#oneaday, Day 22: Make Love, Not Hate

On the Internet, opinions exist in a binary state for many people. There is your opinion (1), and there is everyone else’s opinion (0). Sometimes other people’s opinions coincide with your own, meaning they can join you in the happy 1 gang, while the 0-toting losers get to stand over there being Wrong.

It’s strange, though, really, isn’t it? People develop such strong feelings about particular issues, and these opinions spread virally very quickly via all forms of the media. I remember reading about this in A-level Sociology and forget all the names and dates of studies concerned, but since this isn’t an essay I’m not going to go and look them up. What I do know is that nowadays, such opinions spread far quicker than they have ever done before thanks to the immediacy of online social interactions, meaning that in some cases people may end up feeling that they should change their opinions on things in order to remain somehow “credible”.

‘Twas ever thus, of course, with the school bullies always listening to the most badass music out there whilst the flute-playing pansies amongst us voluntarily listened to—or even played—classical music. (Guess which of the two categories I was in, though I didn’t play the flute. Flutes are for girls.) One group tended to kick the shit out of the other on a fairly regular basis, and it was usually a pretty one-sided battle.

You shouldn’t start actively hating something just because other people say so, though. You should take pride in your tastes, however idiosyncratic or separate from the supposed “norm” they are.

Let’s take a few examples of Things I Like That Should Be Embarrassing To Admit But Really Aren’t, Honestly, No, Stop Looking At Me Like That And Please Don’t Unsubscribe, Think Any Less Of Me Or Be Any Less Likely To Do Nice Things For Me (Like Buy Me Cake, Give Me A Big Wet Snog Or Make Me A Delicious Roast Dinner) Should The Opportunity Come Up.

Okay. I can do this.

(takes deep breath)

I like Robbie Williams. I also enjoy the comedy of Michael McIntyre, the radio show of Chris Moyles, the bubblegum pop music of MIKA and think Ke$ha’s album is a work of quirky genius that I believe I have described as “sounding like Kelly Clarkson being forcibly inserted into a NES” on several occasions. I voluntarily bought both Dead or Alive Xtreme games and played them a lot, and not just for the bazongas involved, I enjoyed the dumbass illogical “dating sim” mechanics that were in there too. I follow Katy Perry on Twitter and find her music cheerfully uplifting. And I own two Spice Girls CDs.

Tastes change over time, of course, but who’s to say that I’m “wrong” for liking any of those things just because the popular opinion is to hate them and deride those who enjoy them? I’m just as guilty as anyone else, of course; I find myself hating shows such as The X-Factor, Strictly Come Dancing and the like irrationally and automatically. I loathe Call of Duty. I would rather gouge my own eyes out than watch anything involving Piers Morgan (I think we can all agree on that one, surely).

The world would undoubtedly be a nicer place where everyone could feel more confident in themselves if our personal preferences stopped being scrutinised so much, and assumptions made based on those preferences. Take the recent announcement of Final Fantasy XIII-2, for example, a sequel to one of the most controversial Final Fantasy games there has ever been. Not because of the content, but because of the gameplay, which wasn’t to everyone’s liking. There are people out there who assume that because Final Fantasy XIII wasn’t to their taste, XIII-2 is going to be shit as well. Justifications range from “Square have lost their way” (well, perhaps, but can’t they pick it up again?) to “it’s the same team, of course it’s going to be rubbish” (because everyone is always universally good or universally bad?) and it’s nonsense. Nonsense I tell you!

Basically, do your blood pressure a bit of good and start concentrating on the things you like a bit more. Tell people how much you like them, by all means. But let’s all make a pact to stop making people feel bad about things that you, personally, “hate”.

Unless it’s terrorism, AIDS or Piers Morgan. You can hate those as much as you like.

#oneaday, Day 312: Quest Complete: C25K

I’ve been somewhat short of what one might call “victories” recently. In fact, most of my endeavours for the last I-don’t-know-how-long-now have ended in what could politely be called failure. As such, I’ve been in a bit of a funk recently, getting very tired of… well, everything, really.

So when an actual, genuine, bona fide victory-slash-achievement rears its head, by golly I’m going to celebrate it.

Tonight I completed the nine week Couch 2 5K running programme, introduced to me by one Mr Calin Grajko, who is a really cool guy and, I have it on good authority, doesn’t afraid of anything. I’ve mentioned this a few times previously, but for those of you who can’t be bothered to look back a few entries, have joined me recently or who are having trouble finding exactly what you want using the search box (which is fine by me), let me explain.

