Changing Course

Hello everyone and thanks for stopping by, as always!

In an effort to write more on this site, I’ve decided to change tack a little from past entries. This blog started as a purely personal blog and gradually morphed into mostly games-related stuff. And fair enough, it’s a principal hobby of mine. But I have all these unused categories going free at the top of the page so I thought I’d branch out and try to write a bit more on some other topics to give all of you lovely readers the opportunity to get to know me a bit better in some other areas. Plus, you never know, I might even pick up some more readers along the way – this was clearly demonstrated a while back when I reviewed Haunted Stereo live at the Hobbit (cue Pingback on myself… ’cause no-one else ever links to me ) and I met a whole bunch of fine new folks as a result.

So from this week forwards, this blog will be… a blog, as opposed to a games blog. You’ll still find games writing here, of course, but there are plenty of other things I’d like to talk about. My last few video games articles have also been posted over on Bitmob, so do go check me out (and comment!) over there if you like what you see. You’ll also see a couple of my articles on Good Old Games, which should be your first destination for picking up… well, good old games. Check out my articles on Rise of the Triad and Simon the Sorcerer.

Right. On to other matters.

My Dan and Charlie project that I discussed in my last post has been proceeding nicely. It’s been fun to “roleplay” these two characters and imagine the situations they have been getting into and how they interact. In practice, it has also been an interesting experiment in separating out various facets of my own personality into two separate people. Those who know me well will have already spotted this, but I also think it’s a potentially interesting way of telling a story from different perspectives. My research on the subject is admittedly limited, but does anyone know if anything similar has been done before, outside of ARGs such as Perplex City? (Perplex City is, I confess, where I got the idea from in the first place, although those characters’ stories were rather less mundane) I’d be intrigued to see how other people have approached it.

That’s it for now. Like I say, this change in approach is largely an excuse to get me writing more on a broader variety of different topics, so assuming I have a bit of self-discipline about this I’m sure I can find something interesting to say on a semi-regular basis. I hope I don’t disappoint.

POKEY my SID

Forget Sega vs Nintendo, it’s time for the battle of the old sound chips.

As I commented on the recently-released 8-Bit Computer Retrospectacular Squadcast (which I really do recommend you go and listen to – it’s our best yet), I was an Atari boy growing up, largely because that’s the system we had at home – there was none of this “own every system” malarkey that goes on now, partly because the systems were a lot more expensive in relative terms than today’s consoles, and partly because pretty much the same stuff came out on all of them anyway.

The bitterest battles that we Atari people fought were against the might of the Commodore 64, a machine of roughly equivalent power and capabilities to the Atari 8-bit series of computers. Both had very similar specifications, so it was common for owners of the two systems to try and outdo each other whenever possible. This constant effort of oneupmanship often took the form of trying to outdo each others’ graphics as seen here in this equivalent screenshot from Alternate Reality: The Dungeon on Atari (first) and Commodore (second).

Alternate Reality: The Dungeon (Atari)

Alternate Reality: The Dungeon (C64)

Atari fans were quick to point out that clever programmers were able to get 256 colours on screen at any one time while the Commodore often seemed to have a more limited colour palette. But then Commodore would strike back with something like this shot, the title screen from Draconus (again, Atari first, C64 second):

Draconus (Atari)

Draconus (C64)

Facepalm. “Hey, where’s all your colours now, Mr Atari?”

Graphics were all very well and good, but some of the bitterest battles were fought on the aural front, with both systems having a great sound chip far ahead of anything else at the time – Atari being armed with POKEY, Commodore with SID.

Okay, I may be exaggerating when I say “bitter battles” but it’s clear that there was some rivalry here. Some compositions sound clearly better on Atari while others are clearly superior on the C64. And it’s the SID chip’s sound which has endured in today’s chiptunes. There’s still POKEY players and archives out there, sure, but nothing on the scale of, say, the High Voltage SID collection, an exhaustive library of pretty much every piece of SID chip music, both retro and contemporary, you would ever want.

So, let’s take a look at a few examples. That is why you’ve read this far, right? To hear some funky old chiptunes? All right. Here we go.

Zybex – Adam Gilmore

Atari version:

C64 version:

Two versions of a cool song that you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read my past entries on game music. Adam Gilmore worked on a lot of music tracks for both the Atari and the C64 (including the theme for Draconus, pictured above) and was clearly very familiar with how to get the best out of both of them. It’s difficult to say which one is the best out of these two – or even if there is a “best” one. The Atari version, to me, has a cleaner sound, while the C64 version has some more interesting synth effects.

Warhawk – Rob Hubbard

Atari version:

C64 version:

Rob Hubbard was one of the undisputed masters of the 8-bit sound chips, with games featuring his music frequently marketed due to that fact – even if said music only appeared on the title screen, as was the case with most games, including Warhawk here. In many cases, the demands that pushing the sound chip hard enough to produce complex music put on the processor meant that having in-game music was often impractical.

I’ve gotta hand it to the C64’s SID chip here, the Warhawk theme sounds hugely better on it – partly because it seems that Hubbard actually wrote a more complex piece of music for it. Listen through, though, and you’ll hear the kind of effects that you’d expect to hear on a standalone synth – vibrato, tremolo, chorus, echo – it’s impressive stuff.

