Auricular Discovery

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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Among all the funk in V8, you’ll find this little number. It’s an energetic remix of Toccata and Fugue in D minor traditionally used for representations of Dracula and the such. What happened to the vehicular car combat genre, anyway? Twisted Metal 1 and 2 brought it into the mainstream. Then came an endless supply of crappy sequels and copycat attempts. Before you knew it, the entire genre crashed. Maybe it was just fused in with sandbox games like GTA3. I feel that the two V8 games were the only post-TM entries to stand on their own feet. If anyone else has a thirst for some automobile annihilation, allow me to point you in the direction of the Half-Life 2 mod known as D.I.P.R.I.P.. Vehicular net-code is notoriously bad on the Source engine however, so this is better served as a LAN game.

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I had this bouncy, cheerful, colorful song stuck in my head for a day, and by my power, you shall as well. Topher of Destructoid’s RetroForce Go has sung praise about this game multiple times. If you want the wackiest fighter for Dreamcast…try JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. If you want the 2nd wackiest…oh crap, Guilty Gear X….hmm. Ok, so if you want the third wackiest fighter, try Project Justice. Get some friends over, take 3 minutes to explain the basic commands, and you’ll have quite a few hours of hilarity.

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Headhunter might have been the first console game to really prove to myself that high budget orchestral film scores can work perfectly in a game. This specific track is a little different, however. It’s a slightly remixed techno-ish version of the symphonic main theme which would play in the later half of the game, if I remember correctly. I personally digitally ripped this and a few other pieces from the game which didn’t make it onto the official soundtrack CD. I was never able to find the unreleased tracks from any of my sources, so you might consider this a rare download.

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