Official Nontendo Music Thread

YES!
I loved Digimon as a kid. Loved.
And when I say as a kid...

To be honest, I was more into like the Tamagochi-type devices and the little pedometer digivice one where you fought all the baddies from the cartoon and digivolved in the cartoon way. That said, I had digimon world as a kid and spent years as an adult tracking it down. Eventually my buddy revealed he owned it, gave it to me then spent a summer playing it in my flat. I think I'd find it too frustrating to play myself, but I got to see most of it by watching him play.

I find the music and the general look and feel of the game wrote similar to monster Hunter, though I can't quite explain why. Also, quote a few of this game's sound effects were lifted wholesale for little kings story.

Great pick, Jay.

Didn't you PM me about playing this a while back? I know someone here did.

I know what you mean in saying that it's somewhat frustrating to play. Getting an Ultimate level Digimon and blasting through the game before suddenly finding yourself back at square one is annoying.

Ah, what sound effects were lifted? I did like the menu chimes in this.

Alright, I'm gonna try and do something semi-regular and actually keep to it this time! (yeah, no review of falcom field zanmai, sorry to nobody who was interested, some of it will pop up eventually though!)  What am I gonna do nobody asks?  Well, I figure I might as well put my collection collecting dust on my shelf to good purpose, and am starting a weekly or bi-weekly thing called... *dramatic voice* Athrun's video game playlist

What is this I hear from nobody?  As the name suggests, I'm going to post one, sometimes two themes from my current music playlists (from games anyway) and then superficually waffle on about them as if I know what I'm talking about!  This is the stuff I listen to with regularity.  Which, yes, is mostly rpg music, but those who've played a lot of the genre know that the music can vary a fair bit, in one game alone you can have rocky battle themes awesome enough to get their own live concerts (no, really, I can name three examples), themes so mellow you could just drift off to them (in a good way), and themes so haunting they cut to your very soul.

I suppose this is kind of the same thing as the usual music weeks, but with this there's no obligation to post from a ton of things, which typically since I don't get through games very often just results in me posting nothing.  It also makes it easier for folks to just check out, as it's going to be mostly a single song each time, rather than half a soundtrack.  

So without further ado, Athrun's Video Game Playlist: Track 01 ~ Gods Bound By Rules (Nier)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIgfwsOph4I


I must make a confession: I have never played Nier.  That aside there is one word to describe its ost: beautiful.  Actually I could use more words, such as haunting, sweeping, epic, engrossing, and touching, but really the first sums it up.  I stumbled across its ost years ago due to a thread very much like this one, one dedicated to spreading the awesome of videogame music, and in fact loved what I heard (this very track) so much that I imported the entire soundtrack from japan (which then turned in to a wallet devouring obsession lasting the last four years...)  

The whole soundtrack is simply stunning and something I wheel out when anyone questions why I buy some game music.  While the song is epic, it's not epic in the tradional sense with overbearing horns and trumpets, instead using a powerful drumbeat and absolutely stunning vocals to do the job.  Be warned, this will not be the last time nier appears in this column, but as the soundtrack responsible for my 50 odd imported collection I figured it was a perfect place to try something I will inevitably fail.



And yes, at some point I will do a few pieces from nintendo!

JayMoyles wrote:

Didn't you PM me about playing this a while back? I know someone here did.

Ah, what sound effects were lifted? I did like the menu chimes in this.

Yep that was me.
I think it was some of the menu noises and then some really obscure ones like shuffling footsteps and that.

Athrun - the vocals actually detracted from the track I reckoned (a bit overpowering for my tastes) , but by jove I loved the drumbeat.

Drunka - thought so! What made you compare Digimon World to Monster Hunter?

It's hard to put my finger on it, really. Just the look of the village, the meat that you eat, traveling out on missions then returning to the central hub, the fixed camera... Just the look and the feel of the game, but only when you're in their respective central village areas.

Gotcha - the actual gameplay seems radically different so I wasn't seeing the connection there. I actually fired up Digimon World after you and Mas tweeted the box at me, and the music still makes me feel like a ten year old again.

GNAMER'S NON-NINTENDO MUSIC WEEKS

Week Three, apparently? I'm sure Jay did more than that...

As if anybody thought I was going to do anything else (well, there's one other series if Jay is virtuous enough to let me try again...). The game that took me on an emotional journey like no other, the sci-fi universe I just can't bare to leave, the one and only Mass Effect. And like any great sci-fi, there's some tunes all up in here!

Obvious spoiler warning but I don't think I've said too much.


