SuperPhillip's Favorite VGMs - Let the Games Begin Edition

Other than the name of this edition of the VGMs, this installment really has nothing to do with the Olympics at all. Instead we will listen to five tracks from retro and more modern games. These are five picks that run the gamut of video game eras, franchises, and styles. From Super Monkey Ball to Bomberman, we have a lot to get to, so let's do it.

v161. DuckTales (NES) - The Moon

Not pony tails or cotton tails, no DuckTales. Who knew that one of the most classic and regarded 8-bit tunes would come from a licensed video game based on a Disney animated series? DuckTales was developed by Capcom, a powerhouse when it came to licensed Disney games. Mickey Mouse, Aladdin, Chip 'n Dale, and more, Capcom was incredible with platformers in the NES and Super Nintendo days. DuckTales is but part of this long line of excellent Disney platformers.

v162. Bomberman 64: The Second Attack (N64) - Game Planet Starlight

Set on the Game Planet Starlight, full of bright lights, casinos, and various ways to lose your hard-earned cash through gambling, this world of Bomberman 64: The Second Attack is complemented by some seriously catchy music. But there's no time to lounge around with one of the Astral Knights loose on the planet. The soundtrack was composed in part by the great Yasunori Mitsuda of Chrono Trigger/Cross and Xenogears fame.

v163. Super Monkey Ball 2 (GCN) - World 7 (Bubbly Washing Machine)

Giving off a distinctly Japanese feel as your monkey in a ball rolls around courses suspended above a bloody washing machine, World 7 from Super Monkey Ball 2's story mode is the penultimate world of the game. Super Monkey Ball 2 had some levels that were more based on luck than actual skill. This put some experts of the original game off quite a bit. Despite this, I managed to somehow complete every level in the game. That is one of my proudest accomplishments alongside my 95% finished F-Zero GX save data.

v164. Drill Dozer (GBA) - Art Museum

Before Pokemon, Game Freak worked on the game Pulseman on the Sega Genesis. Then they crafted a series that some had called a fad. Well, the Pokemon "fad" is still going strong more than a decade later with no signs of slowing down. In between Pokemon games Game Freak had the opportunity to develop one of the last Game Boy Advance games for the system, a unique platformer known as Drill Dozer. The cartridge of the game had rumble built into it. The main character of Drill Dozer, Jill, would see the light of day once more in a guest starring role as an assist trophy in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

v165. Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii) - Dusky (Both Versions)

We continue our Japanese theme from volume 163. Do you recall the name Hitoshi Sakimoto? Well, he was the man behind a good portion of the music of Final Fantasy XII and the Final Fantasy Tactics series. Dusky, particularly Dusky A, is a theme that I absolutely adore. It is perfect for venturing through wheat fields, through demon-filled forests, and across isolated mountaintops. Vanillaware (Odin Sphere) did a wonderful job with the visuals of the game. It is a work of interactive art, wouldn't you say?

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That concludes this eclectic mix of music for the Let the Games Begin edition of the favorite VGMs. Next week we will have five more intriguing themes for your ears to take pleasure in. For now, take solace in the fact that you can listen to past installments with the Favorite VGM Database.

Top Ten Under-appreciated Wii Games

Nintendo's Wii was the most dominant console this generation, but it really wasn't future-proof. Its graphical power was outperformed by both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 right out of the gates. Nonetheless, with its selection of casual titles and innovative motion control (so popular that the competition created their own solutions), the Wii sold strongly for about four or five years. Now we are at a stretch where sales have dwindled down, and the game selection is slowing to a crawl. For every Super Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros., and Mario Kart is a game that is overlooked and under-appreciated. This list is my attempt to enlighten Wii owners on games they may have missed out on. These are titles that either did not sell to their potential or were overlooked completely by nearly everyone.

10) Wario Land: Shake It!