M.U.L.E – Roy Glover

Atari version:

C64 version:

A much older and simpler piece of music than the kinds of things Rob Hubbard dreamt up, the M.U.L.E. theme is still a catchy little piece. For my money, I prefer the POKEY version of this one as the sound envelopes that are used, particularly on the melody line, just give the whole thing a bit more “fullness” than the C64 version which sounds a bit “dry”.

Action Biker – Rob Hubbard

Atari version:

C64 version:

Oh dear. It’s clear where Mr Hubbard’s loyalties lie now, isn’t it? The pathetic, short loop used in the Atari version of Action Biker becomes an actual piece of music on the C64. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Digital music

Bonanza Digi (Atari):

Digi Freaks Digi (C64):

What many people didn’t realise (even now, in some cases, and definitely not in the early days) was that both of these sound chips were more than capable of reproducing and sequencing sampled sounds, leading to much more realistic-sounding pieces. Of course, the sound quality is nothing to write home about, but there’s something gloriously 80s about the sound of “noisetracker” pieces such as these – a phenomenon which continued with the 16-bit machines, particularly with the C64’s 16-bit successor, the Amiga, whose sound chip was so far ahead of Atari’s equivalent effort for the ST (which in many cases sounded inferior to POKEY) it was ridiculous.

So there you have it. A few selected examples from the Atari and C64’s sound chip back catalogues. Back in the day, I was genetically predisposed to hate everything Commodore but on reflection, there are many examples of its superiority in music production. There’s certainly got to be a reason that the sound of the SID chip has endured as long as it has and remains popular to this day, while POKEY remains relatively obscure. I’ll always have a soft spot for those Atari sounds, though.

If you’re interested in making chiptunes, this plug-in for VST- and AU-based DAWs provides a good way to get started for low-cost, while fans of the old NES sound should check this (free!) one out.

Listen To Whatever The Hell You Want

I’m many things, but one thing I’ve never been is cool. There are many reasons for this – crap hair, being overweight, dandruff, a tendency to blush furiously when talking to people, a voice I hate listening to (which, inexplicably, seems to have gained a cult following thanks to the SquadCast) and, of course, relentless self-deprecation.

This lack of coolness was particularly apparent during my teenage years. These days I like to think I have my own identity – nerd chic or whatever stupid post-modern label you want to apply to it – and I’m quite happy with this. During adolescence, though, it’s easy to be jealous of “the cool kids” and for many nerds such as myself, the way to get in on some of that action was to get into the same music that they liked. At least then you’d have something to talk about, and you’d feel justified sitting in on them in the Music department at lunchtime, trying their best not to crucify their favourite song and, inevitably, failing.

I didn’t quite manage this perfectly, however. Kids were into Blur and Oasis when I was at school, so the first album I ever bought for myself was Oasis’ Definitely Maybe. Fine. A good choice. Unfortunately, I chose the day before (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? came out to purchase it, so was thus branded an idiot.

Over time, I got a little better, picking up some other albums that other people considered to be “classics” for various reasons, and more than a few stinkers as well – all of which I have, and intend to hold onto with no shame as a reminder of my past. I never really strayed that far out of the cultural comfort zone of local commercial radio and what I read in magazines, though.

As time went on, I got older and I apparently at some point signed that non-negotiable contract that means once you’re over the age of 25 you must immediately start hating all contemporary popular music. (To be fair, contemporary popular music is shit.) As such, I kind of stopped paying that much attention to a lot of music for a while, instead sticking to things that I’d liked for years, or more “niche” interests such as countless remixes, reorchestrations and even a spectacular metal reinterpretation of the Final Fantasy soundtracks. During my training as a teacher, my buddy Owen introduced me to 80s and early 90s metal, which I enjoyed greatly but didn’t explore in any depth. In the meantime, the charts slowly filled up with 50 Cent and crap like the track in the link posted above, and television began search after search for “the next big star”, with Popstars, Pop Idol, The X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and all manner of other “talent” shows which proved again and again that the mainstream popular music industry at large wasn’t interested in talent, just someone who “looked right” and was “marketable”.

Fast forward a few years – to now, in fact. I picked up Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 the other week, and between them those two games have reignited an interest in exploring music. Not middle-of-the-road chart music because that’s still shit. (I know I posted that already. But it is shit.) No, I’m talking music where the artists actually play their instruments and in many cases compose their own songs too.

It may sound trite to quote Guitar Hero and Rock Band as influences on exploring music, but it’s true in my case. Speaking as an actual musician (albeit not a guitarist, vocalist or particularly gifted singer), I can say that both games encourage analytical listening of the music you’re playing, even if the note charts for you to play on your plastic instruments are sometimes a little questionable (but that’s a discussion for another day). As such, it quickly becomes apparent which ones are the genuinely-well composed tracks and which ones are masking their compositional deficiencies behind lots of noise. For the most part, there’s a clear divide between “classic rock” of the 70s and 80s and more recent tracks, with many earlier tracks displaying much more in the way of virtuosity (and stamina), particularly on the part of the guitarists and drummers – but there are some notable exceptions, two of which I thought I’d mention particularly, as the individual tracks in Rock Band actually convinced me to explore these artists further and purchase more of their music.

