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Electric Challenge #5-7
Stage 5: They're Blocking the Path!: Talk about your favorite antagonist in gaming. What game are they from? Are they a recurring antagonist or a once-off roadblock? Do they have a cool theme song? And so on.
I like Julius from Sword of Mana. (There are going to be a lot of shoutouts to Sword of Mana in these posts, lol.) Though radically different, I love both (A) his femme, vaguely drag-queen-esque look from Sword of Mana as well as (B) his "mysterious shadowy chancellor" look (and also (C) his "disguised as a red mage" look) from Final Fantasy Adventure.
(A)
(B)
(C)
In the tiny tiny fandom for this game, Dark Lord tends to be the more popular villain, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Julius and the fact that he manipulates Dark Lord and loyally does his bidding... in order to achieve his own selfish ends. He's a cool character (and a kickass mage!).
I know "femme shadowy vizier villain" is somewhat of a problematic trope, but it also leads to absolutely great designs (see also: Jafar). Like, look at that amazing silk veil. HECK YEAH!
Stage 6: Ahead on our Way!: Talk about your favorite game OST (original soundtrack). What game is it from? Who composed it? What are your favorite tracks? (Are there any tracks you don't like?)
OMG, this is so hard. I'm going to talk about favorite OST overall, and then also some of my favorite tracks of all time that come from soundtracks that aren't so strong overall.
Favorite OST: Chrono Trigger. I love Yasunori Mitsuda's musical style and how varied it is while also sounding extremely atmospheric and intriguing.
My favorite tracks:
- Wind Scene / Yearnings of Wind / 600 AD: I just love the string sound here, including how it sounds pizzicato'd. This so well captures the feeling of finding yourself venturing out into a world 400 years in the past!
- Chrono Trigger / Chrono's Theme: The main theme of the game, which does capture perfectly the determination felt when you realize the world is going to experience a cataclysm in the future and you decide you're going to stop it.
- Frog's Theme: Another very inspiring theme evoking determination and courage. But with a sad reed/whistle sound that makes this like... one part march and one part spaghetti western.
- Bike Chase: Very good pump-up music.
- Delightful Spekkio: Uyimbube, uyimbube, uyimbube... The happiest battle music ever.
- Decisive Battle with Magus: Starts out as a creepy mausoleum/Halloween vibe but then transitions into a heart-racing epic theme.
- Corridors of Time / Zeal theme: This track is sort of in the middle for me, personally, but I'm including it because it is widely people's favorite song. Very mystical and otherworldly and just a bit sad.
- Wings of Time / Epoch theme: Every JRPG needs an airship theme that conveys the exhilaration of having a set of wings for the first time and setting out to save the world. "Determination" is very much the Mood of Chrono Trigger.
- World Revolution: This song alternates between the final boss's theme and an epic B section, and even throws in some of Crono's theme in there.
- Ending credit music, which I will not spoil.
If I may, I would also like to toss in the opening of Chrono Cross, Time's Scar -- different game but same composer, and one of the most epic opening songs of all time. Just wait for it...
As for individual tracks:
From the Seiken Densetsu series, The Color of the Summer Sky (Secret of Mana) by Hiroki Kikuta never fails to cheer me up. It really does sound like the sun shining after the rain. From Sword of Mana, Endless Battlefield by Kenji Ito is my favorite. Love the bass line. It's been remade many times, and has some good full orchestral / high quality rearrangements as well as the Gameboy soundchip version from Final Fantasy Adventure. Rise of Mana never got a global release, but its soundtrack is also great -- I love The Enemy Appears by Tsuyoshi Sekito.
The Soul Calibur series has some pretty uneven music with some of it being forgettable and some only being memorable just because of how STRESSED it makes you when you're fighting. But then there are suddenly epic songs that make you want to fight in a stage just to hear its music. My favorites:
- Destiny Awaits No One (Soulcalibur II) by Yoshihito Yano. First of all, that track title is amazing. This is such an upbeat song, although does tend to stress me out when fighting because of the weird beat.
- Brave Sword, Braver Soul (Soulcalibur II by Yoshihito Yano.
- Sleepless - An Untamed Beast (Soulcalibur V) by Andrew Aversa. Okay, they really went all out on SCV's soundtrack in general. This track is attention-grabbing from the start and it only gets better.
- Invincible Blade (Soulcalibur V) by Hiroki Kikuta. I actually recognized Kikuta's style just from listening to the background music used in early trailers, before I knew he was involved in the project. I got SO EXCITED.