Over the course of nine weeks, you go from being someone who “can’t run” to someone who, well, can. The first week begins with you running for a minute at a time, then walking for 90 seconds, then repeating this process several times. Each week ups the ante somewhat until you reach the final week when, in theory, you should be able to run for 30 minutes at a time without stopping.

When I started the programme, I seriously doubted that I’d ever be able to do more than a couple of minutes at a time. I deliberately hadn’t looked at what horrors the end of the programme had to offer because I figured the system shock would just put me off and demotivate me. So it was a genuine surprise each week to find out what I’d be doing. It was a big surprise in the last few weeks when the jumps started getting bigger.

But I’m pleased to announce that I can now run for 30 minutes without stopping. It’s not easy, sure, and I’m not quite at that elusive 5K distance just yet (not far off, though—my best distance in 30 minutes is 2.99 miles, just under the 3.1 miles that roughly equates to a 5K) but I figure I can get there with a bit more training. Tonight, I felt a noticeable increase in my speed, for example, though that disappeared with the hilly bits towards the end of tonight’s run.

The important thing with any exercise regime is motivation, and making sure you keep this motivation flowing in both the short and long term. By “short term”, I mean “while you’re doing your exercise”, and by “long term” I mean “the duration of the programme and beyond”.

Through this programme, I think I’ve got both of those things pretty comfortably sorted. The long-term motivation is handled nicely by the programme itself—making constant, regular, measurable progress is motivation in and of itself. Plus telling friends that you’ve completed week whatever-it-is is something you can genuinely take pride in, particularly if your friends are appreciative of what you’ve been trying to do.

The short-term motivation—keeping going while in the middle of a session—can be harder. If you run out of energy, you run out of energy. Part of this is about pacing yourself, but it’s also about not getting too bored of what you’re doing as well.

As such, I have made sure to have some banging playlists on my iPhone while out on my running sessions, matched reasonably well-ish with the timings of each session. Me being me, these songs have mostly fallen into the video game soundtrack category. Conveniently, though, the generally regular tempo and “inspiring” nature of a lot of game music makes it entirely appropriate for use in exercising. So without further pontificating on the philosophy of exercise (there are plenty of people out there who can comment on it with much more authority than I) I will share with you my playlist for tonight’s run. iPhone users, tap the song titles to play the tunes. Everyone else, you should have a fancy-pants Flash player to play each song with.

Warm-Up: The Elite (from Split/Second)

The Split/Second soundtrack was a fixture on my playlists. For the first few weeks, my playlist consisted solely of the Split/Second soundtrack. Because it’s awesome. And free. But this song in particular was an excellent warm-up track because it builds up a bit at a time. There’s also a spooky bit in the middle with jangly guitars that is great when you’re going out at night-time. During this piece, I was doing my 5-minute walk as a warmup for the main event.

Get Ready: Operation Briefing (from Trauma Center: Second Opinion)

The sole reason this song is in there is so that the woman on the GetRunning app which gives verbal coaching for the C25K programme has something unnecessarily dramatic to talk over while she’s briefing you about how long you’ll be running for. Timing the start of playback perfectly will mean that you start running with the next piece, which is…

Go!: Friend (from Bayonetta)

If you’ve never played Bayonetta, know that it’s a study in glorious excess. SPOILER: There is a bit where you ride a motorbike up a rocket into space in order to go and rescue the titular Bayonetta, who has gotten herself trapped in the crystalline eye of God, who happens to be a large female statue that is more than a bit pissed off. This music is from that bit. And it’s awesome. It’s also perfect music to get you pumped up and moving. The tempo is a good pace for running to.

Jenova Returns (from Final Fantasy VII, OCRemix album)

And so begins a set of Final Fantasy VII pieces, or more specifically some awesome remixes by the immensely talented community at OCRemix. When this piece gets all dramatic in the middle, I was just hitting my stride tonight. Which was good.

Beginning of the End (from Final Fantasy VII, OCRemix album)

This is one of my favourite pieces from FFVII. The original version always used to get my pulse racing as the final battle with Sephiroth began. Used at this point in the playlist, I was just starting to feel the proverbial “burn” a bit, and the overdramatic nature of it helped push me through.

Black Wing Metamorphosis (from Final Fantasy VII, OCRemix album)

This is a great, creative remix of the song that everyone knows from FFVII—the final boss theme, One Winged Angel. Bad-ass choirs and screaming guitars? That sounds like motivation to me.

Final Battle: Opportunity (from Skies of Arcadia)

You may be spotting something of a pattern with these pieces. Since it was my last run, I figured I’d make it something of an “occasion” with some ridiculously overdramatic music. The Skies of Arcadia final boss theme is neat because it starts ominous, threatening and dramatic and turns triumphant and victorious by the end. In-game, these changes happened according to how well the battle was going, so you could tell aurally when you were winning. Knowing this sent me subconscious signals that I was on the home straight.