Wario returns, but this time he's ditched the biker attire, the micro-games, and donned his familiar purple overalls for this console iteration of the popular Wario Land series. In every level there are a trio of treasures to find (entirely optional), bags of money just waiting to be shook loose-- performed through shaking the Wii remote, and a myriad of missions to attempt to complete such as reaching the goal in a set amount of time, not getting hit at all throughout a level, or collecting a certain amount of gold. The levels are cleverly designed both in how Wario reaches the treasure room to how he has to quickly race back to the goal soon after. The mellow soundtrack offers some memorable melodies as well. Wario is back, and he means business.

9) The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces


Take to the skies in one of many customizable fighter planes as you dogfight above enemy fortresses, dams, cities, and mountain ranges. Utilize motion controls to pilot your plane (the nunchuk is used as your throttle in this setting), or opt to use regular ones. The game features 20+ missions that have you protecting a friendly, taking down an enemy target or series of targets, or taking out as many fighters as possible within a given time frame. Containing massive amounts of customization, mission variety, a superb score, and intense dogfighting, The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces is great for the pilot in all of us.

8) Muramasa: The Demon Blade


Play as one of two characters in Muramasa: The Demon Blade as you venture across a perilous countryside, through forests, rough waves, and icy mountains, collecting cursed swords. This is all in an attempt to accomplish your task before the sinister Shogun has his way. Combat flows elegantly and effortlessly as you ward off soldiers, skeletons, giant krakens, and other mythical beasts. The true star of the show, however, are the gorgeous graphics. Hand-painted and never losing their luster, the worlds of Muramasa: The Demon Blade come to life with colorful backgrounds with objects such as blades of grass wafting in the wind and sensational scenery. This is one game that deserves a chance to shine in HD if only for the aforementioned visuals.

7) Go Vacation


Vacation, all I ever wanted. Vacation, had to get away. You will be able to get away with Go Vacation-- even in these cold fall and winter months. Participate in one of over fifty activities with over 100 different variants. Explore Kawawii Island's four unique resort areas: marine, mountain, snow, and city as you discover new activities, find new friends, and unlock new content. Create your own villa with furniture you collect from your various excursions on the island, and invite up to three other players to explore the island with you. Whether you're surfing, scuba diving, skydiving, hurling snowballs, riding horses, or inline skating, there's an activity for everyone in Namco Bandai's Go Vacation.

6) Endless Ocean: Blue World


Take a dive in Arctic seas, South American rivers full of piranha fish, and Caribbean oceans in this globetrotting adventure to find treasure within ancient underwater temples and tunnels. Interact with the aquatic wildlife-- just be sure to avoid those sharks! Discover buried treasure, make friends with a helpful dolphin, and hop online with a friend to explore the dank, deep depths of the ocean together. While the option to import custom soundtracks from the original Endless Ocean is gone, the Celtic Woman soundtrack is surprisingly poignant and pleasant. If deep water makes you anxious like me, then why not take a virtual tour of the many waterways of the earth with Endless Ocean: Blue World?

5) We Love Golf!


From Camelot, the makers of Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, and the Golden Sun series comes this Capcom-published take on arcade golf. With eight wacky, regular courses and three short courses, a cavalcade of characters and Mii support, online play, and the ability to unlock Capcom-related costumes such as Apollo Justice, Ryu, and Arthur from Ghost 'n Goblins, We Love Golf! is a golf bag packed full of content. The intuitive controls offered rewards for terrific timing, and the course design itself was challenging enough so the game never felt too boring. Couple all that with another sensational soundtrack by Motoi Sakuraba (Tales of, Star Ocean), and you have one mighty golfing game.

4) Klonoa


The floppy-eared wonder returns with this Wii remake of the PlayStation One classic, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile. With updated vibrant visuals and new modes, Klonoa's very first adventure shines brightly. He'll have to overcome perilous platforming challenges, grab enemies with his Wind Bullet and use them to launch himself to higher ledges, and solve intriguing puzzles to reach the final showdown with the being that threatens the very existence of Phantomile, a land made up of dreams. This all concludes with an out-of-nowhere heart-tugging ending that will touch even the most cynical with a hole in their heart.

