Weekly Game Music: Opening Credits (Little King Story)

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. Like classic music, with a modern twist? Here’s an a cappella remix of Ravel’s Boléro: the Opening Credits for Little King Story, composed by Yutaka Minobe. The royal music helps set the stage for the toybox-like environment in this dictator-takes-over-the-world game.

Little King Story starts with a little boy who comes upon a crown that magically turns him into a king of a country. A shoddy, failing country. Taking a bold leadership role, our king directs the civilians to rebuild the country, and eventually take over neighboring lands and their princesses.

Little King Story is frequently described as Pikmin, if it were themed aroundPsychonauts. As the king, you approach and charm workers to follow you to quests. Each worker can be thrown to handle a certain task correlated to their profession, including building, digging, and of course, fighting. The boss battles you encounter when invading rival countries are widely varied, including straight-up fights, answering questions from trivia shows, and even a ping-pong tournament. Despite its childish graphics, the game frequently delves into the surreal and disturbing imagination of a child’s mind.

Little King Story was released on the Wii in 2009. No other ports exist.

Extra!

Title: King Jumbo Champloon
Game: Little King’s Story
Composer: Yutaka Minobe
Comments: Remix of The Infernal Gallop from Offenbach’s opera, Orpheus in the Underworld

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Weekly Game Music: Prime #19 (Echochrome)

Posted on April 8, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. Here’s a soothing café for a mind-bending puzzle game: Prime #19, composed by Hideki Sakamoto. The music is intended to soothe the player to an otherwise bizarre and confusing puzzle game,Echochrome.

As a puzzle game Echochrome offers no story. Despite this, the aesthetic of the game tells a lot. In a world outlined by solid black lines and a white background, the player must guide an artist’s mannequin across the MC Escher-like level. As the player, you control the camera, and command the mannequin to stop or start walking. That’s it.

Yet, controlling the camera itself proves vital to our hero. See, our clueless mannequin lives in a 2D world. Us with the camera live in a 3D world. By simply moving the camera around, we can easily cover gaps in a path with a dangling plank, and the use of perspectives. The forced perspective can even be used to cause the mannequin to fall at locations that are, in 3D, higher than the original falling point.

Echochrome was originally released on the PSP in 2008. It’s available for download on the Playstation 3.
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Weekly Game Music: Redial (Bomberman Hero)

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. Let’s go old-school, this time, with the spectacular music from Bomberman Hero. Redial, by Jun Chikuma, is a simple techno-like melody with an addicting beat. It’s oddly calming for an epic adventure of an old mascot.

Bomberman Hero has a simplistic, if familiar, story of an intergalactic evil organization emerging from the shadows. In an attempt to foil their plan, a princess manages to steal their plans, but gets caught in the process. Instead, she sends her loyal robot to take the disks, and inform Bomberman the trouble that’s brewing. Hence begins our hero’s journey through 5 different planets.

Bomberman Hero is a 3D platformer, where the camera doesn’t turn. As Bomberman, your method of attacking is — you guessed — throwing bombs. He has a few different maneuvers for this, useful for solving a few puzzles: he can drop a bomb, roll it, or throw it. In his travels, Bomberman will also don different gadgets, including a snowboard, jetpack, and submarine. Each level has a point system, where perfecting it unlocks the real ending.

Bomberman Hero was released on the Nintendo 64 in 1998. It’s now available on the Wii on the Virtual Console.

Extra!

Title: Milky
Game: Bomberman Hero
Composer: Jun Chikuma

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Weekly Game Music: Organ Smash (Iji)

Posted on March 25, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week (at least, in the US), new music. Here’s a music from Iji: Organ Smash by Chris Geehan and Dan Byrne-McCullough. I’ve mentioned Iji in the Strange Free Games series, and I do recommend playing this very fun game!

Iji was released in 2010 for the PC. It can be played on Daniel Rumar’s website.

Iji, a simple and brave girl, and her family ventures her brother’s science laboratory. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a story unless a bunch of aliens invaded earth, right? During the invasion, Iji is knocked unconscious, and throughout this state, Dan reconstructs her body as a super-soldier from the invader’s technology. When she wakes up, Iji is ordered by Dan to negotiate with the invaders for peace.

Iji plays like Gears of War RPG in 2D. Iji can duck under cover to avoid enemy fire, while shooting, jumping, kicking and even hacking enemies to submission. Various stats can be upgraded on your character, including hacking, kicking, shooting, and armor skills. In addition, you can collect a healthy number of guns that you can fuse together to make a more powerful beast. Finally, Iji has multiple endings, encouraging a lot of replay.
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Weekly Game Music: Fluffy Sweet (Cloud)

Posted on March 25, 2012 by Taro Omiya

Oh, jolly. I completely forgot about posting a music for this week. How about some soothing music, for a change? Here’s Fluffy Sweet, composed by Vincent Diamante for the student game, Cloud. It was a catapult to ThisGameCompany’s inception and proceeding game creations with similar themes.

Cloud is a freely downloadable PC game released in 2005. You can download it here.

Cloud describes a bed-ridden boy who’s “brought back to life” as a flying spirit that collects clouds. With it, the games leads you through several different missions, including creating cloud formations, calming storms, and raining on necessary patches of land. It’s a simple story about the joy of flight.

From a gameplay perspective, Cloud controls like an extremely relaxed free-roaming star-fighter game. As the spirit, you fly towards a patch of cloud to collect it, and have it follow you as you gather more. Since the clouds will lag a little bit, you’re forced to proceed in a slower manner. The said clouds can be stored and released, however, whenever you feel like it.

Extra!

Title: First Flight
Game: Cloud
Composer: Vincent Diamante

Title: Cycling
Game: Cloud
Composer: Vincent Diamante

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Weekly Game Music: Dr. Crygor’s Theme (Wario Ware Inc.: Mega Party Game$)

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. I typically talk about lesser-known games in this series of posts, but here’s a more mainstream game I’m sure you’ve heard about. Here’s the Wario Ware Inc.: Mega Party Game$ (shortened toWario Ware) remix of Dr. Crygor’s Theme. It’s a jazzy pop-music by Ryoji Yoshitomi and Kyoko Miyamoto. The random but well-placed voices helps emphasize the bizarre nature of this game.

Wario Ware has a story…and it has nothing to do with the game. It is thatbizarre.

Fortunately, Wario Ware‘s gameplay is easier to describe. Like the Mario Party series, the game involves up to 4 players taking turns playing a randomized 4-seconds single-player minigame. After that game is done, it moves back to a single multiplayer minigame that involves outperforming other the player. The single-player minigames are all strange and funny by nature. Examples includes inserting a finger into a person’s nostrils, scaring away butterflies, and keeping a beach ball afloat by using a human body as a paddle. The multiplayer games are a little more tame, including a balancing game where if you lose on a single-player game, the stack of turtles you balance on grows taller. Another involves obscuring the player’s screen while they’re playing a minigame. It’s a decent minigame compilation that’s bound to make someone laugh.

Wario Ware Inc.: Mega Party Game$ was released by Nintendo in 2004. It’s only available on the Gamecube.

Extra!

Title: Wario Ware Inc.
Game: Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Composer: Keigo Ozaki

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