10: M4, Pt ii
Faunts

I do enjoy when a game features a "real" song at either the beginning or the end so I can play it when I'm playing music around normal people and still get the little kick I get from music that I have some other attachment to. Not as singable as Snake Eater or as well-integrated as The Wonderful 100, this fit the theme of the first game perfectly and helped the ending credits feel really slick and meaningful. I hate film envy in games, but the Mass Effect trilogy really feels up there with big Hollywood blockbusters, and this helped.

9: Stand Strong, Stand Together
Clint Mansell

Here's a big old helping of cheese from Shep's speech near the end of the third game. For all the military bravado, the choir which comes in really helps sell the "hopeless last stand" feeling that made this mission feel like such an event. Say what you will about the third game's ending (I actually loved it), but it definitely felt like an event.

8: Saren
Jack Wall

Saren in the first game was never quite matched as an adversary. The Illusive Man was a very interesting antagonist, and the rivalry there was a great plotline through the second and third games but in the end he was just an old human who could be killed in one shot. The Reapers were a phenomenal, insurmountable threat but the faceless nature that made them so terrifying also meant they had no character. And the Collectors, and Harbinger, were a pretty damp squib who kept making empty threats. It was all about Saren, and every great villain needs a great villain theme.

7: The Normandy Reborn
Jack Wall

A cheesy moment, from a slightly unnecessary death-and-rebirth which occurs at the start of the second game (was calling her SHEPARD not selling the messiah metaphor enough?), I shouldn't have felt so excited at the unveiling of the Normandy SR2, but the music just got to me. Punch-the-air, Spielberg stuff.

6: Garrus
Jack Wall

Just the right mix of X Files and Clint Eastwood opens up the theme for everyone's favourite alien space cop-turned vigilante- turned superhero. I'm Garrus Vikarian, and this is just my favourite character theme on the Citadel.

5: Love Theme
Jack Wall

While much of the story is cribbed from Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5 and who-knows-where else, Mass Effect took the Harry Potter approach of taking old tropes and giving them fresh twists and phenomenal character work to make them so much more than the sum of their parts. So, the romance plots were a huge part of why I liked the game. Shepard and Liara's relationship felt so natural, made so much sense, that it amazes me there even exist other options. The writing really is incredible.

4: The Citadel
Jack Wall, Richard Jacques and Sam Hulick

Throughout the trilogy, a lot of time is spent on this enormous space station. This might have gotten annoying if every single song on the soundtrack didn't so perfectly capture the majesty and otherworldyness of its design.

3: Leaving Earth
Chris Mansell

Between the second and third games, EA and Bioware brought on board Chris Mansell, a popular film soundtrack artist. The first games have a very classic sci-fi feel, with mysterious noises and synths and pieces of music that really transport you across the galaxy. One might therefore worry that this change would feel out of place, but as soon as Shep leaves Earth on her all-important mission and this song kicks in, all your fears go out the window. The perfectly captures the tragedy of the moment and Shepard's melancholy.

2: Suicide Mission
Jack Wall

And here is just some kick-ass action music from one of the best missions in any videogame ever (even if it was set in a dull, brown rock.) Also, it really reminds me of the Eleventh Doctor's awesome "get pumped" music. Just top stuff.

1: Uncharted Worlds
Chris Hulick

And here we are, my favourite piece of music from the Mass Effect franchise and the same tracked I posted in Balladeer's Space Week and got my head bitten off for.
One of Mass Effect's core appeals is the feeling of exploring the galaxy. A lot of the time, that ammounts to little more than selecting a planet from a map. This might have ruined that feeling, were it not for this incredible piece of music. Every time it played, I genuinely felt like I was aboard the Normandy, choosing where to fly next. The only time I feel more like Picard is when I run my hand over the top of my head.

Figured this would be your choice! A solid pick too, sir.

I love the initial reveal of the Citadel, and I think the music that accompanies it does its job amazingly. It made me feel that this was a proper cinematic sci-fi experience and not just another game.

Fun fact - the Saren theme is also the music you hear when you die in the first game - appropriate, I suppose!

I think I prefer the first game's music to the later installments. It just felt more... classic sci-fi, as opposed to cinematic action and bombast. The ME1 soundtrack is a frequent pick of mine for study music.

Oh, and you're right in saying I had done more music weeks than what's advertised, but I decided to remove the older weeks from contention and start a new "series" in a way - hence, week 3! I'll add this post to the index. Top work Drunka.

I'm with you on the first game having a better soundtrack overall, however it didn't have the incredibly memorable moments which are perfect for lists like this. 