Possibly.

Panic Attack (by Dream Theater)

I loved this song ever since I first encountered it in Rock Band 2, where it gave my fingers something of a workout. And cramp. It’s also, like, deep and stuff, cause I can, like, totally relate to the lyrics and whatnot, yeah?

In an exercise sense, it’s fast, gets the adrenaline flowing and has the line “rapid heartbeat pounding in my chest” in the middle of it. So it’s, like, appropriate.

Of course, it also has the line “I am terrified, so afraid to die” in it. Which, depending on your fitness level, may also be appropriate.

Navras (from The Matrix Revolutions)

Ever since I first heard this piece, I thought it would be an awesome accompaniment to some sort of final battle. In fact, a variation on this piece called Neodämmerung is used in the final battle with Mr Smith in The Matrix Revolutions. This piece, to my mind, though, is superior and is only used in the end credits.

So why not have this piece as the grand finale to the nine-week push? Why not indeed. Conveniently, my 30 minutes were up just as it got to the slow bit in the middle, so I got to cool down to some trippy floaty ethnic-sounding warbling. Which was nice.

So, in summary, then? Keep your motivation up (possibly through the use of some banging tunes) and you can achieve whatever goal you want. I’ve achieved one, which is something of a relief after so many things that have gone wrong over the last couple of years.

Now, just another 50-something posts to go to achieve another goal…

#oneaday, Day 139: Multimedia Extravaganza

It is indeed a multimedia extravaganza for you today as I share with you both pictures and sound! I even share them both at the same time! That’s pretty exciting, isn’t it. Admit it. You’re a little excited right now at the prospect of pictures and sound at the same time. If you’re not, you’re either lying, or dead inside.

Err, anyway. Today was another one of those beautiful sunny days so, not having anything better to do and not having anyone to share it with, I decided to head out into the sunshine with my camera and take some pictures around the city. Turns out Southampton is actually not a bad-looking city in the sunshine. The city centre has an awful lot of green space, with about five parks all right next to each other. One of them was hosting some sort of arts festival today – there was live music, craft stalls and somewhere, apparently, workshops on things like drawing and making things.

I always find it interesting how wandering around with a camera makes you notice little things more. A flower with a bee on it, for example. If I didn’t have a camera in my hand, I wouldn’t have given that a second thought. But because “ooh, that makes a good photo”, it gets noticed. It’s also immensely annoying if you spot something that will make a good photo and you then miss the opportunity. I didn’t have this problem much today. I even managed to get the bee.

I present to you, then, a YouTube video of some pictures from around Southampton. They’re a fairly random selection, to be honest, and not necessarily particularly characteristic of the city itself. But they’re things that my eye was drawn to today and thus up came the camera, click click, boom. Wait, not “boom”. That’s something else. The music in the video is the theme from Final Fantasy VII, played by me. Oh yes indeedy.

Yes, as well as taking those pictures, I also recorded a few more pieces for your delectation. Four today, in fact. Here they are. As usual, iPhone users should tap on the titles to hear them, while everyone else can use the Flash player and be smug twats about it.

Alone from Persona 4

Living with Determination from Persona 3

Final Fantasy VII Theme

Eyes on Me from Final Fantasy VIII

That’s not quite my normal 500 words, I know. But I gave you multimedia. So I think you can let me off 80 words or so. Except by the time I’ve finished justifying my lack of words I’ll probably have hit 500 words anyway. So I may as well keep going. I hope you all had a pleasant day. I did, although it was rather quiet. Still, it’s nice to have quiet days sometimes, isn’t it? Means you don’t have to fill them with meaningless conversations and attempts to fill spaces that words should go in. Like this one that I’m filling right now. Oh yes. There’s 500 words. Time to go.

Hope you enjoy the slideshow and music. Let me know what you think in the comments.

#oneaday, Day 137: Flower Girl

I am almost falling asleep on my keyboard here, so I’ll keep this brief to prevent falling asleep with all the letters of the keyboard printed backwards across my face. I can barely keep my eyes open. I’m not sure why I’m so tired, though I have had people over this evening and I spent the first part of my day cleaning up in preparation for said visitors. We had a lovely evening, by the way, thanks for asking.

Earlier in the day I did get a moment to record one more piano piece. I posted it on Tumblr earlier but I’m not sure who got the chance to hear it. A few people did, I guess, and it even got a couple of reblogs. But I thought for those people who don’t “do” Tumblr, I’d post it here too.