First up is Coheed and Cambria, which I know RocGaude is a fan of. Coheed and Cambria are prog-rock taken to the extreme, with spectacularly lengthy album titles (the one I purchased is called Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes Of Madness) and even a companion series of graphic novels to flesh out the story of the characters in the songs. But there’s something about the songs, particularly Welcome Home, the track from Rock Band, that “got” me. Now that I’ve mentioned this, Coheed and Cambria fans amongst my circle of friends have started coming out of the closet too. I’d never heard of them prior to a couple of weeks ago – now it seems that appreciation for their work is more widespread than I thought.

Next up is Dream Theater, their track Panic Attack representing one of the most difficult tracks in Rock Band 2, thanks to some tricky riffs and the fact that it jumps around from 5/4 to triplet rhythms at irregular intervals, meaning that everyone in the band has to keep on their toes. This piece was so unashamedly dramatic that it immediately appealed to me, with the concept of the piece also holding a degree of personal resonance for me. As a result, I decided to check out the album it was from, Octavarium. I wasn’t disappointed – from the opening track through a hugely diverse range of styles paying homage to U2 and Muse among other things, and finishing with a twenty-minute long finale, I really enjoyed the album. It’s the first album I actually decided to sit and listen to – as in, headphones on, lights off, concentrate on the music and nothing else – for a very long time. Not working with music on, not blogging, not browsing the Internet, not having the music on in the background – just focusing on the music exclusively. And I had a great experience with the album.

My point? Yes, there is one, however flimsy it might be. I have no idea if it’s cool to like Coheed and Cambria, or Dream Theater, but I am happy to stand up and be counted as someone who likes them both. I’m sure I will discover more great new music as time goes on, from Rock Band, from the live gigs I’ve been to recently and via services like last.fm.

In short, anywhere but from BBC Radio 1.

And that song is shit.

Haunted Stereo Live at the Hobbit

So here we are again. After a somewhat touch-and-go start to the day after being molested by numerous pints of toilet cleaner masquerading as Lord of the Rings characters, I find myself here considering what it was I saw last night at the Hobbit.

Things began well when I managed to sneak in and grab a peek at the performers’ soundchecks earlier in the evening. When I saw that an electric ukulele was involved, I knew that this was going to be anything but traditional. However, as these things tend to go, it would be an hour or two between soundchecks starting and the actual performances beginning, so I took the opportunity to use every piece of mobile Web 2.0 technology at my disposal to write last night’s blog post, tweet like crazy, post pictures of The Hobbit’s pleasantly literate toilet graffiti to Tumblr and generally keep things rolling until the bands took the stage later. I also had the opportunity to people-watch a little, with The Hobbit’s diverse clientele once again failing to disappoint. From the old drunk babbling about chicken to the selection of surly-looking goths playing pool, The Hobbit is a fine place to witness most subcultures coming together in relative harmony for once. The only group not really represented was the humble chav, which I have absolutely no objection to. I’d much rather they’d all be off their faces on cheap lager at Jesters down the road than spoiling everyone else’s night.

But I digress. There were performances to watch, and it turned out to be a very entertaining, very pleasant evening.

I’m not going to talk much about the support acts here, but I did want to mention the first one. This was a solo female singer named Plat du Jour. She gave a good start to the evening’s entertainment with her songs. Although her arrangements were necessarily simple, given that it was just her and her guitar, her songs were pleasant to listen to, covered a variety of different moods – all too many performers stick too much to one style and one style alone – and she had a wonderfully friendly, down-to-earth manner with the audience. She also had a great voice, with shades of Portishead’s Beth Gibbons at times. I’ll be interested to see where things go with her performances, as she certainly has a lot of potential, judging by her performance.

The main event of the evening, however, was Haunted Stereo, made up of members Andy, Anja, Dave, Joanna, Kenta and Lewis. They describe themselves on their MySpace page as “melodramatic popular song/folk/indie”, which is immediately intriguing. The band’s lineup changes from song to song, with some songs focusing on traditional guitar and drum sounds, with others bringing the folk angle to the fore with violin and accordion taking centre stage, others still involving banjo, the aforementioned electric ukulele and even a glockenspiel at one point. They’re nothing if not diverse.

But what of the music? Well, their own description, as it turns out, is pretty apt. There’s a definite folky edge to many of the songs thanks to the instrumentation involved and the patterns used in the backings. The melodrama comes mostly from the vocal lines which are simple, subtle and sometimes mournful, rising over the top of the busy backing. The combination of instruments means that although at times the band’s pieces are filled with activity, with violin lines, accordion harmonies, banjo plucking, piano lines, drums and guitar parts all competing for attention, they have a pleasantly clean sound which, should you be that guy who sits there listening analytically until he learns how to hum the most obscure harmony part to a song, will make you very happy.

I was impressed with Haunted Stereo. I have a feeling they’re another band that maybe won’t be to everyone’s taste due to their out-of-the ordinary stylings and instrumentation, but there’s certainly a lot to like. The performers all obviously have great technical ability and versatility, and the songs are all extremely listenable, with more than a touch of Belle and Sebastian to one or two of them. They offer an interesting twist on the “folk rock” genre, artists of which The Hobbit seems to attract like flies (but, err, in a good way) and a sound that, even if it’s not your thing, is nothing if not memorable.

