Auricular Discovery

Comix Zone. There is still nothing like it. Well maybe Viewtiful Joe , but that’s stretching it. One of the final great Genesis titles, Comix Zone was a love letter to comics nerds everywhere. Tons of 4th wall breaking to be had here, by the very fact that you get pulled into your own comic book from the real world. Easily one of the most beautiful and creative Genesis games ever made. It only really suffers from high difficulty and short length, and lack of multiplayer perhaps. Brawlers always need multi. The music, while catchy, had some pretty rough quality samples on the guitar side of things. Fortunately, Howard Drossin, Sega-centric composer, lead an effort to perform, arrange, and vocalize 6 tracks from the game. And what a great job he did. This stuff could have passed for radio play in the 90′s, I think, not that I’m being condescending in that statement. That’s a unique thing in the world of game music.

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I loved Populous 3 so much. It’s probably the only god-sim I can fully enjoy. They usually involve way too much micromanagement for me. Pop3 instead focuses on the combat between the tribes, and having a central character, your shaman, where most of your attention will go to. It was really ahead of its time in some ways. You could pull out into space and see the entire world. You could deform the land in real 3D to your liking. You could use spells like tornado to see your enemy’s structures ripped to shreads. It was such an atmospheric experience too, thanks mainly to Mark Knight‘s soothing sounds. This track here is actually a piece he posted on his site, which is a preemptive example of what his Populous 4 score would sound like, if it ever came to be made.

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Fighters Megamix was Sega’s attempt at combining their two biggest 3D fighting series. The melding of two distinct fighting engines may remind you of Capcom’s efforts with the SvC and MvC series. It was also chock full of Sega fan-service much in the way of Nintendo’s own Super Smash Bros. While it had fantastic animations and innovative mechanics, there were many sloppily developed characters that screwed up the balance royally. It also lacked the 640×480 resolution Virtua Fighter 2 ran at. Now, I’ll be honest, I’m only posting this track to serve as a sample of the complete set I just released. The short of it is, I imported over the extended music from Fighting Vipers and Virtua Fighter in place of the shortened tracks Fighters Megamix comes with, and then I gave the whole thing all the proper album treatment it could handle. Enjoy!

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SimCity 2000 was probably the first game to strike me with the depressing realization that I have no creativity. I absolutely fail at these kind of god games. I know not how to create, but to destroy. Maybe if I grew up with a PC instead of a NES/Genesis, I’d have developed some different interests. Oh well. That’s why the game offered you wonderful catastrophe tools such as plane crashes, floods, and volcanos. The music is a delightfully cheesy jazz. It sounds like the kind of background music that would serve as a segue piece for an 80′s urban sitcom, as the camera converges from one setting to the other. Maybe it’s a retired genre, but I keep it for the nostalgia.

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Crayon Physics is a very unique idea, if anything. The only thing I can really compare it to is the recent Scribblenauts, being that both involve reaching a goal item via the conjuring of practically limitless objects. The difference here is that you draw the objects yourself. Personally, I found the game to be very overrated. I think it would really shine on a tablet PC or on the Nintendo DS, as the mouse control just doesn’t compliment things very much. They could have also expanded more on an objective mode so we’d feel compelled get creative with our solutions. There’s something like that in place, but its the same rules for every level, and quite vague. I find myself finishing every single level easily, but completely failing at the creativity aspect. But since I only paid a buck during the “pay whatever you want” sale they held a while back, I can’t complain. The game sports a scant 3 music tracks. This one has the strongest hold over me.

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Can’t say I’ve ever enjoyed a Contra game quite the way I did the original, but props to Konami for not abandoning or abusing the series like some other developers would have. I guess I just really struggle to play these games with 3D graphics, even when they use fixed 2D perspectives. At least I can still enjoy the music. Shattered Soldier (Shin Contra in Japan) has the best soundtrack since Super C on the NES. The quality of the metal here is pretty outstanding, while the rest of the tracks are some very heavy sci-fi techno, with a little Blade Runner vibe thrown in. And yes, this is Akira Yamoaka, the Silent Hill guy. This track alone proves that his recent departure from the survival horror series should give him the much needed freedom to excel in totally different styles. Seven SH scores was enough. We don’t want him getting burnt out.

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Easily one of the best JRPGs of all time. Why is Grandia 2 so great? Well, what can I say? It polishes the genre mechanics to perfection, while having the balls to ditch or replace the aspects that often fail. No random encounters. A turn based combat system that moves like a real-time one. A phenomenal soundtrack that makes full use of streamed audio instead of sequencing. A perfect frame rate. A high contrast story that can handle cute, upbeat moments and dark, mature, tragic scenes while treating you like a mature adult. An English dub that includes much of the Metal Gear Solid cast is the cherry on top. While it doesn’t reinvent anything, it administered a much needed evaluation of the JRPG. Even if you absolutely hate the genre to a borderline racist degree, give this one a shot. But, for your own sake, stick with the Dreamcast version. The PS2 got the laziest port imaginable.

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I’m always surprised at how many people remember this one. I think Jumping Flash was just the right kind of game at the right time. I really don’t know why this game was so quickly thrown aside. Maybe you could blame the massive advancements PS1 graphics were making from 1995-1997. I know the models were blocky and textures were dull, but there was a lot of atmosphere here that made up for it. Absolutely huge stages with creative designs were a blast to progress through. The game took place entirely from within Robbit’s perspective, complete with visor shaped screen and GUI with visual damage indications that games like Metroid Prime would later make use of. You could even see your feet as you pounced! Unfortunately the sequel was pretty uninspired, and there was a 3rd spin-off title in Japan exclusively, but reviews indicate that it’s worth no one’s time. World 6-3 is the final boss theme, and especially rocks. Feel free to download the entire rip from my other site.

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Ok, so Machinae Supremacy isn’t exactly obscure, but it’s surprising how overlooked they are in the remix scene, given their history. Not only have they arranged some game music in the past, (see here for the games that the three Sidology tracks source from), but they’re one of the only groups to incorporate a legitimate piece of gaming hardware (the Commodore 64 sound chip) as an instrument and achieve this level of popularity. While some complain that their more recent albums have toned down the SID sound, with hits like Edge and Pearl, I still respect them for their original efforts. And hey, they actually did give us a little Bionic Commando mix a while back, available from their download page for free, along with tons of other stuff. A pretty outstanding band site overall.

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Finished Trine this week. It’s not often we get a 2.5D sidescroller, so I had to check it out. I really don’t have a whole lot to say about it. You’ll have some fun for the first hour dealing with physics-based puzzles but before you know it, you’ll find that there’s little motivation to solve anything  in the intended complex ways. The game leaves itself quite open to exploiting certain elements. For example, anytime there was something out of reach, I would just conjure a plate in mid air with the Wizard and double jump off of it before it fell. I didn’t have the patience to do things carefully, especially when health is plentiful and dying has no real punishment. I also never have any interest in Tolkien-type fantasy, so I skipped past the narration. At least the score was top notch. Crystal Caverns is a really tranquil piece that stuck with me.

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