Monthly Archives: May 2008

Mr Uematsu goes to a wedding

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So today, I went to a wedding. To my pleasant surprise, I found this in the program:

Processional
Eyes on Me – Nobuo Uematsu
Final Fantasy Theme – Nobuo Uematsu

Awesome. And of course, the processional was awesome. I mean, when I read it, I was trying to picture it in my head. When the actual thing happened, though, I couldn’t stop thinking to myself how absolutely perfect the choice in music was. Eyes on Me was played for the first part of the processional with all the bridesmaids and stuff walking in. The Final Fantasy Theme was the replacement for the traditional Here Comes the Bride thing and when the violin kicked in as the bride walked in, it was an amazing moment.

From what I know of the bride and groom, neither of them are particularly gigantic nerds or gamers. So what does this mean? It shows, that gaming as an art (in this case, the music) is gaining legitimacy in the mainstream. Gaming has some unfortunate connotations that are attached to it. One of the ways to legitimize gaming as even a normal hobby is to legitimize its influence on culture and to raise awareness of the artistic value in games.

Music is one of the artistic parts that games have. The most famous examples of gaming music are Mario and anything that Nobuo Uematsu has composed. I wouldn’t exactly call the Mario theme great music; I suspect its popularity has more to do with the character than the music, although Koji Kondo’s Smash Brothers Brawl mix of the theme and various orchestral arrangements do convince me otherwise.

So we have Final Fantasy as the representative of great gaming music. But, there is definitely other great music. The series that has been doing it for me lately has been Ace Attorney. I was playing the orchestral album in the car and I asked my dad to guess what it was. He responds with a ‘It’s Final Fantasy, duh.’ And then I get to explain that, no, this is music from a game that takes place in court. And you’re a lawyer. And it’s fairly linear. And it’s pretty much a point and click text adventure. Yet, it has an amazing and memorable soundtrack.

Another example of excellent music is The World Ends With You. As I’ve mentioned, everything about the game pleases me greatly. In accordance to it’s unique spin and setting, the music is largely J-pop and electronica. What? Vocals in my battle themes?. Rap in my RPGs? Eurobeat in my overworld themes? TWEWY’s soundtrack represents a significant departure from the established RPG tradition, as does the rest of the game.

But what is it that makes gaming music so special? I’d argue that part of the appeal is the associations that the music establishes. It works particularly well in RPGs and other story-driven games, where music can be tied immediately to various plot points and characters. Whenever I hear the main theme for Final Fantasy VII, I always remember the first time I stepped outside of Midgar and how the world suddenly became much, much larger. When I hear Terra’s theme, my mind turns to the three Magitek armour walking across plains of snow towards Narshe.

But even for games that aren’t as strong in the plot department have something for the music to associate with. The Mario theme is probably engrained in us because of the number of times we’ve been to World 1-1. If you’re playing in the same room, hearing the opening guitar riff from your friend’s computer will probably tip you off that they’re playing Terran.

Of course, this argument could be made for movies, except that movies are much, much shorter than the average game. If we’re looking at a Final Fantasy, we’re talking about forty hours, rushing through everything. A smaller game, like TWEWY is still fifteen hours. Even shorter than that is Portal, but Valve’s storytelling methods don’t translate into movies. As an aside, this is why games with an excellent story can never be made into a good movie. The length of a game is such that you’ll be playing it over weeks (or days if you’re addicted to it) and the associations with the music will be engraved in your mind.

The other kind of music that’s linked with gaming is popular music. Of course, as far as I can tell, this is happenning with any sort of significance in Japan. But let’s look at Japan. The first real theme for a game is Faye Wong’s Eyes on Me, the theme for Final Fantasy VIII. Of course, a theme for a game in Japan isn’t that huge of a deal; they’ve had popular themes for anime for a while now.

The next fairly significant theme for a game was the Disney-Square collaboration Kingdom Hearts, which had Hikari as it’s theme, by Utada Hikaru. The interesting thing here is that Utada Hikaru is the best-selling artist of all time in Japan. And she did a theme for a completely new video game series. Of course, nowadays, virtually any large RPG has a vocal theme. Even TWEWY has a theme by Jyongri.

But back to Eyes on Me. Eyes on Me made sense to me as a choice for a wedding. After all, it is the main love theme as well for FFVIII. What didn’t really make sense was the Final Fantasy Theme. It wasn’t tied to a plot point and it wasn’t a significant character theme. The only explanation then was that the music was used because it fit the occasion and, more importantly, because it was good music.

The World Ends With You

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I can’t remember the last time I’ve been this excited about a game. It’s funny because I hadn’t heard about it until a few days before its North American release. But, it’s become my favourite game as of late, and is definitely one of the stars in the DS library. It’s made me drop Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations in order to get through the story.

TWEWY is an action RPG by Square. If it looks really familiar, then it’s because the character design was done by Tetsuya Nomura, of FF7 and Kingdom Hearts fame. Unlike many RPGs before it, the game is set in an alternate dimension modern-day Shibuya, a district in Tokyo that happens to be the hippest place ever.

TWEWY is one of those games that does things right and blends it into something awesome. The concept is unique. The art is stunning and very stylized, and matches the atmosphere perfectly. The soundtrack, made up of J-pop, electronica, and hip-hop, is a departure from other RPGs. The plot is paced really well and the characters are developed really well in a fairly short period of time.

But even more innovations abound! The combat system is something very DS-centric. Battles take place simultaneously on the two screens, and you have to control one character on each screen. On the bottom, you’re using Neku with the stylus, and on the top, you’re controlling your partner with the d-pad. Neku uses a variety of attacks with stylus gestures while the d-pad follows a series of panels, a lot like DDR. To mix things up even more, there’s a light that gets passed around when the character that has it completes a combo which gives a damage bonus.

The types of attacks that Neku can use are determined by the pins he’s wearing. Different pins have different gestures; you could be dragging Neku around, slashing on enemies up or down, pressing empty space and firing lightning at them, or dragging obstacles and whacking baddies. The top character has a different minigame, where you’re matching things, and when you do, you can use combined attacks. As you can tell, the combat is involved, but damn, it is fun.

The pins, and other gear that the characters wear, are branded. There are several different brands and each part of Shibuya has brands that are cooler than others. Brands that are cooler receive bonuses, while brands that aren’t get penalized. But, you can influence which brands are hip and happening by fighting with pins of those brands.

Food is something that I found very well done as well. Your character eats food that gives the a buff while they’re eating it. They digest food in x number of battles, after which they receive a permanent buff. But, they can only digest 24 battles worth of food per real day. Each character also has foods they like or dislike, which affects how much the buff actually helps them.

Finally, the game has a ridiculous amount of replay value, where after the main plot is finished, there are so many things to collect to 100% it. You can adjust your difficulty and handicap yourself by lowering your level to fight things, which yields larger and better drops.

Just about the only reason not to get this game is if you can’t get the combat system. Otherwise, it’s brilliant, has really unique and hot art and graphics, has a compelling story, and is really, really innovative. Super fun, amg go get it nows. And I will go back to slashing my DS touchscreen franticly now.