Live music is absolutely not dead. Musicians with genuine creativity, too, are still alive and kicking, and this gig proved that. However, it’s only by stepping outside the comfort zone of the national and commercial radio stations, and the pure banality of the popular music charts, that you find this creativity. What I’ve certainly opened my eyes to over these last couple of visits to The Hobbit is that there’s a lot of very talented musicians out there who have no desire whatsoever to appear on The X-Factor in order to be catapulted to stardom and a career of mediocre, predictable songs. This is a good thing, as my thoughts on commercial crap are well-known and well-documented. Haunted Stereo are anything but commercial, but they have carved out a comfortable niche all of their own and I wish them every success in building their fanbase and being stars of the melodramatic popular song/folk/indie world.

Good music should speak for itself. And it does. I’ve enjoyed some good music recently. You should switch off your radio and join me.

Liveblogging from the bar

Well, here I am again, “here” being The Hobbit, aforementioned little live music-friendly pub, waiting for another group to strut their stuff on the tiny downstairs stage and sipping on a vibrantly radioactive-looking Gandalf as I wait.

I’m here as a result of a very pleasant and courteous Facebook message from Andy of Haunted Stereo who you’ll recall, if you’ll cast your mind and/or your browsers back, was playing The Hobbit the same night as Penny Arcade but I was too full of drinks that look more like toilet cleaner to be able to comment coherently on.

Given that I was asked so pleasantly, and my dubious “research” for the last post (well, hyperlinking the bands in question’s MySpace pages) showed that Haunted Stereo would be a potentially entertaining band to watch, I find myself here at the bar with another glass of Domestos and a chicken-obsessed drunk making “small talk” (which, of course, is anything but) with the poor saps serving drinks.

I am blogging from the bar because I can. At least I’m honest about it. A full report of the gig will follow sometime in the next couple of days (i.e. when I actually have a free moment to write it). Along with a SquadCast.

Rock on!

Penny Arcade Live at the Hobbit

Photography in this post courtesy of Laura Bishop. If you’re reading on Facebook and you can’t see said pictures, click here to see the full article.

So I went out the other night. This is a pretty rare occurrence and worthy of discussion in and of itself but I’m not here to do that. Instead I’m going to be focusing on the gig I went to see – Penny Arcade, live at the Hobbit pub, Southampton, UK. I’m going to say now to all the gamers reading that this post has nothing whatsoever to do with Gabe and Tycho and the nomenclature of the band is a complete coincidence, apparently. Who am I to argue?

Live gigs here in Southampton are often a case of a million people crowding into a tiny pub that can seat about three old men and a dog around the fire, listening to ear-shatteringly loud music whilst downing drinks that look like they’ve been piped directly from the local toxic waste dump to the spigots, served frantically by an underpaid and overworked staff clearly insufficient in numbers to cope with the number of rabid, binge-drinking fans.

The Hobbit is, of course, no exception to this rule, with crowds regularly squeezing into its little downstairs bar (a little larger than the average living room) to listen to some tunes and destroy their brain-cells with the vibrant primary colours of the Lord of the Rings-themed cocktails. Actually, “themed” might be pushing things a bit far, as I don’t remember Gollum having a thing for Bols Blue, though many is the time that consumption of too many Gandalfs has led to a fall into darkness, albeit not accompanied by a big flamey demon thing. (Balrog. I know. Be quiet.) Despite all this, however, the Hobbit remains a popular nightspot with a lot of local acts of a variety of styles from the Southampton area performing there on a regular basis. Plus sometimes there’s a guy who comes around and sells fish. Really.

Penny Arcade (photo by Laura Bishop)

Penny Arcade, consisting of Alex Burton on guitar, Matt Rampton on vocals/bass and Tom Uplifter on drums, were performing as part of a complete evening’s set including other local performers Andy from Haunted Stereo, and Long Shore Drift. In total, they graced us with six songs, including Straight Through, I’m Not Sleeping, Are We Talking, Jaws of the Enemy, Katie and a work-in-progress song called “Rocket Ship” performed solo by vocalist Matt. Are We Talking and I’m Not Sleeping can both be heard on their MySpace page, if you’re reading this and are curious. You know you are.

Penny Arcade’s sound is a pleasingly smooth guitar-bass-drum combo which, when coupled with the distinctively melancholy sound of Matt’s vocals, is very listenable. The band keeps a deliberately lo-fi sound, with minimal guitar effects being used and repetitive, hypnotic guitar/bass riffs and beats making up the majority of the songs’ backings. Performing with a more “clean” sound and using minimal effects to hide behind can be a challenge for many bands as it often highlights the shortcomings of their own technical abilities, but Penny Arcade manage to perform very tightly together as an ensemble. Their songs have an intimate, personal feel to them, with Matt’s vocal performance style of eyes closed, mouth to the microphone and little in the way of body movement draws the audience in and encourages them to focus on what it is he is singing about throughout. This is a great style to perform in a venue as intimate/cramped (delete as applicable) as The Hobbit – arguably made rather more poignant by consuming just one too many Gandalfs to get one to that “drunken melancholia” stage.

