Posts : 4642 Points : 4668 Join date : 2013-01-15 Age : 42 Location : Milton Keynes
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Sun 21 May 2017 - 10:18
"Shop themes? Really?" I thought. And then Athers did Malo Mart and I completely got it. Also love the Animal Crossing ones; given how much of a % of my life has been spent in those shops, it's surprising that they're still catchy.
There are a couple missing though - Burger? Skip Sandwich? Lucky Sandwich? Earthbound's Humoresque of a Little Dog has to be somewhere.
Also here's some Stereotype Alert from the Garage in Beyond Good and Evil (it counts as a shop, 'cause you buy vehicle bits)
Balladeer DIVINE LONELINESS
Posts : 26493 Points : 25325 Join date : 2013-01-16 Age : 35 Location : Admintown
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 5:51
That Earthbound one is actually pretty top - the Mother 3 one's pretty bizarre in comparison. (BG&E one's okay.)
JayMoyles Galactic Nova
Posts : 15896 Points : 15061 Join date : 2013-01-21 Age : 31 Location : The Shibuya River
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 15:35
Jimbob wrote:
" There are a couple missing though - Burger? Skip Sandwich? Lucky Sandwich? Earthbound's Humoresque of a Little Dog has to be somewhere.
Yes, great shout! That's an excellent little shop theme.
I've totally forgotten about a pretty big one from Persona 4 - EVERYDAY'S GREAT AT YOUR JUNES.
The Cappuccino Kid Mani Mani Statue
Posts : 6744 Points : 6907 Join date : 2013-02-25 Age : 105 Location : East of Mombasa
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 19:31
FFS lads, it's this:
Jimbob Bargain Hunter
Posts : 4642 Points : 4668 Join date : 2013-01-15 Age : 42 Location : Milton Keynes
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 19:39
The Cappuccino Kid wrote:
FFS lads, it's this: youtube
"All around!" "All around!" "All around!" "All around!". I forgot Snowboard Kids had a purchasable upgrade shop thing...
Balladeer DIVINE LONELINESS
Posts : 26493 Points : 25325 Join date : 2013-01-16 Age : 35 Location : Admintown
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 19:42
Two very sweet little shop tunes there.
JayMoyles Galactic Nova
Posts : 15896 Points : 15061 Join date : 2013-01-21 Age : 31 Location : The Shibuya River
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 20:59
I never knew it was Atlus behind Snowboard Kids, huh. Also - good tune!
Buskalilly Galactic Nova
Posts : 15092 Points : 15270 Join date : 2013-02-25 Age : 34 Location : Nagano
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 21:07
Best game to ever come from Atlus, easily.
JayMoyles Galactic Nova
Posts : 15896 Points : 15061 Join date : 2013-01-21 Age : 31 Location : The Shibuya River
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 21:09
I see your bait and I know your game, Summerhayes.
masofdas The Next Miyamoto
Posts : 24035 Points : 24436 Join date : 2013-01-18 Age : 34 Location : VITA Island
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 21:22
Drunkalilly wrote:
Best game to ever come from Atlus, easily.
JayMoyles Galactic Nova
Posts : 15896 Points : 15061 Join date : 2013-01-21 Age : 31 Location : The Shibuya River
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 21:23
Meanwhile, Masofdas sees your bait and rises to it.
masofdas The Next Miyamoto
Posts : 24035 Points : 24436 Join date : 2013-01-18 Age : 34 Location : VITA Island
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 21:24
You weren't thinking it be that though Jay?
JayMoyles Galactic Nova
Posts : 15896 Points : 15061 Join date : 2013-01-21 Age : 31 Location : The Shibuya River
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 21:30
There's only one correct answer.
Another shop theme:
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game. Keep listening till the guitar kicks in.
Buskalilly Galactic Nova
Posts : 15092 Points : 15270 Join date : 2013-02-25 Age : 34 Location : Nagano
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Mon 22 May 2017 - 21:41
After posting that, I looked up what else they'd published and I probably would go with one of the Trauma Centres. They did Game of Thrones on PS3 and 360, which I still really want to play some time.
JayMoyles Galactic Nova
Posts : 15896 Points : 15061 Join date : 2013-01-21 Age : 31 Location : The Shibuya River
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Wed 24 May 2017 - 20:56
GNamer leaves the shopping centre and is set upon by an angry man! It's a boss battle!
What's the best boss battle theme?
Note: NOT final boss battle themes. That's a separate week coming down the line, so store up your favourites for another time.
Ballaesque post imminent.
