Weekly Game Music: Inugami Village (Shadow Hearts: Covenant)

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. Don’t have a good turkey day music, but I will break the electric trend and go with a relaxing piano solo. Here’s Inugami Village(better translated, Village of the Dog God), composed by Yasunori Mitsuda. It’s from the JRPG, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, which has a strange retelling of World War I with demons and monsters.

Shadow Hearts: Covenant starts where its prequel left off: the former game’s hero, Yuri Hyuga, stays within the town of Domremy, defending it from German invaders. Unfortunately for Yuri, an Inquistor from the Vatican (Nicolas Conrad) breaks through his defense, and worse, curses him to an incredibly weak state. It turns out the so-called Inquistor is actually a sorcerous from an evil clan, Sapientes Gladio. Before the sorcerer finishes him, though, Karin Koenig and the villagers saves Yuri. Once they’ve both gathered some strength, they devise a plan to get their revenge back on Nicloas.

Shadow Hearts: Covenant is a turn-based, random encounter JRPG. The player can have up to 3 characters in its party, placed on a 3-by-3 grid. The farther away the character is placed from the enemies, the less likely they’re going to get hurt at a cost of diminishing their attack power. To spice up the old formula, Shadow Hearts adds a Sanity Meter per character. If it reaches 0, the player loses control of that character. Lastly, most attacks and magics uses the Judgement Ring, a spinning dial where one must stop its spinning needle to a colored area to execute damage. The smaller the area, typically the better the attack.

Shadow Hearts: Covenant was released on the PS2 in 2004.

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Weekly Game Music: Co-op (Magnetis)

Posted on November 11, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. More techno, now with 90% more jazz. Here’s a music from Magnetis, Co-op. It’s composed by Romain Gauthier, the same composer as Edge.

Magnetis is a Tetris-based puzzle game that involves dropping a pair of blocks to clear more blocks. Unlike Tetris, however, you clear blocks by creating a line segment where two like-colored magnet blocks faces towards each other. This eliminates any blocks in-between the two magnets. If, however, two magnets of different colors are matched together, everything in-between becomes garbage blocks, potentially blocking any other formations.

Magnetis was released on the Wii in 2009. It was later released on the PC via Steam.

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Weekly Game Music: Mind Mapping (Beatmania IIDX 16: Empress)

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. Continuing the techno trend, here’s Mind Mapping by Ryutaro Nakahata (hey, another Taro). It comes from a popular Japanese arcade game, Beatmania IIDX 16: Empress.

Beatmania IIDX 16 EMPRESS simulates a DJ deck using 5 buttons and a disk. Much like any rhythm game, the object is to hit the right button when the “notes” hit the bottom of the screen. The arcade was released in 2008 in Japan. It was later ported to the Playstation 2 in 2009.

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Weekly Game Music: The Gensokyo The Gods Loved (Touhou: Mountain of Faith)

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. Since I’ve already posted Cave Story before, it’s only natural that I post about another game series created by one amazing Japanese man: the Touhou project by Junya Ota. Here’s a remix of The Gensokyo The Gods Lovedfrom Touhou: Mountain of Faith. It’s yet another trance from the infamous zts.

Touhou: Mountain of Faith begins when Reimu Hakurei, the Hakurei shrine’s miko (Japanese shrine maiden), is informed by mysterious authority that the shrine must be closed. Asking why, the figure claims the shrine lacks faith from its local citizens of Gensokyo. Confused, Reimu informs her magician friend, Marisa Kirisame, addressing the terrible consequences of closing the shrine. Marisa, noting that something smells fishy, convinces Reimu to investigate on this authority.

Touhou: Mountain of Faith is a top-down shooter, much like the old arcades. Unlike those arcades, however, ships and aliens are replaced with magical girls, fairies, gods and Japanese monsters. Most important, however, is how this series defines the aptly-named sub-genre, bullet hell. The game literally tests your pattern recognition of screens and screens of lasers.

Touhou: Mountain of Faith was released on the PC in 2007.

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Weekly Game Music: Another Winter (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game)

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. Here’s an excellent music from an indie video game, based off of a movie, based off of a graphic nove- aw, screw it! Here’s Another Winter from the excellent chiptune band, Anamanaguchi. It’s from the downloadable game, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is lightly based off of Bryan O’Malley’s graphic novel series, Scott Pilgrim. Unlike the novels, it starts with Scott Pilgrim meeting and making out with Ramona Flowers, instead of Knives Chau. From there, the game wastes no time: Scott Pilgrim has to defeat Ramona’s 7 ex-boyfriends, and his girl friend and band-mates, Stephen Stills and Kim Pine gets to join in the fun.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game plays very much like an old-school 2D beat’em-ups. Up to 4 players can join in on the bash-fest of numerous pixelated thugs and enemies. To spice things up, one can earn money to learn new abilities and experience points. Furthermore, many items, including fallen bodies, can be picked up and thrown for extra damage.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game was released on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in 2010.
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Weekly Game Music: mrs mushroom likes LCD soundsystem (Botanicula)

Posted on October 14, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. To celebrate Amanita Design again, here’s a playfully named music, mrs mushroom likes LCD soundsystem by DVA. It’s a nature-inspired, if a little trippy, collection of sounds and composition from the beautiful game, Botanicula.

Botanicula narrates a light-hearted adventure of 5 small friends, Mr. Lantern, Mrs. Mushroom, Mr. Poppy Head, Mr. Feather, and Mr. Twig. Mr. Lantern find himself taking on the duty of planting the last seed from the great tree that he and his friend inhabit. The seed, which gives Mr. Lantern a vision, describes how the mysterious black parasites had started infesting the tree. Quickly realizing the significance of this task, he gathers his loyal friends to help him trek down the large and complex home of theirs.

Botanicula is an unorthodox point-and-click adventure that involves directing the direction the group should go. The game has no inventory system, and most of the actions require assistance from the player rather than the in-game characters themselves. As an example, catapulting things off a twig is done through the player’s mouse instead of the character taking that action. Similar to their previous games, Botanicula is narrated entirely without text. Lastly, the game has numerous hidden secrets, which becomes a fun meta-game in-and-of-itself.

Botanicula was released on the PC, Mac, and Linux in 2012.