3) Sin and Punishment: Star Successor


Taking place in a far away future, Sin and Punishment: Star Successor pits players against an increasingly more powerful enemy force. You'll point your Wii remote at the screen, picking off foes of low-level scrubs, mid-level forces, and big-time bosses taking up a sizable chunk of the screen. Up to two players can trek through the relatively short campaign, racking up multipliers to increase each others' score, and then hop online to add their scores to an online leaderboard. Those who missed having a console Star Fox this generation will find a lot to love about this substitute. It's the type of game that was a one-in-a-million shot to ever have been translated as the original S&P sold an atrociously pathetic amount of units in Japan. Regardless, Star Successor can now be found within bargain bins for less than twenty dollars.

2) The Munchables


Ranking at number two on my list comes The Munchables, a Pac-man meets Katamari Damacy type game. To progress through levels, your Munchable much gobble up lower level monsters than your character is currently at. As more monsters are munched upon, your creature grows, allowing him or her to digest larger enemies and advance to otherwise unreachable portions of levels. Boss battles have you eating a monster made up of grapes, broccoli, and chocolate, and the game features eight worlds of multiple levels to go through. For a colorful adventure that supports poor eating habits, there is no better alternative to a zany game than The Munchables on Wii.

1) Excitebots: Trick Racing


Sent out to die with no marketing whatsoever by Nintendo, this excellent arcade racer isn't so much about coming in first, but coming in first and doing so in style. At the conclusion of each race, the player with the most stars (earned by performing tricks, reaching high amounts of hang time, crashing into other vehicles, kicking field goals, catching butterflies, etc.) is the victor. Excitebots will have players purchasing new vehicle types such as squid, mice, lobster, ladybugs, frogs, and many more. The locales are numerous and have racers slogging through marshes, through dusty deserts in Mexico, and through wintry forests in Canada, to name a few. Online play has racers betting a set amount of stars and competing with up to five other players. For a game that will give you such a bang for your buck, Excitebots: Trick Racing is top of the heap.

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Hopefully the following list provided you with some ideas of games that you may have not known were available. The Wii is an interesting console as it has the most niche games on it in comparison to the competition. Whether you're teeing it up in We Love Golf, soaring the unfriendly skies in The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces, or tricking out to rock music in Excitebots: Trick Racing, these under-appreciated treasures demand your attention.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii) Review

Welcome to Wednesday night on SuperPhillip Central. Our next review is for one of the more visually-appealing games of this year, and it's on the Wii of all places! It's Muramasa: The Demon Blade!

The Art of War

Vanillaware may not be a household name to many people. They're the development studio behind the relatively successful Odin Sphere for the Playstation 2. Like Odin Sphere, their next game is also oozing with style and is aesthetically pleasing. This game is Muramasa: The Demon Blade for the Wii. Based on ancient Japanese folklore and filled to the brim with style and substance, is Muramasa: The Demon Blade a cut above the rest?

Play as Momohime or Kisuke.

It is the age of demons, magical spirits, and feudal flair in Japan. Muramasa tells the tales of two separate people, Momohime, a princess possessed by an ancient demon, and Kisuke, a ninja on his own who is riddled with amnesia. Each of their stories progresses through eight acts, and after completing both characters' stories, a final chapter is unlocked that wraps everything up. Each character starts out on different ends of the world map with different bosses to battle and beat. The stories are not handled very well as it can be quite difficult to follow each one due to lazy storytelling and a lack of context during scenes. What voice acting included is all Japanese giving the game a distinctive foreign film feel. The localization doesn't translate the dialogue word-for-word. Instead, the localization gives a gist of what each character says. Every character and NPC in the game gets spoken dialogue showing no corners were cut on this aspect.

