens, the Girl, LogFella, and Dogfella (very creative names, there), the Scythian seeks for great mythical powers to seal it. Even if the it costs her own life…

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is a hybrid of two games: a point-and-click adventure, where one taps to navigate the character and observe interesting things, and a Punch-out style rhythmic combat system. Both work in harmony to create a puzzle game where the rules are vague, and the solutions are magical and nonsensical. Despite its shortcomings, however, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP stands tall as a bold experience, and an even bolder attempt to widen the iPad audience.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP was released on the iPad in 2011. It’s also available on Android, PC, Mac, Linux and even Steam.

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Weekly Game Music: moony [advanced] (Futari No FantaVision)

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. Since the holidays is just around the corner, here’s a little festive trance music from the Japan-only puzzle game, Futari No FantaVision. Introducing moony [advanced] by Soichi Terada.

Futari No FantaVision is actually just a 2-player version of a game that was released in the US, FantaVision. In FantaVision, you control a ray that can detonate rising fireworks if you’ve successfully aimed at three or more like-colored fireballs. The game becomes a sort of rhythmic puzzle game, where you attempt to detonate as many fireworks as possible.

Futari No FantaVision was released only in Japan on the PS2 in 2002. It’s “prequel,” FantaVision was released in the US on 2000.

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