Not stage background music, but the opening to Soul Edge, Edge of Soul (composed by KHAN (Benten Maru) and performed by Suzi Kim), remains one of my favorite songs ever to listen to, made better by the extremely cheesy motivational lyrics ("Nobody can just do it for you. It's time that you knew it's up to you to love, it's up to you to shine. The light true and blue!") delivered with horrendous English pronunciation. But it is absolutely amazing. And yeah, I do feel stronger when I hear this song! Thanks for the pep talk.
Bravely Default's whole soundtrack by REVO / Linked Horizon is amazing. I thought I've gushed about it on this blog before but maybe I scrapped it because I can't find it. But yes, I absolutely love the main theme which appears in the various overland themes. Shoutout to this particular version of it (Ship Racing Across the Ocean) which is very easy to forget about because it only plays when you're using a certain ship, which you only use for a short portion of the game near the beginning. Unlike all the other versions of the main theme, it's in 3/4 time! Has a very Miyazaki/Joe Hisaishi feel to it. (And yes, the "first airship" theme (Boat Soaring Through the Heavens) -- which also features the main theme -- also does its job of conveying "first flight" exhilaration!) All of the characters' special move themes are great. I'll just link to the vocal soundtrack (called the Luxendarc Daikikou (Big Travelogue / Travel Diary). In particular, let me rec Ringabel's special attack theme, Love's Vagrant.
Stage 7: Off the Map: Tell us about a game you think is underrated.
There are so many I want to mention, but let me do a game that I haven't mentioned in this meme so far, and I'm going to go with a game that is more obscure/unknown rather than underrated:
Panel de Pon. This SNES game is rather unknown because it didn't get a release out of Japan. Well, more accurately, it was released outside of Japan but in a heavily localized form, where it was given a Yoshi/Mario world-type reskinning and renamed to Tetris Attack. The first inkling I had of the original version was actually an item in Super Smash Bros. Melee called Lip's Stick. I thought the name was just a silly play on lipstick, but actually, it was referencing Lip, the main character of Panel de Pon. Later, an old LJ friend introduced me to the Japanese version of Tetris Attack and I was like OMG, this is amazing.
Imagine a world and art style that seems like a mash-up between, like, Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears or something. The story, as far as I can tell, is that monsters have brought constant rain to the land of fairies which for some reason has made them angry and turn on each other. Lip, the flower fairy, has to first calm her fellow fairies down and then team up with them to fight off the trouble-making monsters. This is about the level of stakes I can handle in a game, lmao. The story is extremely basic and short but I appreciate it for the magical girl fairy roster and Friendship! aesthetic. The ending literally is Lip running down a rainbow with sparkles trailing after her. It's so femme.
Some kind of sexism meant that when they localized the game, they freaked out because they thought boys wouldn't buy a game chock-full of fairies and flowers, and so we got Tetris Attack instead. Which isn't a bad game (I remember playing it as a kid), but I want fairy magical girls, dammit.
The gameplay in both versions is the same: it's a puzzle game where you try to line up 3+ blocks in a row to clear them and create combos by forming more 3+ arrangements when the blocks on top of the cleared blocks fall down. It's not super hard, although the story mode is a bit cruel as you need to complete it on hard without any continues to get the real ending of the game (trivial to do with save states on an emulator, though). There's also a puzzle mode, which is actually pretty helpful for teaching you how to make combos.
Anyway, it's a pretty minimal, easy-to-pick-up game, and fun for some competitive play. The character roster isn't very fleshed out but nevertheless colorful and interesting. For example, towards the end of the story, you find out that the ice fairy Sherbet uses "boku" and fire fairy Flare uses "ore" -- they're all girls but yeah. There's apparently a remake, too, that was bundled on the Gamecube with Yoshi's Cookie and Dr. Mario and that introduces a second generation cast of characters, but I've never played it. List of Panepon characters on the wiki.
no subject
Gotta love your OST and music track mentions here. I haven't played Chrono Trigger yet (I know, I know...I have it for my DS and everything, just have a hefty backlog! XD), but the soundtrack has always been incredible to listen to. I love Yasunori Mitsuda's work. "Time's Scar" is certainly one of the most epic opening songs ever too, I agree! And I adored your other track selections too--they were all phenomenal to listen to! :D
Julius sounds like quite the neat antagonist as well! :D That's neat that he has so many differing designs too. :)
no subject
"Time's Scar" is indeed epic. It's also good to know that people can Chrono Trigger's soundtrack even when they haven't played the game. Glad you enjoyed the music choices!
I love Julius so much. X3