The basic flow of Muramasa has whichever character you choose running from one room to the next, occasionally entering a random encounter. This is where an exclamation point flashes on the screen and summons a multitude of enemies for your character to slice and dice. After a room is cleared of enemies, bonus experience points from striking first to not taking any damage are awarded after battle. The rooms themselves don't have much in the way of actual platforming. Many of these rooms are large, empty, and repeat themselves often throughout the course of the game. This can get quite repetitive running through the same rooms over and over. Occasionally, a hidden item will be located in a room signaled by an orange marking on the map. When found, the item will be placed in your character's collection of goodies.

There's plenty of opportunities to take in the sights.

Muramasa has a Metroid-style of progression. Instead of accessing new areas with new abilities, you access new areas by acquiring new blades. Blades earned from bosses destroy specially-colored barriers blocking your character's progress. There's a hundred or so different swords in all to collect, each with special abilities, and these are acquired through various different means. You can forge a profusion of new blades once your spirit and vitality are high enough, you can acquire swords from bosses, or you can collect them from enemy-infested lairs. These lairs, too, have barriers that only certain blades will open.

If you get lost running around the similar-looking rooms, you can use your map to know where to go. An arrow on the map, which can be placed near the middle of the screen for easy access, will point in which direction you need to go. Unfortunately, there's plenty of times where you'll be scampering through areas all over again, backtracking. There's times where you'll be repeating ten, twenty, thirty rooms just to reach where you need to go. Sometimes you won't even get any battles while doing so making the process all the more tedious.

Each sword has a special art skill
that can be unleashed on foes.

Speaking of battles, Muramasa is an action-RPG at its very core. Battles consist of Monohime or Kisuke slicing up enemies that appear on screen. The action in this action-RPG is very fast, fluid, and fun. Scoring and chaining combos is almost effortless, and depending on the difficulty you're playing on (either Muso [normal] or Shura [hard]), you can evade and block attacks with ease. The challenge level of the game can be changed at any time. In battle and over time, your blade will weaken in strength as it is used to block attacks. If it takes too much damage, it will break in two and need to have time to itself to repair. Thankfully, you can equip three swords at once and exchange them on the fly, sometimes even damaging all enemies on screen in the process. As battles end, the experience you acquire make lengths to increase your level, giving you more strength, defense, and life flame (or hit points).

There's a decent amount of enemies in Muramasa. Sure, you'll more likely get your fill of ninja and tengu, but there's plenty of variety in the enemy design. Many times you'll face off against six or more enemies at once. A boss battle concludes every act, and this is definitely where the design shines. Many bosses will take up large portions of the screen with some taking up the majority. Boss battles are the most difficult and rewarding part of Muramasa. Each boss has multiple life bars that slowly empty as they're damaged. If a battle is too tough and you lose, your only penalty is the chance to retry or to start back right from outside the boss battle. Ample save points, many located right before a boss, are widely available making long periods without saving a non-factor most of the time.

I better start "kraken" on beating this boss. Wakka-wakka.

Muramasa's biggest draw may not be its actual gameplay but its presentation. Rest assured, Muramasa is a gorgeous game with beautiful, colorful, crisp visuals and plenty of eye candy to ogle. Backgrounds use various tricks such as paralax and a fish-eyed view to add extra dimension to areas. Models are highly detailed and superbly animated from small characters like Momohine to large characters such as many of the bosses you'll battle. Everything in the presentation package has been tailored with the greatest of effort even down to your character eating a savory dish of food to regain spirit. It's like food pornography! Meanwhile, the soundtrack is in part by Hitoshi Sakimoto who is best known for his work on games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story, and it's excellent in helping give the game that ancient Japanese ambiance.

Frozen land but the fire inside still burns.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade may be breathtaking game to behold, but its gameplay can only be masked so much by the beauty of the visuals. There's a lot of needless backtracking and repetition involved. The game can sometimes feel like a chore running through recycled areas again and again. There's also little in the way of exploration. These problems aside, Muramasa is a very capable action-RPG with tons of style and plenty of "oooh, pretty" moments. As it stands, Muramasa: The Demon Blade gets a modest recommendation as a good, but not great game.

[SuperPhillip Says: 7.75/10]