Weekly Game Music: Prisman Holiday (de Blob 2)

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. We’ve been talking about PC games for the last 3 weeks, so let’s go back to colorful (pun-intended) console music. Here’sPrisman Holiday from de Blob 2, composed by John Guscott and performed by The Bamboos. It’s a soothing music to compliment the artful game.

de Blob 2 starts when Papa Blanc rigs the general election at Prisma City, so he can win. As his name implies, the new president wipes out all the colors from the city, turning it gray and more gray. Cue De Blob to the rescue, as the ink-absorbing character spreads color back to the city.

de Blob 2 plays like a 3D puzzle-platformer. As De Blob, you must first absorb color inks, then slap you body onto a surface. Frequently, there will be missions that requires De Blob to mix different colors before coloring a certain object. As an example, to color a museum purple, De Blob first needs to find a blue and red ink before slapping himself to the building. Occasionally, De Blob will find secret corridors that will act like classic 2D platforming stages, which has its own set of switch-hitting puzzles.

de Blob 2 was released by THQ in 2011. It’s available on the Wii, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo DS.
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Weekly Game Music: Vinelle Island (Fantasy Earth Zero)

Posted on February 26, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. A few weeks ago, I’ve mentioned a Flash-based MMORPG with excellent music. This time, I’ll talk about a now-defunct MMORPG that, unfortunately, nobody can play anymore. Here’s Vinelle Island by Hitoshi Sakimoto. It’s from Fantasy Earth Zero.

Fantasy Earth Zero is a fantasy-based versus game that involves taking over other kingdom (teams). It’s a strange mix of real-time strategy and action-RPG. Like real-time strategy games, the players must collect resources called crystals at designated locations. Collecting enough crystals allows players to create infrastructures or summon units to take control of.

Like Action RPGs, there’s a controlled level system with a hard limit. Like console RPGs, Fantasy Earth Zero requires that you control your character directly. In addition, attacks must be aimed and executed manually. As such, the game requires immediate attention and reaction to heated battles.

Fantasy Earth Zero was released by Square Enix in 2006. While it has been released in the US in 2010, the game has been defunct and unplayable for over an year.

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Weekly Game Music: Annul (Neotokyo)

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music, and what better way to start than a weird music that mixes futuristic sounds in a spaghetti-western composition? I’m talking about Annul, by Ed Harrison. It’s used in a Japanese-themed Half-Life 2 mod, Neotokyo. It’s an action-filled, yet melancholy music of the ever-growing conflict between the government military and the terrorists.

Since Neotokyo is a Half-Life 2 mod, it is currently only playable on the Mac and on the PC. The mod can be downloaded here.

The story for Neotokyo, like Team Fortress 2 is merely used to explain the settings and missions. An extremely nationalistic group attempts to take the Japanese government for themselves when an amendment to the constitution doesn’t come through. Fortunately for the country, the government successfully foils the group’s actions, but at a price of scattered terrorists roaming in the streets. Neotokyo sets the stage for these terrorists fighting against the government law enforcers.

Like Team Fortress 2, Neotokyo is an online multiplayer first-person shooter. The main draw are the “capture the flag” missions, where the object to capture is the Ghost. When the player carries the Ghost, he or she becomes capable of seeing opponents coming from behind the walls. In exchange, the player is unable to fight back, and must flee back to his or her base as fast as possible. Neotokyo also takes cues from theMetroid Prime series, where different classes have different visors to visually detect invisible opponents. Every class, of course, have their own camouflage suits. Lastly, the mod is reveled for its art direction and graphics. Asian cities aren’t a common sight in video games, after all.

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Weekly Game Music: The Village Green (zOMG)

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Taro Omiya

Next up in my library of game music: Gaia Online. Yup I’m talking about that game-centric online community. I can only expect a lot of flaming between opinionated internet users, but first, lets put our differences behind and enjoy the music. It’s so good, even I took interest in the game it came from, zOMG, despite its ridiculous name. Here’s The Village Green, by Jeremy Soule.

zOMG is playable online, and even better, doesn’t require registration to get a good demo out of it.

zOMG is a flash-based MMORPG, intended to be smoothly integrated to the Gaia Online website. As such, your avatar’s gender, clothes, and accessories carry over to this stylized world. zOMG starts with you just getting off the train into the Village Greens. Quite immediately, you learn that all the inanimate objects have come to life…for the worst. It’s up to you to find what’s behind this mystery.