My picks:
I'll start with the obligatory Persona tracks, and it's Rivers in the Desert from Persona 5. No context needed - this is just a genuinely cracking track and incredibly catchy. I love the staccato lyrics in this track. CREATING NEW LIIIIIFE, CREATING RIVERS IN THE DESEEEERT.
Transistor is a game I really haven't spoken about enough on the forum. It's a wonderfully stylish action RPG with a banging soundtrack replete with beautiful vocal tracks - relevant, being that you play as a singer. In Circles is my favourite of the bunch and again, no context needed!
Look, the whole game is a boss fight, but I don't care. Shadow of the Colossus deserves multiple picks. I love the triumph of Revived Power as you finally manage to leap onto many of the game's colossi. I love the tension and melancholy of Silence as you observe some of the game's more tranquil beasts from afar. In Awe of the Power? I'm in awe of this game and its soundtrack.
Fuck it - obligatory Digimon World track. I'll forever associate this one with Greymon slamming me into the dirt time after time.
RULES OF NATURE. COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS. This game's soundtrack is AMAZING. Senator Trump Armstrong is a cracking villain... and you haven't even heard his final boss theme yet.
So zetta slow. And thus my desire to replay The World Ends With You grows ever stronger.
If I had to compose a boss battle theme for a fight against a spider, then I could only hope to nail it like Undertale did.
Say what you will about Dark Souls III, but there's no denying it has brilliant boss music. The part at 1:47 where Vordt steps up his game is suitably terrifying.
I'd argue that FFXV nails epic boss battle music more than DSIII though. The first time I heard this track was when I wandered a bit too far off the beaten track and ran into a stupidly powerful boss monster. Those opening few seconds are embedded in mind as a reminder to leg it.
I'm cheating a little bit here, but each monster in Monster Hunter Generations is essentially a boss battle anyway, right? The Mizutsune theme is my personal favourite. I'm a stickler for Japanese-inspired music. All it's missing is a guy yelling "YOOOOOO" and we'd be sel.
Phew! Over to you guys. Remember, no final boss themes!
Balladeer DIVINE LONELINESS
Posts : 26493 Points : 25325 Join date : 2013-01-16 Age : 35 Location : Admintown
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Wed 24 May 2017 - 21:00
Mate. Mate. You can't do this to me. You just can't!
Sigh. Drafting post soon. There's at least one I'll omit because I've got an upcoming music week planned for it. You bastard Jay. Feedback coming soon as well, I guess. (I'm a fan of Mizu, I can say that at least. And Muffet's fine, but not the one I'd choose, as you know!)
JayMoyles Galactic Nova
Posts : 15896 Points : 15061 Join date : 2013-01-21 Age : 31 Location : The Shibuya River
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Wed 24 May 2017 - 21:06
I lure you all in with a slower-paced week like Shop Themes and then I've got you all. Enjoy best final boss themes week after best title theme week or some similar nonsense.
I had to stop myself from posting more tracks from each game, especially Undertale and TWEWY. So many good tracks!
The Cappuccino Kid Mani Mani Statue
Posts : 6744 Points : 6907 Join date : 2013-02-25 Age : 105 Location : East of Mombasa
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Wed 24 May 2017 - 21:07
Here's half of the Dynamite Headdy soundtrack.
Spoiler:
Last edited by JayMoyles on Wed 24 May 2017 - 21:49; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : Chucking them in a spoiler box, crashed my browser trying to load the thread!)
JayMoyles Galactic Nova
Posts : 15896 Points : 15061 Join date : 2013-01-21 Age : 31 Location : The Shibuya River
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Wed 24 May 2017 - 21:16
The Mega Drive has a special something over the SNES, doesn't it? Loved hearing the Mega Drive output the Nutcracker, and your last pick there is damn fine.
Buskalilly Galactic Nova
Posts : 15092 Points : 15270 Join date : 2013-02-25 Age : 34 Location : Nagano
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Thu 25 May 2017 - 17:06
As far as I'm concerned, music weeks canonically end at 150. Anything else is basically fanfic.
Anyway here are some tracks, deliberately avoiding Souls, Monster Hunter and Mario Galaxy.
Spoiler:
Star Wolf An all-time classic to me. Just a snazzy theme that captures the cool of Wolf O'Donnell. Personnally, I think I like the N64 version best for its directness, but here's a video chronicling every version.
Black Knight One of the cooler characters, a recurring rival in Shovel Knight. Starts out cool enough but evolves over the battles.
