We finished off Mega Man for now, so let's move onto a new video game franchise. What better franchise to examine than Super Mario Bros.? This week we'll begin listening to the 2D console games starting with the one that started it all!
V251. Super Mario Bros. Main Theme
If you've been with me for awhile, then you know when I list a song that has been heard over and over again countless times that I usually try to mix it up. It's no different with this installment kicking off a ten track listen to the various tracks of mainline Mario games. This is the theme that even someone who hasn't picked up a controller in years could probably hum flawlessly. It's the main theme of Super Mario Bros, but not the original version. It's the smooth jazz rendition as heard on the Super Mario World Live concert CD. Enjoy.
V252. Super Mario Bros. 2 Main Theme
Hey, gang. We just finished off Super Mario Bros. (well, we did if you listen to these in order, and if not, SHAME ON YOU! *shakes fists uncontrollably*), so the next logical step is to head to Super Mario Bros. 2. By now the history of the American version and Doki Doki Panic has been brought up so many times that this is no longer an interesting story of how it came to be. We know the story already. Stop telling it to us! Here's the essential main theme of the game-- Super Mario All-Stars style!
P.S. I'd love to see Wart in a game again.
V253. Super Mario Bros. 3 - Waterfront
This is a special dance arrangement CD, officially licensed and published by Nintendo of Japan, arranged and performed by the Akihabara Electric Circus. The CD celebrated its 20th anniversary on December 15th of last year. The track we'll be listening to features two well-known Super Mario Bros. 3 themes, the underwater and land levels songs.
V254. Super Mario World - Staff Roll
We move onto Super Mario World which is one of my favorite games of all time as you know if you've been following my blog for awhile. No fancy arranged versions or anything like that. This is the bona fide original SNES staff roll theme. It was catchy to me as a kid, and it's catchy to me as an adult... who still acts like a kid.
V255. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - Athletic (Game Music Concert Version)
This will be our final look on the 2D side of mainline Mario games with Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island-- or just Yoshi's Island if you prefer the JPN title. This song is an orchestral version of the Athletic theme from Yoshi's Island performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic back in the mid 90s.
For those wanting the original and Smash Bros. versions, check this volume out.
Next week we'll enter three-dimensions as we explore the myriad of music in Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and many more! You won't want to miss this!
Monday, February 16, 2009
MySims (Wii) Review
On Tuesday I will be posting a new review for MySims Kingdom. Does it improve on the original MySims' formula? You'll find out tomorrow. Until then let's take a look at the original with a fairly old review of MySims!
===YourSims, MySims, and OurSims
The Sims is a beast of a franchise selling millions of copies worldwide through its various sequels, expansions, and spin-offs. MySims is the latter of the three. Stylized heavily to pique the interest of the Japanese crowd, MySims sports a very cute, endearing, as well as charming look to it with deformed anime-styled characters and bright, colorful visuals, but how does the gameplay hold up?
Begin by concocting your own Sim.
After creating your Sim from the multitude of facial expressions, eyes, hairstyles, makeup, and clothing options, you're assigned to construct a house to live in and a workshop to build furniture and other items in. After this, you're placed into your town-- which you're given the task to name. The mayor will explain that the town was once a bustling little community until slowly and steadily most of the inhabitants moved away. It's your duty to help this stumbling township regain its former glory and bring the town's status back up to five stars. What you can do at the beginning to the game is a little limiting as you need to follow the mayor's tutorial mission as well as check out the neighbors who remained in your town.
Perform tasks for your fellow Sims.
Missions-- or tasks as the game calls them-- all revolve around the same trend-- construction. Commercial Sims-- those who own a business-- will often ask of you to make them an item or group of items after they've settled into their new digs. These items range from couches and chairs to arcade machines and giant-screened T.V.s. However, all items have a required number of Essences that need to be used when crafting the task. Essences are the bread and butter of constructing furniture. Certain Essences are found in distinct locations through a number of methods. You'll be prospecting and digging up various Essences, casting a line and reeling in other Essences, planting, growing, and shaking numerous trees for Essences, and retrieving other Essences by participating in events such as book club meetings and seances with other Sims.
Building furniture, or anything for that matter, is quite easy, but there's a lot of depth underneath that aura of simplicity. It's as quick as selecting from the multitude of blocks available and grabbing and dropping. There's square blocks, circle blocks, sphere blocks, triangle blocks, and a whole assortment of other blocks available for the creative type. The aim of constructing anything is to make sure you cover the glowing stars of the blueprint model. You needn't build everything exactly to blueprint. There's a lot of wiggle-room to maneuver here to give artists as much creativity as they'd like and those just wanting to build something fast the ability to do so. Once the task is completed you exit your workshop and give the item to the neighbor who gave you the task. It's your duty to place the object inside their domicile wherever you see fit.
Mingle around town...