Like most MMORPGs, zOMG doesn’t have a strong focus in story, and certain quests end up conflicting in details (though it’s clear several of them are lies). Similarly, the combat is the basic point-and-click-to-attack fare. Unlike most MMORPGs, however, there are no weapons, armor, or heck, even a level-up system. Instead, you collect special rings that provides you different power and abilities. This includes swords, guns, magic, stat-boosts, etc. Furthermore, the combined stats determines what level you’re at.
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Weekly Game Music: The Impact Site (Pikmin)

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Taro Omiya

There’s a relatively lesser known Nintendo game called Pikmin. Everything about it should have been a blockbuster: Mario series creator and video game legend Shigeru Miyamoto designed the game. Nintendo themselves show-cased the game as a demonstration of their new console, Gamecube’s abilities to handle numerous characters and their AI. Some people argued this was the first game to get Real-Time Strategy right on a console. And yet…it fell through everyone’s radar. A shame, since the music in the game — such as The Impact Site, composed by Hajime Wakai — is wonderfully organic to match the wild-life nature of this game.

Pikmin has a relatively simple plot. Captain Olimar, a space captain cruising through space on a vacation, collides into an asteroid, and gets marooned on to an unknown planet. Unfortunately for Olimar, this planet is treacherous. Every creature, including spiders, are large and vicious. Worse, the planet’s atmosphere is toxic to Olimar, and he must rely on the month-long air supply left on his ship. His only path of escaping this planet — retrieving every lost spaceship piece, and repairing his ship — seems like an impossible task. Yet, as Olimar hopelessly scavenges his immediate surrounding, he encounters a loyal plant-based humanoid creatures that he names, “Pikmin.” He finds breeding these species to create an army is rather easy, and uses them as forces to defeat enemies and gather his lost spaceship parts.

Pikmin plays a lot like a Real-Time Strategy game. As Captain Olimar, you direct an army of Pikmins to handle different tasks, such as building bridges, fighting enemies, and carrying spaceship pieces. Olimar uses his whistle to gather Pikmins within a certain radius, and throws them to handle the selected tasks. Pikmins is breed by carrying dead enemies into their home-base, Onions. As there’s only a month of air supply available, your time in gathering all the spaceship pieces are limited.

Pikmin was released on the Gamecube, and later, ported to the Wii. It’s dramatically improved sequel was only released on the Gamecube for the US.

Extra!

Title: The Forest Navel
Game: Pikmin
Composer: Hajime Wakai

Title: 2P Battle
Game: Pikmin 2
Composer: Hajime Wakai

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Weekly Game Music: like stars (CLANNAD)

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Taro Omiya

A while ago, I’ve mentioned that one of my favorite parts about doing this series is that I discover games I’ve never played before. Here’s one of those games: CLANNAD, a visual novel that became an inspiration for many mangas and animes. One of its trance music, like stars by zts, is a sorrowful but hopeful tune that sets the tone for this tear-jerker game.

CLANNAD is a slice-of-life story that chronicles the life of Tomoya Okazaki from high school to parenthood. Tomoya leads a inward, negative life in high school. His delinquent life can easily be connected to his terrible relationship with his father. Recently, Tomoya’s alcoholic and angry father accidentally dislocates his son’s shoulder, forcing Tomoya to quite his sports team. Likewise, his father becomes apologetic and distant, only worsening Tomoya’s life. Despite these misfortunes, Tomoya befriends the sickly and low esteem Nagisa Furukawa. Together, they attempt to start a drama club.

CLANNAD is a visual novel where you converse with other characters. Like a choose-your-own-adventure, there are multiple choices that will lead to multiple different stories. Most interesting in this game are the dream sequences, where Tomoya dreams of being one of the only 2 living things in a barren, soulless world. Tomoya himself has no body in this world; instead, the other living thing, a girl, provides a body for him using a robot-like toy. The lights that appears here also mirrors those in the real-life sections. Once all of them are gathered, the true happy-ending is unlocked.

CLANNAD was released on the PC, PS2, PSP, PS3, and the Xbox 360, in Japan only.
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