Alex Burton on guitar (photo by Laura Bishop)

Penny Arcade’s style undoubtedly isn’t for everyone. They’re low on flashy glitz and overt showmanship, both in their unassuming physical performance styles and the sound of their music in general, but they’re all the better for it – to me, at least. All three performers look deep in concentration during their performance, which is in keeping with the “personal” feel to the songs, and the whole gig felt like the audience were being let in on some kind of secret. This is the kind of thing that I have a lot of time for, and it’s this kind of feel that keeps people coming to the Hobbit for gigs – however sticky the floor gets, however terrible those vibrantly-coloured cocktails may make you feel the next day, however many sweaty bodies you may be squeezing yourself up against (and not in a good way… usually) – it’s the intimacy of the venue and, by extension, the intimacy of the performances there that works so well. Penny Arcade fit right in, and I hope to see more of them in the future.

Matt Rampton on vocals and bass (photo by Laura Bishop)

As for the other bands? Well, to be honest, I couldn’t comment. Gandalf number three made me fall into darkness.

Photo credit: © Laura Bishop, 2009.

A Jedi in New York: Day 2

A short post tonight as it’s pretty late and we’re both exhausted! It’s been an interesting and fun day today, though, as we had another long walk and took in a Broadway show – specifically, Avenue Q, which proved to be both hilarious and touching.

Acquiring tickets for Avenue Q was less easy. Our New York Passes supposedly got us money off Broadway tickets if purchased through a ticket seller called Applause. We could have phoned them up to order, we later realised, but after waking up later than we’d intended and wolfing down some breakfast at, again, the Ritz (omelette today… tasty but not quite so enormous as the pancakes portion) we decided to pay Applause a visit and pick up some tickets.

Why Avenue Q? Two reasons. Firstly, we’d played a song from it in the last local pantomime that I’d taken part in. The song was “Purpose” and I found it pretty catchy, but knew nothing about the show it was from. Secondly, I remembered that Rampant Bicycle had mentioned the show a while back, along with a number of entertaining-sounding songs such as “The Internet is for Porn” – and also something about puppets. Puppets? I was intrigued.

But I digress. The offices for Applause were actually in an anonymous-looking office building of the type that bigger companies rent out tiny rooms in when they need a tiny bit more space. The depressing loss adjustment company I temped with for a short while (which, incidentally, made me come perilously close to hurling myself off a tall building from sheer boredom… despite tall buildings not being easy to come by in Eastleigh) hired out a tiny office to put their typing slaves (including myself) in. They rather naïvely supplied everyone with wireless Internet access, however, so I spent the majority of my time when I should have been listening to boring, slobbery old men dictating their boring, slobbery old reports about small hairline cracks extending from skirting boards to the ceiling surfing the Internet.

The point of that? Wandering down the corridor to the Applause office put me depressingly in mind of that horrible place. Fortunately, once we were inside we were greeted by a typical-looking ticket window, which is kind of the last thing you expect to see behind a door in a place like that. We were greeted by a friendly woman who sold us some tickets and gave us our discount, promising that we’d be able to pick up the tickets at the theatre half an hour before the performance that evening.

There’s no amusingly tragic end to this story, if you’re waiting for one. We picked up our tickets, we saw the show which was, as previously stated, great fun.

Also today we had planned on visiting Central Park Zoo (another attraction we could get into with our Passes) but the walk to Applause had been a long one so we decided to simply stroll around the park and enjoy the scenery. There are plenty more photos to come from there.

Tomorrow we are going to head for the Zoo and possibly one (or more) of the museums on our list.

Ode to Game Music 2: The Art of the Final Boss

This is going to be a somewhat self-indulgent (and lengthy) gush on one of my favourite topics to do with video games in general, and with their music in particular. But I promise that I won’t mention One Winged Angel at all in this post after this paragraph as I’m sure most people who are familiar with that of which I speak below will be overly familiar with this track already.

Oh, and if you’re reading this on Facebook come and read this on my proper page. It has streaming audio and everything.

Everyone ready? Let’s begin.

So, the final boss confrontation. To me, this can make or break a game. I remember learning very early on at school both when writing essays and preparing for performances that “people remember the beginnings and the ends of things more than anything else”. And it’s true. For me, by far the most memorable parts of many games are the very beginning and the very end. Sure, if the middle is interesting, compelling and/or fun I’ll be more inclined to make it from the beginning to the end, but I’ll be even more inclined to remember a game fondly if its finale is aurally spectacular. Conversely, if a final battle is somewhat underwhelming in terms of presentation, I’ll be less inclined to think of it favourably.

Take Diablo II, for example – I think most people agree that Diablo is a fantastic game, but for me that final battle with Diablo was utterly underwhelming, and it was the music that killed it completely. Or rather, it was the lack of the music that killed it completely. Diablo has an eerie, ethereal sort of soundtrack that doesn’t have much in the way of memorable tunes. Sure, it’s atmospheric and sure, its production values are higher than for many games (it is a Blizzard title after all) but dammit if I didn’t want something a bit more dramatic for battling the most evil thing in the history of ever!

So it is with this in mind that I want to share with you some of my favourite final boss confrontation soundtracks. The overdramatic climactic music may be something of a cliché to many people but I can’t get enough of it. If it involves “scary choirs”, a phrase a similarly-inclined friend and I coined a while back to describe the chorus in One Wi… I mean that song at the end of Final Fantasy VII… so much the better.