The song in question is Aerith, or Aeris, or Flower Girl or whatever you want to call it. It’s the piece from Final Fantasy VII that makes everyone cry. There are two reasons for this – one, it’s a beautiful piece of music, and two, the most memorable point of the game in which this piece of music is heard is where Aerith/s dies. (Oh come ON! Surely everyone who is ever going to play Final Fantasy VII knows that by now.) This scene is widely regarded by many as one of the first times where computer games genuinely started to encourage emotional investment in their narratives – at least on consoles. Developers of adventure games on PC had been trying this for a long time already, but Final Fantasy VII was the first mainstream console game which people admitted crying to.

It’s a cliché and a bit of a joke these days, of course, but it was my brother telling me about the sheer emotion in the game that made me originally want to pick up Final Fantasy VII. I’d never touched an RPG prior to that point and had no idea what HP, MP and Limit Breaks were. My life was shortly to change forever.

The piece of music itself, though; it’s always held a peculiarly personal meaning to me, and I can’t pin down why that is. I think it possibly may be something to with the fact that the older Final Fantasy games allowed you to rename your characters, so in my game, it wasn’t “Aerith” dying, it was someone I knew. This made it all the more traumatic.

When I play the piece nowadays, I don’t necessarily think of someone dying. But I do always find myself thinking of someone. I always feel that the character of the piece represents gentle, total, unconditional love and/or affection towards someone. So inevitably while playing it I find myself thinking of someone special to me in some way. The exact person who comes to mind has changed many times over the years, but the reason for my thinking of them hasn’t. They are important.

iPhone users, click here to hear the track. Everyone else, use the Flash player below.

#oneaday, Day 136: Massive Pianist

Some more music for you today as it’s awfully late and I feel like I’ve been busy all day today, even though the only thing I achieved in the daytime was to buy two shirts which actually look good on me. Oh, and record these two pieces, of course.

A bit of background on these pieces for those who aren’t familiar with them. Final Fantasy has been a big part of my life for many years – at least since Final Fantasy VII came out. I believe I’ve talked about the fond memories I have associated with this game in the past – the long, hot summer days, the thirty-six hour playing stint which culminated with my friend Woody and I suffering strange hallucinations of items that didn’t exist in the game – but the thing that’s stuck with me longer than the game itself is its music. FFVII was the first time I really noticed game music as a positive thing and, just to make this even more clichéd, it was One Winged Angel which impressed me the most.

After playing FFVII to death, I tracked down the previous games in the series, which I’d never experienced before, not really knowing what an RPG was before that point. I discovered that they, too, had great music, and not only that, there were piano arrangements available.

After a considerable amount of time searching, I managed to track down some dodgy scans of the piano scores for IV, V and VI. Later, I acquired genuine copies of the VII, VIII and IX books. The arrangements of the pieces are gorgeous – proper piano arrangements in a variety of styles rather than simple transcriptions. I’ve been playing them ever since and everyone seems to think that they’re very “me”.

Persona is a bit different. I came to Persona with the third game in the series a year or two back thanks to the Squadron of Shame. We even did a podcast about it. What struck nearly all of us about that series was its peculiarly quirky and enormously Japanese soundtrack. I was very interested to discover earlier this year that both Persona 3 and Persona 4 have piano scores available too. Unfortunately, they’re not nearly as well-arranged as the Final Fantasy scores, but they certainly sound good enough – for some pieces at least. The J-hip-hop tracks don’t sound particularly good on a piano, so there is no way I am ever playing any of them in public.

Much like Final Fantasy, the Persona games hold a very fond place in my heart. Rather than having memories attached to them, though, I found the stories of both games to be very emotionally resonant. I identified a great deal with many of the characters, as Persona deals a lot with friendships, personal identity and figuring out who you are, both in yourself and in relation to other people. While I can’t point a fake gun at my head and summon a mythical beast to do my bidding, I do at least understand what some of the characters have been through, and empathise with others. It’s rare that a game is written well enough for that to happen, so both games hold a special place in my heart.

Without further ado, then, here’s two more pieces for your delectation. Just like last time, iPhone users can click on the titles to hear the tracks.

*pauses* I wish I’d remembered to upload these tracks before I started writing this. *drums fingers* Tra la la la la…

Aha! They’re done. Here. *Enjoy* the *sauce*. And yes, I know there’s a couple of bum notes. I was in a hurry. 🙂

The Oath from Final Fantasy VIII

Heaven from Persona 4

#oneaday, Day 134: Busy Days

Hello everyone! Apologies for the late hour. It’s been a genuinely busy day today, despite it being a Bank Holiday (or Memorial Day if you want to be all American about it).

