Klondike Audio

Here’s another Nifflas gem, an earlier one.  I’m not sure, but I think this may have been Nifflas’ first game.  This is a song which can’t be separated from its gameplay home, in particular because the entire game of The Turtle Philosopher must be completed before this song ends. Instead of getting faster, or louder, or more insistent, the last minute of this song slows down and grows more ethereal.  To me, it sounds like the shimmering bridge of light you’ve been walking on over the ocean slowly disappearing as the sun rises.

I can’t really explain why I like this song so much—I’ve never played the game (known here as Legend of the Mystical Ninja, for the N64), nothing about this song reminds me of a ‘deepsea shrine’, and the instruments are simple and midi-like.  Even the bitrate of this MP3 is poor.  I love it all the same though.  In fact, during the day I went skydiving recently, it ran through my head all before and after.  Only the clouds themselves shut it out!

Very little about Final Fantasy X-2 was quite as polished or magical as Final Fantasy X’s, but there was a lot of good there.  This is the song I think competes most strongly on Final Fantasy X’s level.  A really solid driving percussion line, with a catchy Eastern melody lilting over top of it gives a great feeling of hypnosis to accompany the pyreflies.  The loops’s second half is entirely piano, with some lighter percussion, and altogether the effect is wonderful.  This is another song that I don’t think could have come out of anything other than something so disparate as the art of video game music.

This is actually the “Tom Jones A-Go Go Mix” of the original Space Channel credits music.  Not that I’ve ever played Space Channel 5 (sadly), but a Japanese take on Tom Jones got my attention right quick.  Actually, the similarities are basically just Tom’s famous original brass riff, and the general “lounge singer” feel.  I’ve listened to the original SC5 song, and I think the additions, including the sweet new percussion riff that gets used often here, are great.  I initially took this as a joke song, but it’s grown on me so much that I have a hard time going without it for a day or two.  Fun!

Somehow, this song has been inextricably linked, for me, to Chapter 33 of the seventh Harry Potter book, which can consistently bring me to tears.  So for me, this submarine song from Final Fantasy V has shifted its connotations from placid and beautiful, to deep sadness.  I’ve included a couple other Final Fantasy V songs, I mean sure they’re good, but as far as I’m concerned this is the best song on the soundtrack.  It’s not like Final Fantasy V had a very emotional storyline—that game was all gameplay.  I’ll just have to supply the emotion myself.

This was the soundtrack where Motoi Sakuraba really started showing who he was and where he was going.  This is actually a fairly banal boss track for the first 24 seconds, until it hits 16 seconds of chaos.  I find those 16 seconds fascinating, and I haven’t heard anything like it from anyone other than Sakuraba.  More generally, I frequently fall in love with songs for very small sections of them.  Once I’ve found the nugget of genius in a song, my appreciation for it radiates out and I start enjoying the entire song more.  This is definitely one of those, and I think it’s a good example of what makes Sakuraba so different.

Mushihimesama Futari is the sequel to Mushihimesama, two super intense “shmups” whose final bosses are “the hardest ever”, according to Youtube.  This is from the sequel, whose soundtrack I’ve come to be fonder of than the original.  I’m not a shmup gamer, but I appreciate the art form from afar, and I appreciate the creativity it seems to consistently draw out of composers.  Almost never is a Level 1 stage to a shmup not sickeningly catchy.  “On the Verge of Madness” in particular is the Final Level music…ah, you can see them all on Youtube anyway.  I recommend it, the games make purple dots an art form in themselves.

This song is highly reminiscent of Passionate Rhythm from the remake of Romancing SaGa, also by Kenji Ito.  It may also be the only good song on Dawn of Mana.  I played Dawn of Mana for all of 15 minutes before putting it up for sale on Amazon.  It hasn’t sold yet.  Since I still have it, if anybody wants to convince me to give it a second shot, be my guest.  To its credit, two remakes of the original Final Fantasy Adventure overworld music are present on the soundtrack—unfortunately, neither were all that inspiring.

This one not only from a Nifflas game, but composed by Nifflas himself.  This is probably the catchiest tune on the soundtrack, yet look how minimal it is.  There’s not much of a melody at all, yet it is still catchy.  If you played Within a Deep Forest without the music on, you missed out on 50-66% of the game.  I really admire Nifflas’ ability to produce quality graphics, music, sound effects, and gameplay.  The corporation will never completely obsolete the Renaissance man.

This music is from the game “Graffiti Kingdom”, though Mitsuda titled the album “Hako no Niwa”.  As you might guess from the game’s name, the music is lighthearted, though not without its serious side.  The instruments used throughout the soundtrack are all acoustic, but something I read on the Internet (don’t you love those sources?) said that Mitsuda actually performed all the instruments for each track himself.  I have no way to verify this, but if it’s true that’s really impressive.  The album is worth checking out, I found several songs among the toys that had some substance.

I’ve had no exposure to anything with the name “SSX” attached, or to Junkie XL, though a friend indicated he’d heard of Junkie XL in non-VGM circles (as you might say, “IRL”) as a talented musician.  I certainly enjoy it.  It’s solid funk, hip hoppy electronica, the kind that sounds like it’s coming out of a street boom box, with some light samplings.  It’s not at Hideki Naganuma level, but that’s just fine—not everyone is supposed to get all hyper with the Record button.  This is a new name for me to research.

The amount of positive feelings I have toward Azure Dreams is in wild disproportion to how little I played the game.  I barely got far at all, but I still tried like 3 times over 5 years.  I blame myself for not getting into it enough to complete it; I simply wasn’t made right.  The music wasn’t really outstanding, but I liked the sensibility of it all.  In this song, it really kicks in at 0:50, where it beautifully drags out a simple culmination over 25 seconds.  Azure Dreams also wins the Most Tower Songs award, though the Best Tower Song award still goes to Lufia II, coming soon.

This is part of a shower of music from Nifflas’ work that will be gracing this page.  Knytt is an even more gorgeous game than Within a Deep Forest, and a more one-of-a-kind experience.  Almost all the music in it was 10-18 seconds long, which was extremely effective ingame, but less good for posting here.  The one exception was the tutorial stage, which was a great introduction to using Knytt’s astounding control system.  I think it may have been the most natural feeling movement in a game, and the physics that went into jumping and climbing probably wasn’t even that hard.  Or at least it looked seamless.  Look, you should get all up in this.

There’s a subset of the Overclocked remixes I love, that I don’t appreciate for their original source material at all, but just as an interesting song all on its own.  This is one of those, though the source (Final Fantasy X’s People of the North Pole) does become visible in the later parts of the song.  This is a solid electronica piece, with a bouncey “techno beat” along with “techno piano” that manages to sound laidback and thoughtful enough to avoid an actual “techno” label.  I could use a little more variety in the later half of the song, but really, the sound is beautiful enough that I can take it for the entire 5 minutes.

Megaman X3’s soundtrack is totally great, just as great as X1’s or X2’s, and is definitely the one which most resembles “hard rock”.  Blast Hornet is a song that’s great for leaving on repeat as you go about a difficult task.  It keeps you hopping.  I also have to note that the Intro Song has an irreplaceable metal (as in the substance) instrument that opens the track, which is totally not matched in any remake I’ve heard of the song, and there are several.  Anyone who remixes Megaman X3’s intro stage music must include that unmistakeable FWANG.