I have all the soundtracks on my phone and they get regular listens so this was much easier to research than most music weeks; I've just been adding songs to a playlist as I go.

I'll hit that mass effect music up once I've got around to playing it, I can't go spoiling it like I've done with a bunch of games.

JayMoyles wrote:

Athrun - the vocals actually detracted from the track I reckoned (a bit overpowering for my tastes) , but by jove I loved the drumbeat.

Yeah, the vocals' prominence definitely would make it harder to like if they aren't your thing, I'm a sucker for those types of vocals so I pretty much adore the song but it definitely ain't for everyone.  

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I'm doing this a day early because aldnoah zero left me feeling kinda blue, so time to get something cheerful goin on!

Athrun's Video Game Playlist: Track 02 ~ Sophisticated Fight (The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky FC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bekkP37HcC0


Ah falcom, easily my favourite composer group in gaming with their ability to simultaneously create memorable melodies with themes that bring up vibes of the good old days of gaming, and then because they're awesome proceed to do a bunch of arranged versions.  Between the games themselves and said arrange albums they very quickly rose to my favourite with ease.  As for this theme, gone with the rock in with the cheerful jazzy music.  They've done a few versions of this theme but none of them have topped the original in my opinion, with the sav rendition coming off a tad too fake in the instrumentation department and the zanmai version missing the very thing I like about the song: the cheerful and almost relaxing nature of the theme.  

Needless to say this won't be the last time falcom pop up in my weekly thing, given a good fifth of my gaming soundtracks are by falcom and all.  But sophisticated fight seems like a excellent place to start with my personal fave themes.

Man, that was jolly! I'd love it if that was the theme tune that played when I got up in the morning.

Yay Mass Effect

I've done it before but you can't get enough MASS EFFECT also why did Balla bite your head off. I thought if a game is on a Nintendo system like 3 is, is meant to go in the Nintendo music thread.

I hope drunka you cover a game that came out recently on the U when you go back to Nintendo that has some cool remix (I think there remixes).

He came out with this when I posted the galaxy map music for Space Week.

Balladeer wrote:

I saw that someone had posted in my thread and I was all happy and then it's a rubbish multiformat game.  You could have made Athrun happy instead of making me sad, you know).

Which is especially annoying if you read this little nugget from this very thread!

Balladeer wrote:

masofdas wrote:

Multiformat games seem to sneak into the Nintendo thread as well don't they Balla.

Where they belong.

Oh, and another one for the Balla bingo; abusing and misunderstanding the word "multiformat".

Only one out of three is on Wii U, because EA tried to get money for old rope and then threw a temper tantrum when nobody wanted to buy the old rope.  "Well in that case I'm not going to give you any of the shiny new ropes I'm making!" cried the spoilt rich kid in the videogames playground.  That's okay, EA: if we don't have to play with your ropes, nor will we want to use them to hang ourselves.  (Actually that's to do with new games, not porting over old games, but I'm not going to let that ruin a good extended metaphor.)

If you'd just done ME3 in the Ninty thread I wouldn't have raised an eyebrow apart from to shout at EA, but you can't say that a music week for the entire ME series should go into a Nintendo thread when two of them never saw the platform.  Want to be annoyed at someone?  Be annoyed at EA.  Goodness knows I am.

And while I did use two different uses of "multiformat" (one being "non-Nintendo"), I hope that the meaning was clear in both cases.  No annoyance intended, anyhoo, and I'll try to stick to the one from now on.

I never said ME should be a Nintendo week, I just posted a track which is in ME3 as part of space week. Me no an idiot.

Fuggit, was it ME3? In which case I'm the idiot. My apologies.

Its the galaxy map music, which is the same in all three.

It's that time of the week again, time for another pick from my video game music collection currently doing the rounds on my playlist!  This week Danganronpa finds itself shunted off by a soundtrack actually in my collection despite my unkeenness of doing Falcom two weeks in a row (but hey, the tone of the theme is completely different so it's okay!)  Without further ado, the pick.

Athrun's Video Game Playlist: Track 03 ~ The Azure Arbitrator - Ao no Kiseki Evolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGRVJWsJAL0


Out with the cheerful quirky and in with the epic final boss rock!  And it doesn't get much more epic than this eight minute piece, kicking off with some epic eery chorus before slamming in to the rock.  I'll admit as far as the opening goes I actually prefer the opening of the original version of this song which is even more eery and spine chilling in its build up, but I adore the improved instrumentation in Evolution's rendition, and then there's that guitar gig at around the 3 and a half minute mark which may annoy fans of the original but just gets me even more in the zone.  While Ao no Kiseki is never going to get the super arrange treatment that its predecessor Zero no Kiseki recieved this scratches any potential itch for one I might have had.  Course this may not be to everyone's tastes, and it's certainly no The Strongest Foe from Ys Fleghana, but it's up there with Falcom's best final boss themes if you ask me.  An awesome rearrangement of an already awesome final boss theme.