My day started with waking up several times, snoozing my alarm and then waking up again. The last snooze inexplicably went on a lot longer than the other ones so I had a minor panic when I woke up the last time, because I actually needed to get up today.

Why? I hear you ask. Well, today was my first performance in public for ages. What? I hear you ask. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been playing the piano for quite a long time now. Since the age of five, in fact. Which makes it… a long time that I’ve been playing. I haven’t performed in public for quite a while, though, and my friend Sam assures me that he’d never heard me play in public before. I’m convinced otherwise, but he’s very insistent on this matter. I know he certainly didn’t see the last piano performance I did at university, which was a duet performance with one of the strangest people I’ve ever had the curious fortune to encounter in my life that was followed with one of the most memorable and terrifyingly inappropriate pub conversations I’ve ever experienced. Those who know who I’m talking about also know what the conversation was about. Those who don’t… well, I feel it would be improper for me to discuss it here. Unless you really want to know, in which case leave me a comment and I’ll tell you there.

So today was my first performance in public for ages. We’ve established that.

What did you play? I hear you ask. Demanding, aren’t we? Perhaps you should stop asking so many questions and let me get on with my story because it’s entirely possible I might have been about to tell you what I played. In fact, I’m half-tempted to just not tell you now.

Except that would make this blog entry run rather short and not allow me to include the lovely media that I’m about to. So I’ll tell you.

A few years back, I discovered the Final Fantasy Piano Collections and managed to acquire most of them. Some of them I have the actual books of. The older ones I managed to track down some scans from the Internet. More recently, I managed to locate some piano scores for the music from Persona 3 and Persona 4. These respective series have some of my favourite music of all time, so I figured a public performance would be a good opportunity to spread the love and let other people know what they’re all about. So that’s what I did.

The event itself was part of Southampton’s “Keys to the City” event, celebrating local arts and the piano in particular. Today’s performance took place in the city’s art gallery, tucked away on one side of the Civic Centre near the library. I got the impression not many people know about it. But there’s a lovely Steinway piano there which has clearly been crying out to be used for some time, so my friend and ex-colleague Stephen McCleery of Retrograde Recordings helped to organise an event to give it a bit of attention.

Here’s three of the pieces I performed. I’ll be recording the others over the next few days, so there’s a few posts ready to go if I’m short of inspiration!

If you’re reading this on an iPhone, don’t get pissy about the Flash audio players not working. I’ve been good enough to supply direct links to the files. Just click on the title. I’m good to you people. Not every blog would do that, you know.

Anyway… enjoy. More to come over the next few days.

Main Theme from Persona 4

Prologue from Final Fantasy

Velvet Room from Persona 3

#oneaday, Day 54: End of another week

It’s that time again. Friday night. I chose not to listen to Radio 1 on the way home tonight, which means I didn’t want to throw things at Annie Mac and her stupid jingles. Whoever decided the airhorn should be the iconic sound of “I Think This Is A Fine Piece Of Music And No Mistake” should be punched in the testicles or lady-equivalents. But no matter, because I didn’t actually hear it tonight. I drove home listening to, of all things, The Sims 3 soundtrack. What? It’s cheery and relaxing, and after the day I had, I needed cheery and relaxing. It was that or whack on Bayonetta’s soundtrack and freak people out with either J-pop or epic scary choirs blasting out of my car.

This weekend I will be editing the next SquadCast on the subject of Machinarium, an endearing little adventure/puzzle hybrid available for PC and Mac. I will refrain from talking about it too much here as we discuss it at great length on the SquadCast which should, barring disasters of unforeseen proportions, be available by the end of the weekend.

Other plans for the weekend include Final Fantasy XIII, which I’m enjoying a great deal so far, and maybe a bit more of the Blur beta, which I’ve been playing a little bit of this evening – check out my thoughts here.

I’m actually looking forward to being unemployed as I’ll have time to do lots of things I’ve been meaning to for ages but have usually been too exhausted to. Sitting on my imaginary To-Do list is the production of a website for my potential computer tuition services, some more writing for here, pJedi and BitMob, some chasing of potential sources of freelance writing work and, of course, some time to actually wind down. After the week I have coming up, I will probably need it, but the less said about that, the better.

Then there’s PAX. I can’t wait. It’s going to be an awesome time when I get the chance to see some very dear friends – some for the first time, others for the second. After that, who knows where things will lead?

My new life may not be easy all the time, but I’m certainly looking forward to taking control and doing things for myself.