Rannoch Reaper Boss fights are a dying outside of Nintendo and Fromsoft, but the battle with a Reaper on Rannoch in Mass Effect 3 is one of the most memorable moments in the trilogy for me. The Reapers were such an otherworldly, powerful force. They reminded me of the Tripods in War of the Worlds, they were just godlike. Then I found myself alone, on the ground, trying to kill one. Dramatic, hopeless stuff with music that captures it perfectly.
My favourite, though, is this short excerpt from Twilight Princess. This isn't a boss theme, but the short sting that plays when you have a boss on the ropes. As you've figured out the trick and you're going to town on the weak spot, this tune is so damn empowering.
masofdas The Next Miyamoto
Posts : 24035 Points : 24436 Join date : 2013-01-18 Age : 34 Location : VITA Island
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Thu 25 May 2017 - 17:27
Iconic MGS boss battle
Resident Evil 3, shit was going to go down when this hit
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Thu 25 May 2017 - 19:31
Gah, and I thought final areas was a tough enough thing to choose from, then you go and make the topic about literally the single best archetype in video games! So many themes, so many! Too many! Also Rivers in the Desert is sex in music form. Heard that a while back and my first thought was "yep, Meguro managed to somehow pull off another banging soundtrack."
I'm opening up with some ridiculous bombast, and it ain't even a Falcom theme! Yeah, it's kinda generic, but tell me, does anything else get your blood pumping more while you're climbing a freaking CHIMERA and hacking away for dear life, all the while it's leaping about and using fire breath everywhere? Nay, you cannot top that, and you cannot top this for such fights!
And now I DO return to Falcom with this banging number from Ys Seven, Vacant Interference is everything I love about Ys music. Banging good rock, that electric guitar makes the soul soar, and the violin mixing in is just perfection. This theme was in fact the theme that, after hearing, got me interested in checking out Ys Seven all those years ago. Another blood pumping number for some truly nuts boss battles.
Don't let the slower tempo or the fact it's a character theme throw you off, because this next number does indeed play as a boss theme!
Caius' Theme from the much falsly maligned Final Fantasy XIII-2, whose original soundtrack is brilliant stuff (f*** the haters, a few s*** themes does not a bad soundtrack make!) As is this theme, wondrous powerful stuff. It absolutely nails everything about Caius and the fights with him, the hint of hopelessness, the grandiose flair for the dramatic, the slightly sinister edge, it's a perfect theme in my opinion. Plus who doesn't like it when Square Enix bust out the latin choir? Soulless husks, that's who!
And I round out my selections with this grand epic number of musical perfection from Tales of Zestiria. Because regardless of whether the game may suck or have been rushed one thing is for certain: Go Shiina is a godly composer that we gamers need more of! The fight it played in was epic too.
I could of course continue, but I've got to draw the line somewhere and I think four themes is a good number!
Balladeer DIVINE LONELINESS
Posts : 26493 Points : 25325 Join date : 2013-01-16 Age : 35 Location : Admintown
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Thu 25 May 2017 - 21:23
Apologies all, feedback will come when I physically have time to give it. I'm not around much this weekend. I just about have time to do this... (deep breath)
Spoiler:
As opposed to starting with Mario boss themes this time, I'm going with Mario RPGs, because although Paper Mario Sticker Star had all the fun factor of slowly choking yourself (and just like slowly choking yourself, some weird people quite like it), its music was genuinely good. Tower Power Pokey's theme is better than solid, but Gooper Blooper's theme is genuinely great: a medley that increases in intensity as the boss' special attack powers up, until it backfires in his stupid face and that theme clicks in. You do need the blooper clapping noises though, which most YouTube versions ignore.
Pretty much every Mario RPG has its own great boss theme, though. Super Mario RPG has Fight Against an Armed Boss, Paper Mario has the Koopa Bros., Superstar Saga has Popple (my 'best of the rest'), TTYD has RAAAAAAAAWK HAWK!, etc. etc.
Spoiler:
Controversial statement: by its lofty standards, I actually feel that SMG drops the ball slightly on boss themes (SMG2 can't even find the ball). Kingfin/Boldergeist is pretty great, especially when you get in close and personal; otherwise, meh. In particular, Captain Burrows should feel ashamed of himself.
So we're forced to go back a bit. Sunshine has the Phantamanta theme, which is nice and spooky and blobby; but it's good ol' 64 that holds up its end of the bargain, with a truly intimidating Bowser theme, even now. BWA HA HA
Spoiler:
Here's the obligatory DKCTF bit. But once again, the game really knocks it out of the park: 4/6 boss themes are great! BRAWL with the most epic seal-fighting music ever! STRUGGLE against the best mountaintop boss theme there is! Erm... PARTY with three baboons on the beach?