These are presented in no particular order, I should probably say. And if you have any similar examples, please feel free to share them in the comments.

Final Fantasy I (Origins Version): Last Battle (Nobuo Uematsu)

Start as you mean to go on, with a bit of Uematsu. While he is probably one of the first composers that people get interested in when they start looking into video game music, his “mainstream” (for want of a better word) doesn’t mean that his music isn’t worth looking at. On the contrary, in fact – the Final Fantasy series has typically had spectacular finales and a huge amount of this can be attributed to the music.

This piece is from the remake of Final Fantasy I for the PS1. If you’re unfamiliar with the first FF, the battle system consists of your party members standing on one side of the screen wafting their weapons around at a monster or monsters on the other side of the screen. There’s very little apparent physical interaction between them, and said monsters don’t animate at all.

That didn’t stop this piece of music making the final battle with Chaos (incidentally, just how many unimaginative RPG designers have used something as generic as “Chaos” for their final bosses since FFI?) super-dramatic and exciting.

This piece takes in all the JRPG finale clichés. Pipe organ? Check. Tinkly piano breaks? Check. Loosely based on the game’s main battle theme? Check. But I still love it.

Final Fantasy II (Origins Version): Battle Scene 2 (Nobuo Uematsu)

I’ll say now that I’m getting all the FF music out of the way first so those who think it’s been done to death (which, to be fair, it probably has) can happily skip to the later tracks.

Who’s still here? Oh good. This theme is from battling the Emperor at the close of Final Fantasy II, one of the less well-known FF games because many people hate, loathe and despise it with a passion. Me? I enjoyed it, and this music, while simple, was pleasant to experience at finale time.

The interesting thing (well, to me anyway) about this one is that the main motif of the theme also made a reappearance in the final confrontation of Final Fantasy IV when battling Zeromus. This also happened a couple of other times, with the chord sequence for Exdeath’s (still a dumb name) theme in Final Fantasy V bearing more than a passing resemblance to Sephiroth’s theme in Final Fantasy VII.

Talking of which…

Final Fantasy VII (Nobuo Uematsu)

I have two tracks to share for this one for the reason that it does one of the things I love best in a good final confrontation soundtrack – it takes one of the earlier themes in the game and expands on it. The next few tracks in this post revolve around this kind of idea.

So this track (Those Chosen by the Planet)…

…becomes this track (The Birth of a God).

Eventually, anyway. Give it time. At about 1:25 in, we get that Sephiroth theme coming back to kick some ass. I remember the first time I heard this it was one of those moments where you get an involuntary shiver down your spine. I know for a fact this doesn’t happen to anyone, but this one particular musical technique at work here – using a simple motif from an earlier piece of music in a completely different one, particularly if they are of markedly different styles – always has that effect on me, particularly if it’s used at a dramatic moment.

Then, of course, after this track, you get that other one that I’m not mentioning.

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark (Jeremy Soule)

Mr Soule is very fond of the technique I mention above, as is clearly demonstrated by both his work on Neverwinter Nights and Dungeon Siege (up next). The moody, creepy opening track from Hordes of the Underdark (which, so far as I’m aware at least, has no title other than “x2_title”) sets the scene for a descent into darkness with faint undertones of potential heroism ahead:

Slog your way through to the end of the game through its many traps, challenges and monsters and, musically, you end up almost right back where you started, but in a slightly different key at a slightly faster tempo with more screechy strings and clangy percussion:

There’s even some pipe organ in there. Well done that man.

Dungeon Siege (Jeremy Soule)

Dungeon Siege as a game was, to many people, a relatively forgettable action-RPG. It wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination bad, but most people seemed to think it was a fairly unremarkable game still riding the remnants of the Diablo II wave. Still, I remember it fondly for its music – in this case, both the very first and last tracks of the game providing strong “bookends” to the action.

Here’s the track you get for setting out on your journey:

This being Jeremy Soule, there’s more than a passing resemblance to the “sound” of Neverwinter Nights – if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, eh? – but to me, the main theme of Dungeon Siege is much more memorable. I know of people who have restarted the game many times simply to hear this music again. I was also delighted to discover that Dungeon Siege II also started with an alternative version of this theme.

Get to the end of the game (assuming it holds your attention, of course – and I maintain that it’s actually an entertaining experience worth playing through) and your battle with the final boss is accompanied by this stirring soundtrack:

Scary choirs, clangy percussion, a hurdy-gurdy break and… there it is, lurking around the 1:08 mark, that opening theme. Once I heard that, any trace of gaming fatigue I had was immediately gone and I had to finish this game to do justice to the excellent soundtrack. It’s strange. The adrenaline rush of the simple re-use of a musical motif – I often wonder if I’m the only one that this particular technique has an effect on. But then I think about how many composers out there do it and I know it can’t just be me.

Space Channel 5 (Hataya, Tokoi, Nanba, Ohtani featuring Ken Woodman and His Orchestra)

My love for Space Channel 5 has, of course, been well documented in the past but I feel it’s worth mentioning here simply because it’s a completely different soundtrack to what we’ve heard above – and yet it still uses that same technique, and it has that same effect on me.