#oneaday, Day 51: Final Fantasies

Picked up Final Fantasy XIII today, but I’m not going to talk about it too much just yet. I want to do a proper “first impressions” post. Suffice to say, though, I’m enjoying it so far. It has been extremely linear so far, as people have been saying, but it’s certainly not a worse game for this fact. So far all the characters seem appealing, and the dynamic between them, now they’ve all met each other, is shaping up to be interesting. I look forward to seeing what happens.

I wanted to talk about my memories of the Final Fantasy series generally, as it’s a series that will always be close to my heart for a variety of reasons. I’d never even heard of it prior to Final Fantasy VII’s release, but I was intrigued when I heard my brother discussing it and he mentioned the oft-quoted fact that it was “one of the only games that had ever made anyone cry”. It sounds trite now, of course, as everyone knows what FFVII’s “big shock” was, and the moment has lost its emotional impact. But I remember playing that game for the first time and not knowing what was going to happen – so when that moment at the end of Disc 1 came, I genuinely felt something. It hadn’t been spoiled for me. I knew something tragic happened at some point in the game, but that was it. I wasn’t prepared for them to kill off a main character like that. It was, of course, even more traumatic for the fact you could rename every party member in FFVII, so it was like someone I actually knew died. (Shush. I was young and stupid.)

Of course, killing off main characters isn’t something that FF has traditionally shied away from, but being unfamiliar with the series prior to that moment, I wasn’t to know. In fact, not only was I unfamiliar with the FF series, I was unfamiliar with the RPG genre in general, my only real experiences with it having been Alternate Reality on the Atari 8-bit (which, when I played it as a young child, I really didn’t understand) and the dreadful Times of Lore by Origin on the Atari ST. Neither of them had gripped me, perhaps because of the deficiencies these games held in the narrative department. Alternate Reality just didn’t have a story full stop (besides that which you made for yourself) and Times of Lore was just… well, crap. So, suffice to say I hadn’t felt particularly inspired to pursue an interest in the RPG genre – not until FFVII turned up, anyway.

A particularly fond memory of VII comes from one long summer when my folks were away in America for a few weeks. It was the first time I’d been left home alone and, among other things best left for discussion another day, my friend Woody and I spent a lot of time playing Final Fantasy VII. At one point, we played it for thirty-six hours continuously, whacking each other over the head with couch cushions when the other looked like they were falling asleep. Eventually, we did pretty much both pass out, with some peculiar dreams and talking-in-sleep going on. The tequila probably didn’t help matters.

We fell asleep as we were in FFVII’s Ancient Forest looking for the Apocalypse Sword prior to the endgame. I remember falling asleep to the music there and it infecting my brain. I can’t hear that track these days without thinking of the peculiar sensations of sleep deprivation, slight drunkenness and square eyes from staring at the TV for too long.

It was some time after discovering FFVII that I decided to explore the rest of the series and uncovered the world of the music of FF. I managed to track down some scans of the elusive “Piano Collections” books for FFIV, V and VI online and tried playing them. They’re wonderful arrangements – actually properly written for the piano, rather than simply transcribed – so the performance of them has become something of a trademark of mine over the years. Hearing any of those tracks always fills me with a sense of deep joy and nostalgia – not necessarily for the games as such, but because they remind me of times past – of good times with friends, of things that happened around the same time as me playing them – all sorts. Playing the games themselves has much the same effect. It’s actually been many years now since I played FFVII, VIII or IX. Although they are now somewhat aged, I don’t think the soft spot I have for them will ever leave me, and I’ll always carry the memories of what I was doing when I played them. (FFVII – that long summer. FFVIII – first year at university. FFIX – visiting my bro in America one Christmas.)

Yeah, I know. How lame to tell a Final Fantasy story. But I don’t care. 🙂

Ode to Game Music 2: The Art of the Final Boss

This is going to be a somewhat self-indulgent (and lengthy) gush on one of my favourite topics to do with video games in general, and with their music in particular. But I promise that I won’t mention One Winged Angel at all in this post after this paragraph as I’m sure most people who are familiar with that of which I speak below will be overly familiar with this track already.

Oh, and if you’re reading this on Facebook come and read this on my proper page. It has streaming audio and everything.

Everyone ready? Let’s begin.

So, the final boss confrontation. To me, this can make or break a game. I remember learning very early on at school both when writing essays and preparing for performances that “people remember the beginnings and the ends of things more than anything else”. And it’s true. For me, by far the most memorable parts of many games are the very beginning and the very end. Sure, if the middle is interesting, compelling and/or fun I’ll be more inclined to make it from the beginning to the end, but I’ll be even more inclined to remember a game fondly if its finale is aurally spectacular. Conversely, if a final battle is somewhat underwhelming in terms of presentation, I’ll be less inclined to think of it favourably.

