Let's Listen: Don't Press Start

Game music assists role play, getting you in the mood to take on the role of Samus, Toejam or Master Chief. If Streets of Rage was accompanied by the Parodius soundtrack, the tone of Axel's mission would be entirely different.

The music that plays before you even start up the game occupies a special role, introducing you to the role and preparing your mindset before you get a chance to take it on.

Donkey Kong Country 3

Are you ready for an energetic funtime adventure? That's what this track asks you, the player. My feet are a-tappin', and I'm ready for this to be a fun game.

It takes an already strong track, the bonus theme from Donkey Kong Country, and gives it a new coat of paint. In this case, the opening song is drawing on the memory of a previous game to set the tone, but the track is also good enough to stand on its own--otherwise, it wouldn't be worth remembering from the first game.

Also worth noting is that this is one of the few tracks on the DKC3 OST composed by David Wise. You can view the game's intro to accompany this song here.

Sanxion

This one breaks the rules a little. Yes, it's an introduction tune, since it plays before you play the game, but you can't press start to skip it. This is the loading theme for Sanxion; you'll hear this every time you boot it up. I don't know how much of it plays before you get to the actual game, but I've heard it's pretty bad.

Which is a pretty good thing in Sanxion's case. Within the first 30 seconds, you've got an extremely hummable hook. You'll hear that hook quite a bit, but different phases keep the tune fresh. For instance, I don't think there's any particular reason the breakdown at 1:21 is followed by the haunting bit at 1:29, but it maintains the rhythm and general mood of the song, so I'm happy. It keeps coming up with new bits right up to the 5:36 completion time.
The job of Sanxion's loader tune is to keep you interested in blowing up space ships while it loads the actual game, however long that may take. In that sense, this is a great tune.
Also, those interested in focusing on some awesome SID drums should stick around for 2:19.

Crusader of Centy

For these writeups, I like to lead with something catchy, put the stuff I'm not sure about in the middle, and close with the cream of the crop. In its four minutes, Crusader of Centy's opening manages to cover a wide scope, from foreboding omens (0:00) to a world of temporary peace (1:20), finally ending on a grand sendoff to adventure. And there's plenty in between.
Fantasy commonly relies on a storied setting to draw readers, and that's what this opening theme affords Crusader of Centy. The tune strings together a series of moods, taking the listener on a journey through the land before so much as creating a save file.
And it does a good job of matching the tale told by the opening scrawl, as you can see here.

LPGA Terranigma, at great length

The origins of the Terranigma Let's Play actually predate this blog (is that even possible? survey says: maybe?), which is why it's so special to my heart. Not really. It's just more terribility in line with our other videos. The true specialty of LPGA Terranigma is that it's now spanned the course of a year, becoming our longest running and most popular video series. Over 15 views! Over 5 videos! Ten months of zero activity! That's a success story if I ever heard one. So rejoin us here, about halfway through the game's prologue, for an LPGA you'll never remember to forget.

It's the Imperial Age of consoles, and the gamer is a worthless commodity

Sorry, I had to get in just one more post about Xbox One this week. This is maybe kinda slightly a rehash of my EA post a few weeks ago. Apologies all around.

Needless to say, the gamer-community reaction to the One has been overwhelmingly negative. It has in turn been called "the worst conference since Nintendo's Vitality Sensor", a "travesty", "a clear win for Sony", and "gay. just plain gay". And I made up all of those quotes! Seriously, just pop by GamesRadar, Joystiq, or Kotaku for a few minutes: not just the comment threads, but even the published articles carry outright condemnation. What it all comes down to is outrage over a simple fact:

You, the gamer, do not matter anymore.

This presentation was not intended to please you. You are no longer the audience for console manufacturers, or even most (mega) software developers. They are not targeting the 10% demographic who finish their games, or the 5% who utilize backwards compatibility. Why would they? Any veteran of Business 101 (and let's remember that I failed Business 101) could tell you that a company aims to please the majority demographic. A 5% increase in sales is nothing to scoff at, but if it comes at the cost of a successful launch with the other 95%, it's not worth it. It sucks, but the game market is no longer home to gamers. You are a tiny minority.

Beyond all the used game and backward compatibility talk, the underlying criticism of Microsoft's platform is that they seem to be completely skipping over games. They are showing zero new games to headline their console (wonder why all the publicity stills are just images of the box sitting on a pedestal?) and seem to care more about TV and Skype functionality. Because they do care more about those things, because Jeff Public Daniels spends a whole lot more time watching footballs and Two and a Half CSIs than he does playing Halo 8. And hardcorers are saying "but I don't, and neither do my friends!" But the very fact that you play Halo 8 has already put you in Microsoft's pocket, and you're only a tiny piece of the market anyway. They don't even care whether they lose you. Try to open up your perspective a bit and watch the presentation from the eyes of someone who has never owned a console before. All that TV shit suddenly looks a lot more appealing.

The Wii was perhaps not the first, but certainly the most prominent harbinger of the transitioning mentality. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth generations, we all talked about "console wars". Which company could grab the biggest slice of the gamer pie? Wii came around and showed that this was a paltry squabble; the real competition was not to grab the most gamers, but to convert the most non-gamers. The existing "hardcore" population became a given, and the war transformed into a campaign of conquest.