But none of those match up to DKCTF's very finest wrestling theme: Bashmaster the Unbreakable! (He's actually really easy, but shhhhhhhhh.)
Spoiler:
If you can listen past the MIDI (Jay), LoZTP has a fine line in boss music. I've mentioned Blizzeta before, but it also has two splendid mini-boss themes: the jungly craziness of Ook, and the best fatman music ever. And then there's the utterly batshit medley that accompanies Zant.
But my favourite Zelda boss music, that I'm going talk about here anyway, is the beast in the piccy above: Wind Waker's Molgera. CHIKKA-DUKKA-CHIKKA-DUKKA-CHIKKA-DUKKA-CHIKKA-DUKKA. Shout-out also to HW Legends' not-rubbish remix. And WW actually has a very fine mini-boss theme of its own.
There's some Zelda boss music I can't, or won't, talk about right now as well... but here's what happens if you mix Ook and Zant and make the result a ninja.
('Master, the odds that you have bollocksed up a URL somewhere in this post are approaching 98%.')
Spoiler:
In Xenoblade Chronicles X, Uncontrollable usually means a super-beast is about to come out of nowhere and tear you and your party a new one. So here's the backside of a pig with a funny name. Tee hee.
...Athers, your turn. I know there are other great boss musics in XCX, but I just can't remember what they're called because Sawano gives his pieces ****ING STUPID NAMES.
NONTENDO BREAK
Spoiler:
Every story monster, and many of the others, deserves a theme in here. Toriel. Papyrus. Metatton. Asgore. Heck, Toby created one for Sans that was never used.
But it's Undyne who is hands/fins down my favourite. It's so catchy! Especially the mariachi-esque bits. And god forbid you've been naughty...
Spoiler:
Bravely Default has the sweeping That Person's Name Is... Bravely Second has the somewhat less sweeping Sapp and Piddler. But they both have this creepy-as-all-hell offering, to go with their creepy-as-all-hell bosses. See above.
Also, I'm not sure where else I'm going to shoe-horn it in, so it goes in the vaguely Squeenix box: FFIV's Battle with the Four Fiends. Grand stuff, this.
Spoiler:
Say 'non-final boss theme from Okami', and most people will wonder why the heck you're coming up to them in the street and spouting meaningless words. Either that, or if they'll a bit more knowledgeable, they'll give you the Ninetails battle theme.
Meh. It starts with a good ol' YOOOOOOOOOOOOH, but otherwise I can take or leave it. Lechku and Nechku, though? Two demented clockwork owls and their wonderful ticking score? Sign me up! I also quite like the mad French alien Waka's flute-tastic piece. The flute's called a 'shakuhachi', fact fans.
Spoiler:
If you listen to one piece from this whole post, make it this one. One of the two massively obscure DS game I rave about incessantly, Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure brought us Banson's Aria, in which Charles Banson, opera singer and fop, attacks Hatsworth with musical notes and his fangirls. All to beautiful nonsense Italian words.
The game's other boss themes are fine stuff as well. Cake or Death is a strangely rocky piece when you're duelling with an apparently dead woman on a cake, while Not My Shoes! features some hot banjo action while you dodge a massive chair-flinging nurse.
Also, while we're on posh English gents, anyone remember when Layton took down a drone attack to the most gorgeous electric violin?
Spoiler:
You know, I think Pokémon does the best boss music of any Nintendo franchise. Everyone knows ya boi Guzma's theme of late, and some know the theme of his partner in crime; but their predecessor had a pretty grand tune too. Then there's your more rival-like characters: the rawk of Gladion, the manic fiddle of Zinnia, or the triumph over adversity of Wally. If we're talking Legendary Pokémon, Ho-Oh would like a word. And that's without touching the Gym Leaders/Kahunas or Elite Fours.
But y'all know there's only one best Pokémon boss theme. Or, well, two I guess.
Spoiler:
If anyone's a boss, it's Godot.
Last edited by Balladeer on Mon 29 May 2017 - 20:18; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : Of course I got a link wrong!)
Buskalilly Galactic Nova
Posts : 15092 Points : 15270 Join date : 2013-02-25 Age : 34 Location : Nagano
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Thu 25 May 2017 - 21:52
Bloody hell Balla! I'll give that a proper read at some point. I thought about going with Godot but I wasn't sure if he counted. Absolute tuuuuuuune though.
Balladeer DIVINE LONELINESS
Posts : 26493 Points : 25325 Join date : 2013-01-16 Age : 35 Location : Admintown
Subject: Re: Music to my Ears (Castle Levels!) Thu 25 May 2017 - 21:53