Take Diablo II, for example – I think most people agree that Diablo is a fantastic game, but for me that final battle with Diablo was utterly underwhelming, and it was the music that killed it completely. Or rather, it was the lack of the music that killed it completely. Diablo has an eerie, ethereal sort of soundtrack that doesn’t have much in the way of memorable tunes. Sure, it’s atmospheric and sure, its production values are higher than for many games (it is a Blizzard title after all) but dammit if I didn’t want something a bit more dramatic for battling the most evil thing in the history of ever!

So it is with this in mind that I want to share with you some of my favourite final boss confrontation soundtracks. The overdramatic climactic music may be something of a cliché to many people but I can’t get enough of it. If it involves “scary choirs”, a phrase a similarly-inclined friend and I coined a while back to describe the chorus in One Wi… I mean that song at the end of Final Fantasy VII… so much the better.

These are presented in no particular order, I should probably say. And if you have any similar examples, please feel free to share them in the comments.

Final Fantasy I (Origins Version): Last Battle (Nobuo Uematsu)

Start as you mean to go on, with a bit of Uematsu. While he is probably one of the first composers that people get interested in when they start looking into video game music, his “mainstream” (for want of a better word) doesn’t mean that his music isn’t worth looking at. On the contrary, in fact – the Final Fantasy series has typically had spectacular finales and a huge amount of this can be attributed to the music.

This piece is from the remake of Final Fantasy I for the PS1. If you’re unfamiliar with the first FF, the battle system consists of your party members standing on one side of the screen wafting their weapons around at a monster or monsters on the other side of the screen. There’s very little apparent physical interaction between them, and said monsters don’t animate at all.

That didn’t stop this piece of music making the final battle with Chaos (incidentally, just how many unimaginative RPG designers have used something as generic as “Chaos” for their final bosses since FFI?) super-dramatic and exciting.

This piece takes in all the JRPG finale clichés. Pipe organ? Check. Tinkly piano breaks? Check. Loosely based on the game’s main battle theme? Check. But I still love it.

Final Fantasy II (Origins Version): Battle Scene 2 (Nobuo Uematsu)

I’ll say now that I’m getting all the FF music out of the way first so those who think it’s been done to death (which, to be fair, it probably has) can happily skip to the later tracks.

Who’s still here? Oh good. This theme is from battling the Emperor at the close of Final Fantasy II, one of the less well-known FF games because many people hate, loathe and despise it with a passion. Me? I enjoyed it, and this music, while simple, was pleasant to experience at finale time.

The interesting thing (well, to me anyway) about this one is that the main motif of the theme also made a reappearance in the final confrontation of Final Fantasy IV when battling Zeromus. This also happened a couple of other times, with the chord sequence for Exdeath’s (still a dumb name) theme in Final Fantasy V bearing more than a passing resemblance to Sephiroth’s theme in Final Fantasy VII.

Talking of which…

Final Fantasy VII (Nobuo Uematsu)

I have two tracks to share for this one for the reason that it does one of the things I love best in a good final confrontation soundtrack – it takes one of the earlier themes in the game and expands on it. The next few tracks in this post revolve around this kind of idea.

So this track (Those Chosen by the Planet)…

…becomes this track (The Birth of a God).

Eventually, anyway. Give it time. At about 1:25 in, we get that Sephiroth theme coming back to kick some ass. I remember the first time I heard this it was one of those moments where you get an involuntary shiver down your spine. I know for a fact this doesn’t happen to anyone, but this one particular musical technique at work here – using a simple motif from an earlier piece of music in a completely different one, particularly if they are of markedly different styles – always has that effect on me, particularly if it’s used at a dramatic moment.

Then, of course, after this track, you get that other one that I’m not mentioning.

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark (Jeremy Soule)

Mr Soule is very fond of the technique I mention above, as is clearly demonstrated by both his work on Neverwinter Nights and Dungeon Siege (up next). The moody, creepy opening track from Hordes of the Underdark (which, so far as I’m aware at least, has no title other than “x2_title”) sets the scene for a descent into darkness with faint undertones of potential heroism ahead:

Slog your way through to the end of the game through its many traps, challenges and monsters and, musically, you end up almost right back where you started, but in a slightly different key at a slightly faster tempo with more screechy strings and clangy percussion:

There’s even some pipe organ in there. Well done that man.

Dungeon Siege (Jeremy Soule)

Dungeon Siege as a game was, to many people, a relatively forgettable action-RPG. It wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination bad, but most people seemed to think it was a fairly unremarkable game still riding the remnants of the Diablo II wave. Still, I remember it fondly for its music – in this case, both the very first and last tracks of the game providing strong “bookends” to the action.