Space Channel 5’s main theme, Mexican Flyer, is the basis for much of the rest of the game’s soundtrack – if not in terms of reusing motifs then at least stylistically, with the blaring horns and Sixties stylings providing a backdrop to many scenes in the two games in the series. It’s certainly a memorable, toe-tapping theme that sums up the “Gays In Space!” aesthetic nicely. So when I got to the end of Space Channel 5 Part 2 after, oh, the mighty 45 minutes of game that preceded it, I was immensely gratified to be dealing with the extremely bizarre and surreal finale accompanied by this piece:

This piece has everything I want from a finale – a bit of drama (0:33), a bit of cheesy false-hope “Yay! You did it!” (1:03) and cap it all with an ending that takes the main theme and builds on it from a simple vocal (1:20) up to everyone in the galaxy singing along with you (2:15). This is the kind of piece that makes you feel rotten if you fuck it up halfway through.

Persona 3 (Shoji Meguro)

There’s just one more example of what you have probably surmised is one of my favourite musical clichés to fall back on, and that is the great and brilliant Persona 3. I’m not sure much more needs to be said about this at this time other than the fact that The Poem for Everyone’s Souls…

…becomes, after 90+ hours, The Battle for Everyone’s Souls.

It, of course, is them followed by the final battle mix of Burn My Dread featuring, in Beige’s own words, some Japanese guy “rapping the fuck out”.

Beyond Good and Evil (Christophe Heral)

Just two more, you’ll be pleased to know. First up is the spectacular soundtrack of Beyond Good and Evil which I want to draw attention to simply for its high production values and the great “bookending” of the game that these two tracks achieve.

Shortly after starting the game, you are thrust right into combat with a mysterious enemy you don’t know much about. During said battle, you are accompanied by this incredible piece of music that everyone who has played Beyond Good and Evil seems to comment on when describing the game’s amazingly strong opening sequence. Dancing with Domz certainly sets the scene for an epic battle.

The return to this style at the end of the game with the piece Sins of the Father is made all the more effective by the fact that much of the music in the middle of the game has been either of a somewhat “gentler” style, or when things did get hectic, a more “electronic”, “technological” sound. A return to the orchestral/choral stylings of the opening for the final confrontation helped, for me at least, to diminish the “Umm… what the fuck happened at the end of this game?” nonsense.

Trauma Center: New Blood (Atsushi Kitajoh)

I draw particular attention to Trauma Center here because I still find it utterly bizarre. I mean, we’re talking about a surgical action/puzzle/shooter game here. And let’s not forget the fact that the first Trauma Center game ended with you battling an illness that was “a form of Death itself” that had wrapped itself around the human heart.

I don’t know about you, but when I think about doctors, nurses and surgeons, pipe organs and scary choirs (there they are again) don’t spring immediately to mind. Neither do electric guitars. But what the hey. If you’ve played Trauma Center, you’ll know that it’s a sweaty-palmed and utterly terrifying experience, which these two pieces, heard during the final “battle” with the Cardia disease, reflect perfectly.

And on that note, it’s good night from me. Congratulations if you made it through all that, and I hope you’ve enjoyed some of my picks. If you have any other final boss musics that you’d like to share, please post ‘em in the comments.

My next post on game music (which will happen when it happens and not before, dammit!) will likely revolve around the art of the end credits music.

Listen!

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna waffle on atcha. It just occurred to me that at least two out of the three games discussed below have awesome soundtracks. In the case of Space Channel 5, it is, of course, the game’s raison d’être but Divine Divinity has a notably good soundtrack also. Castle Crashers, while having a great intro theme, has a somewhat more forgettable soundtrack, though it does suit the action nicely.

So without further ado, here’s a few clips from both games for your entertainment.

Introducing Ulala! (Space Channel 5)

This first tune gives you a strong introduction to Space Channel 5 – it’s played during the first level. By a short while in, you’re left in no doubt as to how you’re supposed to be feeling while you’re playing. Gay. In every sense of the word.

Which One Is Real? (Space Channel 5)

What was the last music game you played with a bebop-like section?

Perfection! Space Elementary School Band (Space Channel 5 Part 2)

You’ll either love or hate the infectious cheerfulness of this track.

Blank TV/Ulala Support Chant (Space Channel 5)

A capella! Awesome. This piece of music sums up the whole “get everyone behind you” thing that makes the finales of the two SC5 games so awesome.

Main Theme (Divine Divinity)

The main theme from the game is an interesting composition, eschewing the kind of “epic” soundtrack that Baldur’s Gate always went for in favour of a more haunting melody.

Forest (Divine Divinity)

This is a simple piece, but evokes a sense of loneliness which is apt for the setting the music appears in.

Bitva (Divine Divinity)

A huge change of pace for this one reflecting the diverse nature of DD’s soundtrack.

Enjoy. You can download the tracks from DD at Larian’s official website. As for SC5? You’re on your own, though resourceful soundtrack collectors probably know the first places to look.

EBA is a masterpiece

Many of you may already feel this way – others may think I’m talking out of my arse here, but I present for you the reasons why Elite Beat Agents is, in almost every way, a complete masterpiece of game design. You may wonder the timing of this post if you haven’t been following me on Twitter, but the fact is, following our discussion on the Squadron of Shame SquadCast about Okami, and bringing up EBA’s finale’s similarities with Okami’s (yes, really) I had an urge to play it again.