It's kinda like how Britain and France spent most of their existence up til the 17th century biting at each other's dicks, and then all of a sudden realized "hey - there's the rest of the world out there. Let's try to take over the biggest chunk of that", and hence, colonialism, imperialism, etc. They (for the most part - Napoleon being an obvious exception) no longer tried to conquer the rest of Europe, instead setting their sights on Africa, Asia, and America. That is the turn that video games have taken. Console giants Sony and Microsoft are England and France, and we, the gamers, are the English and French, depending on which box we have in our TV cabinets. And as our overlords turn their attention to colonizing the rest of the population, we've become jealous that no one is fighting over us anymore. Of course, to continue the analogy a little further, a few years down the line, the rest of the world got tired of European rule and kicked those bastards to the curb. Which equates to the looming death-of-consoles at the hands of even casualer gaming on social networks, tablets, and phones - devices not tied to proprietary software.

The British Empire. Note that at NO point did Britain ever conquer France (or vice-versa) - just as MS and Sony have no interest in conquering each other's hardcore fanbase

Let me leave you with the worldwide console sales of the last 30 years, by hardware generation. Notice that I split PS2 sales at 2006, as it was a legitimate 7th generation competitor. I'd include handhelds, but it's very difficult to track numbers on gaming usage of smartphones and tablets, so it'd make a misleading comparison with DS, GBA, etc.

3rd gen: NES (62) + SMS (10) = 73 mil

4th gen: SNES (49) + Genesis (42) + Turbo (10) = 101 mil

5th gen: N64 (32) + PSX (102) + Saturn (9) = 143 mil

6th gen: PS2 (106) + GCN (21) + Xbox (24) + Dreamcast (10) = 161 mil

7th gen: PS2 (49) + PS3 (77) + Wii (100) + 360 (77) = 303 mil

Look at that massive jump from 6th to 7th. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo aren't battling over that 300 million. They know that if they play their cards right, they can turn it into 600 million, and the way to do that isn't infighting over the 15 million loyalists who care about backwards compatibility.

Let's Listen: Beasts as Black as Night

You're probably familiar with the old saying, "You can always judge an RPG soundtrack by its boss tune." Boss anthems are hardly ever the most emotive or interesting songs on a soundtrack, but there's something irresistible about their sense of dire emergency. I'm here today to talk about Beasts as Black as Night, the boss theme for Ys III.
What happens when you release the same RPG across multiple platforms? Ys III takes the route of using the same soundtrack on each console.

SNES

This is why that route is oft regrettable. In a Controversial Blogging Choice, I'm leading an article about one song with a bad example of that song.

Say what you will about the SNES, its synths hold up pretty well. The SNES version of Beasts as Black as Night, however, doesn't understand what to do with them. The lead instrument (0:12) is too contemplative to fit the urgent role of the lead melody. Equally puzzling is the pan flute used for the rapidly moving background instrument (0:00) which works more by chance than anything.

(Look to Nobuo Uematsu's SNES Final Fantasy soundtracks for songs that don't press the hardware but still pack in plenty of emotion and panache. For a soundtrack that tailors its sound to the console, check out Mortal Kombat SNES vs. Genesis.)

Genesis

The Genesis version finds siblings in the PC-88 and X68000 versions, but its production takes the lead by a nose. Just like the title, every instrument in here is dark and searing. Am I getting too flowery?

The fun of Beasts as Black as Night kicks off immediately (well, 0:05) with a guitar that spirals violently downward, marked spooky by a whistle in the distant background. Out of the soundtracks limited to hardware synths, the Genesis version is the best-produced not only for its synths but for its attention to mastering.

TurboGrafx-CD

But the TurboGrafx-CD version wasn't limited to hardware synths. It may be cheating, but the TG-CD version is my personal favorite. Most CD consoles back in the day (early 90s) had a penchant for overblown rock music, but Ys III does that one better and mixes in plenty of weird synths. I like to think that the lead synth is a bassoon!! The point is, this version--without going too far--has flakes of the unusual in its instrumentation.
Notable features of this version are the solo at 1:21 and the breakdown + solo at 2:52.

(For an overblown rock CD soundtrack, I think everyone's favorite example is Lords of Thunder.)

Unfortunately, there are some versions I couldn't find. I'd love to hear the MSX version, for instance. However, I would be remiss if I didn't at least link you to the Oath in Felghana version, which is overblown in a more orchestral and less weirdo synth way. Most of my talk was about instrument choice, but I guess that's what happens when you take a simple song and discuss it three times over.

That being said, it [Xbox One] looks to be a complete travesty

I'm not going to reiterate news coverage for no one to read, but One is everything that has been feared by the gaming public in the last few months and years. All I can say is that unless Microsoft does a complete 180 and contradicts what they've said today and yesterday, they have officially lost me as a customer. The only real reason I have to buy a console is convenience and exclusives. As One will not play my 360 games, will not allow me to play used games, and will not allow me to have shitty Comcast internet, it has completely lost its convenience advantage over PS4 or PC. And since exclusives are a three-way game, I'm not that bothered by what I'll be missing. I'm not so sure 360 really beat out PS3 in that department; it just remained competitive enough that I didn't feel the need to get a PlayStation. And Nintendo tends to have the best exclusives anyway - especially if they get Platinum in their pocket, as a successful Bayonetta 2 might permit.