Here’s the track you get for setting out on your journey:

This being Jeremy Soule, there’s more than a passing resemblance to the “sound” of Neverwinter Nights – if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, eh? – but to me, the main theme of Dungeon Siege is much more memorable. I know of people who have restarted the game many times simply to hear this music again. I was also delighted to discover that Dungeon Siege II also started with an alternative version of this theme.

Get to the end of the game (assuming it holds your attention, of course – and I maintain that it’s actually an entertaining experience worth playing through) and your battle with the final boss is accompanied by this stirring soundtrack:

Scary choirs, clangy percussion, a hurdy-gurdy break and… there it is, lurking around the 1:08 mark, that opening theme. Once I heard that, any trace of gaming fatigue I had was immediately gone and I had to finish this game to do justice to the excellent soundtrack. It’s strange. The adrenaline rush of the simple re-use of a musical motif – I often wonder if I’m the only one that this particular technique has an effect on. But then I think about how many composers out there do it and I know it can’t just be me.

Space Channel 5 (Hataya, Tokoi, Nanba, Ohtani featuring Ken Woodman and His Orchestra)

My love for Space Channel 5 has, of course, been well documented in the past but I feel it’s worth mentioning here simply because it’s a completely different soundtrack to what we’ve heard above – and yet it still uses that same technique, and it has that same effect on me.

Space Channel 5’s main theme, Mexican Flyer, is the basis for much of the rest of the game’s soundtrack – if not in terms of reusing motifs then at least stylistically, with the blaring horns and Sixties stylings providing a backdrop to many scenes in the two games in the series. It’s certainly a memorable, toe-tapping theme that sums up the “Gays In Space!” aesthetic nicely. So when I got to the end of Space Channel 5 Part 2 after, oh, the mighty 45 minutes of game that preceded it, I was immensely gratified to be dealing with the extremely bizarre and surreal finale accompanied by this piece:

This piece has everything I want from a finale – a bit of drama (0:33), a bit of cheesy false-hope “Yay! You did it!” (1:03) and cap it all with an ending that takes the main theme and builds on it from a simple vocal (1:20) up to everyone in the galaxy singing along with you (2:15). This is the kind of piece that makes you feel rotten if you fuck it up halfway through.

Persona 3 (Shoji Meguro)

There’s just one more example of what you have probably surmised is one of my favourite musical clichés to fall back on, and that is the great and brilliant Persona 3. I’m not sure much more needs to be said about this at this time other than the fact that The Poem for Everyone’s Souls…

…becomes, after 90+ hours, The Battle for Everyone’s Souls.

It, of course, is them followed by the final battle mix of Burn My Dread featuring, in Beige‘s own words, some Japanese guy “rapping the fuck out”.

Beyond Good and Evil (Christophe Heral)

Just two more, you’ll be pleased to know. First up is the spectacular soundtrack of Beyond Good and Evil which I want to draw attention to simply for its high production values and the great “bookending” of the game that these two tracks achieve.

Shortly after starting the game, you are thrust right into combat with a mysterious enemy you don’t know much about. During said battle, you are accompanied by this incredible piece of music that everyone who has played Beyond Good and Evil seems to comment on when describing the game’s amazingly strong opening sequence. Dancing with Domz certainly sets the scene for an epic battle.

The return to this style at the end of the game with the piece Sins of the Father is made all the more effective by the fact that much of the music in the middle of the game has been either of a somewhat “gentler” style, or when things did get hectic, a more “electronic”, “technological” sound. A return to the orchestral/choral stylings of the opening for the final confrontation helped, for me at least, to diminish the “Umm… what the fuck happened at the end of this game?” nonsense.

Trauma Center: New Blood (Atsushi Kitajoh)

I draw particular attention to Trauma Center here because I still find it utterly bizarre. I mean, we’re talking about a surgical action/puzzle/shooter game here. And let’s not forget the fact that the first Trauma Center game ended with you battling an illness that was “a form of Death itself” that had wrapped itself around the human heart.

I don’t know about you, but when I think about doctors, nurses and surgeons, pipe organs and scary choirs (there they are again) don’t spring immediately to mind. Neither do electric guitars. But what the hey. If you’ve played Trauma Center, you’ll know that it’s a sweaty-palmed and utterly terrifying experience, which these two pieces, heard during the final “battle” with the Cardia disease, reflect perfectly.

And on that note, it’s good night from me. Congratulations if you made it through all that, and I hope you’ve enjoyed some of my picks. If you have any other final boss musics that you’d like to share, please post ’em in the comments.

My next post on game music (which will happen when it happens and not before, dammit!) will likely revolve around the art of the end credits music.