The fact that my DS went missing for a short period threatened to stymie this plan, but I eventually located it. It had somehow found its way into a cardboard box filled with discarded letters and things which had, subsequently, found itself under a chair. Exactly how this came to pass, I’m not sure, but it had certainly hidden itself well, making the ability to boot up EBA again a pleasurable experience.

So, why is this game so good?

Play mechanics

EBA is a fine example of the old mantra “easy to learn, difficult to master”. In terms of actually interacting with the game, all you have to do is tap on numbered circles on the DS’ touch screen in the correct order, in time with some ever-decreasing overlaid circles, preferably in time with the overlaid circle hitting the numbered circle. This, to help matters slightly, is in time with the music. Occasionally you have to drag the stylus along a pathway as well as tap, or frantically spin a big wheel around (producing, as does The World Ends With You, the dreaded “is he playing his DS or is he masturbating?” looks on the bus) – but aside from these three different moves, that’s it.

The challenge, of course, comes with the patterns in which these techniques are arranged. On the easiest difficulty level, you’re roughly tapping out the beat in quarter notes, occasionally with a few eighth notes thrown in later, but not that many. As the difficulty level cranks up, however, you find yourself tapping out “counter-rhythms” to what is already in the music, or drumming along with the rhythm section, or all manner of other things. Part of the challenge is in interpreting the on-screen patterns into physical movements and, subsequently, what they should sound like. By the time you reach the end of Hard mode and beat it, you’ll wonder how anyone could possibly move a stylus that quickly.

Music

It may sound pointless to mention this, but of course a rhythm action game is made or broken on the strength of its music. EBA has a selection of music that covers a pretty wide range of artists, and doesn’t limit itself to one genre. Okay, there’s quite a bit of guitar-based stuff, but at least there’s some variety within there, covering everything from Deep Purple to Avril Lavigne – and then besides that, there’s some interesting tracks that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to hear in a rhythm action game – Chicago’s “You’re the Inspiration” being one of them.

Addictiveness

EBA has the “addictiveness gene” down pat, and it achieves this in one very simple way – holding victory just tantalisingly out of reach, just ahead of where you are now. This is particularly apparent on the later levels of the hard difficulty, where you find yourself replaying songs over and over again, making a slight bit of progress each time. That slight bit of progress encourages you to try again, making you think that “next time might be the one”. Four hours later when you still haven’t finished the song and everyone around you never wants to hear “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” ever again, unlike many games, you don’t feel too bitter about the whole thing because you know for a fact that you’re slightly better than when you started.

This brings up an interesting point. I Tweeted the other day that shooters irritate me for forcing me to replay the same bits and hear the same dialogue over and over again if you fail – the example that sticks in my mind most of all is one section of Gears of War that came quite early on, and is the reason I gave up playing that game and swore never to touch it ever again. Entering a room, you are helpfully informed over the radio that there are “enemies everywhere” and that there’s a “sniper up above”. Every time you try it. And said sniper has a habit of killing you immediately. So you hear this A LOT.

So why doesn’t EBA irritate me in the same way? After all, hearing the same piece of music over and over again must grate. My theory is that because you’re constantly interacting with EBA during the piece of music, whereas in a shooter some dialogue tends to come in a bit of “downtime” – either running between locations or in a cutscene – you notice the repetition less.

Emotional impact

EBA is the last game I expected to have a genuine emotional impact on me when I played it, but it achieves it brilliantly – and it does this in several ways. Firstly, there’s the fact that the comic-strip “cutscenes” that precede each level are put together in such an entertaining way that, despite the fact you don’t get much time to get to know the characters, you really start to care about them. As a result of this, you feel that there’s a real sense of consequence if you fail. EBA is one of the few games I can think of where your failure actually causes other characters to cry – and I’m not talking some emo JRPG scene where a single tear falls from our normally stoic hero’s eye – I’m talking full-on inconsolable bawling their eyes out crying here. This makes you genuinely feel bad if you fuck up, and is another reason to try the stage again.

Secondly, the choice of music is just perfect for each stage. The best example I can think of, which had me wiping my eyes when I’d finished it, is the stage surrounding the little girl “Lucy”, whose father got into an accident and isn’t coming home. Lucy is convinced he’ll be back because he promised – and around the time of her father’s birthday, she urges her mother to “get the house ready for Daddy”. The emotion of this scene is clear from the opening of the preceding cutscene and continues throughout the course of the level, helped enormously by the choice of “You’re My Inspiration” as the music.

I was also interested to see EBA dealing with themes that you don’t often see dealt with – sure, dead parents are nothing new to, again, emo JRPG heroes, but to an innocent little girl?

OMG SPOILARZ

A proper finale

So many games fall at the last hurdle – the finale. Mess up the ending of your game and you’ll send people away with a distinctly bitter taste in their mouth. EBA successfully avoids this by using what may be something of a cliché amongst Japanese games – the entire cast of the game coming together behind you to “pray” to you and give you strength – but every time I see it, it works brilliantly. And to tie in with the emotional impact I mentioned above, when you finally do reach the end of that final song, the characters are in such a euphoric state that it would take a cold and harsh person to not feel exultant right there with them.

So there you have it. EBA is a masterpiece… in my opinion, at least.