SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs - "Ace in the Whole Sky" Edition

SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs provides a weekly dose of great video game music goodness, and this week is no different. This week's edition is named after the Ace Combat series, which saw a new trailer for its upcoming seventh entry release last week. However, there's more than just that series featured this week.

Starting off, of course, with Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, we go even more retro with a character theme from Battle Arena Toshinden 2. Then, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles changes things up with a more subdued tone before things pick up again in rockin' fashion with a tune from F-Zero X. Finally, No More Heroes delivers a delightful theme for one of its more popular bosses.

As always, just click on the VGM volume name to hear its song, and be sure to check out the VGM Database for all past VGM volumes represented on this long-running series of articles. Now, let's get on to the music!

v1321. Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War (PS2) - The Unsung War

We begin this edition of SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs with a majestic and sometimes forceful choir and orchestral piece from Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War. This PlayStation 2 exclusive remains the top seller in the Ace Combat franchise, sporting over one million sales in North America alone. I figured we'd take a listen to a song from the series with the latest trailer from Ace Combat 7 popping up last week.

v1322. Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (ARC, PS1, PC) - Theme of Tracy

Time for something completely different. Between your Street Fighters and Tekkens, there have been a great deal of fighting game franchises that didn't last as long as the more popular Japanese fighters. Battle Arena Toshinden is one of those. This weapon-based fighter packed a serious punch in arcades and then later on the PlayStation One and PC. Let's pour one out (a bottle of Dr. Pepper, so no one below drinking age gets any ideas) for this franchise with a rockin' '90s character theme from the second game in the franchise.

v1323. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (GCN) - Eternal Oath

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles's story has various caravans from each village in the game going out to dangerous dungeons to get crystal energy to protect their homelands from the deadly miasma mist in the air. A lot of villages and their caravans are success stories, but some, like the village turned dungeon where this somber and sullen theme is heard, fail. Composer Kumi Tanioka brought a rustic, earthen sound to the Crystal Chronicles soundtrack's marvelous melodies, something that makes it one of my favorite Final Fantasy soundtracks to date.

v1324. F-Zero X (N64) - Drivin' Through on Max

Both F-Zero X and F-Zero GX fight in many F-Zero fans' minds for best game in the franchise. Where do you stand? Musically, while I do like the techno and electronica music heard in GX, the hard rock and heavy metal of F-Zero X beats GX for me. It's amazing that such sound was possible from the Nintendo 64's hardware, and composers Taro Bando and Hajime Wakai delivered a delightfully peppy and energizing soundtrack.

v1325. No More Heroes (Wii) - Season of the Samurai

A chill start breaking into a guitar-driven romp caps off this edition of SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs, Season of the Samurai from No More Heroes is the theme song to female samurai Shinobu. Her battle is one of the first true challenges of No More Heroes where the difficulty most certainly picks up. Be careful and watchful for her one-hit kill attack which will cut Travis Touchdown down to size in a jiffy.

SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs - In the Wee Morning Hours Edition

Sneaking into SuperPhillip Central like a snake through the tall grass, our weekly segment of video game music favorites arrives in the early morning hours to start your week. This week we have music from Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, Valkyrie Profile, and Dragon Quest V! If for some reason you feel the symptoms of VGM withdrawal while you wait for next week (symptoms include missing the VGM segment and missing the VGM segment again), check out our complete selection of VGM faves with our updated database.

v621. Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War (PS2) - First Flight

In North America alone, Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War met fantastic financial success, selling over 1 million units. That makes the fifth installment of the Ace Combat series one of the highest-selling entries in the franchise to this day. While most of the music within missions was orchestral, such as this piece, arcade mode featured a rock-centric set of songs.

v622. Valkyrie Profile (PS1) - Fighting the Shadowy Gods

The battle theme of Valkyrie Profile, Fighting the Shadowy Gods gets the player pumped and primed for battle. While we did very much enjoy what Motoi Sakuraba offered with his soundtrack for Valkyrie Profile, we're still rather fond of his Star Ocean: The Second Story tracks a bit more.

v623. Dragon Quest V (SNES) - Violent Enemies ~ Almighty Boss Devil is Challenged

Dragon Quest has never been as prominent of a franchise in the West compared to Final Fantasy. However, it's a different story in Japan. A fair amount of entries in the Dragon Quest series never made it over the Pacific. It wasn't until the remakes for the DS that IV, V, and VI were legally playable for RPG fans. This selected composition from Dragon Quest V contains both the regular battle and boss themes.

v624. Power Stone (DC) - Manches Stage (Jack)

One of us on the staff recently got back into the SEGA Dreamcast cult-classic Power Stone, albeit on the PSP with the Power Stone Collection. Seeing as Capcom is now heavily focused on franchises like Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Lost Planet, to name a few, we don't hold much hope to ever seeing Power Stone get placed in the public eye for a loooooong time, if ever.

v625. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) - Volcano

The New Super Mario Bros. series gets a lot of flak from gamers, particularly longtime Nintendo fans. Then again, a large portion of those people whine about everything anyhow. Nonetheless, one of the greatest disappointments with the NSMB line of games is the music. It's by no means awful, but the constant "bah, bah" sound effects and otherwise poor instrumentation make for a combination that is less than amazing. Perhaps if New Super Mario Bros. 2 and New Super Mario Bros. U also didn't share the same exact music, we, along with our fellow gamers, wouldn't be so up in arms over the music. Regardless, the volcano theme that originated in NSMB Wii gives a foreboding feeling with its powerful chord progression.