But wait, there's more!  As a special once off I shall be covering the other theme currently circulating my playlists from this same soundtrack.  Order now to receive this absolutely free!

Athrun's Video Game Playlist: Track 04 ~ Unfathomed Force - Ao no Kiseki Evolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrMbKBQqK1s

Just what this theme was missing in the original for me, Falcom's signature violin and electric guitar rock and some spine chilling vocals to open the theme.  While I always liked the original it was always missing that extra zing to me.  No longer.  And because falcom were feeling nice they even gave the song a proper ending rather than the typical loop and fade out most game ost's have, just like Azure Arbitrator, thus once again scratching my itch for a super arrange soundtrack for ao no kiseki.



And that concludes another week of this segment. Next week: A nintendo theme, so expect this to go without a contribution by me for the next fortnight.

Choral stuff in videogame music doesn't sit well with me, but I enjoyed the guitar in both tracks you posted. The second one especially, with its strings and loveliness.

Apologies for not posting an update yesterday - uni got in the way!

Non-Nintendo Music Weeks: Week Four - Scott Pilgrim VS. The World: The Game



Scott Pilgrim VS. The World: The Game is a tie-in done right. I suppose it's pretty hard to cock up a game based on a movie based on a comic series inspired by video-games, but this goes above and beyond, delivering a tightly constructed homage to brawlers of old like Streets of Rage and River City Ransom. Actually, the fact you can buy food to gain stats almost makes this feel like a modern River City Ransom. Anyway, onto the music!



Another Winter is your opening stage theme, and it accomplishes everything you'd want in an opening level theme. It's chirpy, upbeat and catchy. It's very easy to find yourself whistling the little part starting at 0:38. Also, it avoids any "snowy level" musical tropes, which is a bonus. Anamanaguchi are renowned chiptune artists, and they knocked this one out of the park.



To contrast, Rock Club is a bit more intense than Another Winter. It plays in the third stage of the game and it's pretty fucking fantastic. It's somehow even more catchy than Another Winter. There's a lot going on in this track, but it just works so well. The chip-drums in this are just mindblowingly good. If you listen to any of the tracks in this update, make sure it's this one.



The final boss theme is split into two parts, but I prefer Gideon Part One. If you listen to Gideon Part Two, it's just... a bit too busy. It's certainly more intense than the first part, as it has to be to reflect the ramped up intensity in the fight itself, but I think the first tracks does a better job of retaining some intensity whilst also retaining the catchiness and chirpiness that I love about Anamanaguchi and this OST.

Next week: a guest, hopefully! If not, then my favourite platformer of all time gets some love.

Hey I've done that before but not as in depth and always good to hear like mass effect again. So you will be doing Sonic 2 next week then or we talking 3D so Crash Bandicoot 3 then

Nah, next week is your slot Mas! Expect neither of those platformers the week after.

Week Five: Have laugh with masofdas

I’ve been given the reigns this week by Jay. Originally I was going to do Destiny as it’s got things like THIS but thought that’s a bit boring, so then came Velocity 2x to mind as it has stuff like THIS.

But again little bit boring and predictable, someone else can do them in the future.

So thought I’d use this slot for a game(s) that no one else will do ever as the games are quite frankly sh1t but do have some decent stuff in there sound tracks.

So give you these classic from Mary-Kate and Ashley (used the PS2 box art, so balla doesn’t realise this is on GameCube as well)


With tunes like this Do As I Say from 6X or Hello Kiity by The Tantrums not Miss Lavigne (Massive Swipe Right)

Okay so not that great but for the game they were in there not bad at all

So will leave you with some Zelda games as there good right


Harlequin Bazaar

The Fairy Pool

The last and best it could even be from a real Zelda Overworld.

Hope you enjoyed this silly edition of Music, if I do do again I will do something more serious.

Can't say I expected that in the slightest.

I did enjoy the 6X track - sounds like something you'd hear in a Tony Hawk's game. Not too keen on the second one though I'm afraid! The CDi tracks were surprisingly good for being in such guff games. That overworld theme has no right to be as good as it is. Oh, and it's week 5 Mas, just to let you know.

Cheers for the contribution!

6X had a few tracks in the game but I think that's the best of the lot also yeah does feel like a Tony Hawk type track.