Once you reach a new level by fulfilling the needs and desires of your townspeople, you'll be able to check by the hotel to welcome new citizens to your town. The beauty of MySims is that you have full creative control of your town. If you didn't like that you didn't really have the power to say what citizen could live in your town in Animal Crossing, you'll definitely enjoy this aspect of MySims. It really is YOUR town to mold and craft. You go up to the Sim you'd like to move in, talk with them, ask them to move in, pick out any of the myriad of lots for them to live on, and then construct their home for them. Constructing homes is simple as well, and again there's a wide array of blocks to fool around with. A wide variety of windows, doors, roofs, furnishings, and colors are available to the player so no two homes will ever look the same if the player is creative enough.
There's three main areas to MySims-- the main town, the forest, and the desert. As you acquire new items from the mayor after your town reaches new levels, you'll be explore these areas more in-depth discovering new places to dig, caves to explore, lots for new Sims to move in on, and Essences to acquire. Besides the types of Essences you can gather and the aesthetics of the areas, there's really nothing that changes the main core of what you'll be doing-- shaking trees, digging up Essences, and moving in new Sims. This repetition might put off some players.
Mingle indoors....
The Sims in your town each have their own personalities, and with those different personalities come different tastes. A goth-like character will probably be none too pleased with a pretty pink house, and a cute schoolgirl will most likely detest living in a brooding fortress of doom and despair. Sims will react to one another, but it's overly simplistic. Lasting relationships don't really occur to the level of what you'd find in the normal Sims titles. There aren't many options for what you can do with other Sims. It's either be nice, be mean, or just read the repeated dialogue over and over again. There's really no gender definitions either. Though it is amusing to see two male Sims blowing kisses at each other. There are special things you can do with Sims besides the generic options, however, such as dance with them, join in on lunch, juggle, and more. Sims can also interact with the various objects the game has, so a Sim can start grooving to a jukebox or take a snack out of the fridge and start chomping.
From the cute chibi characters to the colorful palette the game offers, the presentation is simple and endearing to the eyes. The sound design is quite good also. Sims speak their patented gibberish, and the music is bouncy, happy, and varied. Aesthetically, there's an extensive amount of options to furniture you can create, colors and patterns you can add, and structures that can be built. However, even doing the simplest of tasks in MySims can cause the game to chug to abysmal framerates and laggy gameplay, and this occurs more times than should be necessary for a game this simple in scope and design. There's also way too many load times. Load times when you enter buildings, two second load times when you talk to someone, load times when you wish to place furniture, design furniture, and load times when moving from one area to another. If a game as dynamic graphically as Metroid Prime 3 can pull it off, why can't a more tame game like MySims do it? It seems that with more development time these issues could have been rectified.
RIBBIT!
If you're the type of gamer who vastly enjoys customization-- from the characters, the insides and outsides of homes, who you put in your town, and where you put them-- you'll greatly enjoy MySims if you can ignore the technical downsides. However, if the thought of repetition and even more repetition turns you off, then these Sims might not be the ones for you. With a construction interface that's intuitive and and easy to pick up for beginners and enjoyable to master for those with an artistic flair, a wide variety of personalities and townspeople to chatter with, and a very cute disposition, MySims is certainly an endearing experiment. It's not perfect, but damn, is it ever addicting.
[SuperPhillip Says]
Story: The town you've moved into is in need of revitalization. Are you a bad enough dude to help out?
Graphics: Simple which is no excuse for the load times and framerate kinks.
Gameplay: Repetitive, but is it right for you? Depends on how much you like the idea of customizing your own town and the Sims that live in it.
Sound: Yotoki ruffle, bizado! That means in Sim-speak: "quite good, homeboy!"
Replay Value: The creative type will have hours upon hours clocked into MySims. Others? Maybe not so much. Your time into the game reflects how creative you are.
Overall: 7.0/10 - Good, but framerate issues and abundant loading screens make for a bumpy ride.
Super Mario Galaxy - "Don't Stop Me Now" Fan Tribute
Before I head off to bed, check out this amazing fan-made video tribute to Super Mario Galaxy. In my eyes, it's a game that hyperbole doesn't do justice. The video is masterfully and professionally edited, and I can't even imagine how long it take to construct all of those gameplay shots. If it doesn't make you want to crank out Super Mario Galaxy, then you have no soul... or the soul you have is a boring one at the very least!
Friday, February 13, 2009
SuperPhillip's Top Ten Video Game Soundtracks of 2008
Hey, all. Happy beginning of the weekend to you all. I'm wrapping up the week with a brand-new top ten. Tonight we're going to take a look.. er, listen, to the top ten video game soundtracks of 2008 as judged by yours truly. You'll get to see my favorite soundtracks of the year, get a little explanation of each choice, and hear some cool selections from each soundtrack.
10) Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP)
Taking an alternative approach to Final Fantasy music, there's a myraid of techno, rock, and trance tracks all throughout the Crisis Core soundtrack including several remixes of Final Fantasy VII tracks. Of course by this moment in time, I think One-Winged Angel has been redone to death, and nothing can surpass the Advent Children version.
9) Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Michuru Yamane has been the go-to girl/composer of Koji Igarashi's Castlevania franchise for a decade or so now, and she hasn't lost a step since. Order of Ecclesia is her latest tour de ass-kicking with beautiful melodies as heard in Azure Wanderings and her adrenaline-pumping tracks like Dusk's Holy Mark. It's also an opportune moment to mention her phenomenal remixes in Castlevania Judgment for Wii.
8) Sonic Unleashed (Wii, 360, PS3, PS2)
While a lot of this soundtrack is fantastic, there certainly are plenty of tracks that are ho-hum. Regardless, the songs that are notable are beyond awesome. Tomoya Ohtani, Takahito Eguchi, Mariko Nanba, Fumie Kumatani, and Hideaki Kobayashi (all of which who have worked on past Sonic Team games such as past Sonic games, Phantasy Star Online, and more) all did a magnificent job with yet another Sonic soundtrack.
7) Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
While not a perfect kart-racing experience, Mario Kart Wii is a fantastic entry into the series with a great amount of content, cool characters, and wonderfully-designed courses. The soundtrack is no exception either. Seldom has there been a Mario Kart with a mediocre soundtrack (I didn't care for Mario Kart DS), and the greatness continues with Mario Kart Wii. Upbeat and catchy, the music of Mario Kart Wii earns this soundtrack the number seven spot.
6) LittleBigPlanet (PS3)
This is the only game on this list that includes music from licensed artists. They're lesser known artists, but licensed all the same. There's an ample amount and variety of tunes to fit any level an aspiring designer wishes to create. Throw in some "Volver a comenzar" for a latin flavor, or opt to include Alexander Nevsky's "Battle on the Ice" for a touch of latin chanting!
5) The World Ends With You (DS)
The World Ends With You has an eclectic mix of music. You have your usual instrumental themes occasionally, but the vocal tracks lead the march including Japanese pop, hip-hop, rock, and rap. Most of which is in Japanese with some English tracks, but that is quite alright. The lyrics are just the icing on the cake. For me personally, the actual music and melody are what I take from the listening experience. If I cared about the words, I'd probably read poetry!
4) Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon (Wii)
Without a doubt, I award Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon with the best game with remastered and remixed Final Fantasy tunes. It even beats out the upcoming Dissidia game which I feel has weaker arrangements. Listening to the full sounds of the various songs sent shivers up my spine the first time I heard them in-game. It really is a terrific soundtrack, and I do hope more people get the chance to play this fabulous game!
3) Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (360)
It only took ten years, but now the many themes of the Banjo-Kazooie universe can be heard in full, glorious orchestral sound! Yes, there are plenty of recognizable themes returning such as Grunty's, Mumbo's Garage, Click Clock Wood, Hailfire Peaks, Freezeey Peak, and so forth, but the original songs are top of the line, too!
2) Wario Land: Shake It! (Wii)
Even though synthesized sounds are used for every instrument, it doesn't deter from making this soundtrack runner-up. The songs are relentlessly catchy, fun to listen to, and difficult to resist humming and/or bobbing your head to. Just listen to the examples given, and if you're like me, you'll be hard-pressed to not want to listen to more!
1) Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
Feedback Time!
Did you like this article? Do you agree/disagree with some/all of my picks? Let me know in the comments below! Talk to you soon!
10) Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP)
Taking an alternative approach to Final Fantasy music, there's a myraid of techno, rock, and trance tracks all throughout the Crisis Core soundtrack including several remixes of Final Fantasy VII tracks. Of course by this moment in time, I think One-Winged Angel has been redone to death, and nothing can surpass the Advent Children version.
9) Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Michuru Yamane has been the go-to girl/composer of Koji Igarashi's Castlevania franchise for a decade or so now, and she hasn't lost a step since. Order of Ecclesia is her latest tour de ass-kicking with beautiful melodies as heard in Azure Wanderings and her adrenaline-pumping tracks like Dusk's Holy Mark. It's also an opportune moment to mention her phenomenal remixes in Castlevania Judgment for Wii.
8) Sonic Unleashed (Wii, 360, PS3, PS2)
While a lot of this soundtrack is fantastic, there certainly are plenty of tracks that are ho-hum. Regardless, the songs that are notable are beyond awesome. Tomoya Ohtani, Takahito Eguchi, Mariko Nanba, Fumie Kumatani, and Hideaki Kobayashi (all of which who have worked on past Sonic Team games such as past Sonic games, Phantasy Star Online, and more) all did a magnificent job with yet another Sonic soundtrack.
7) Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
While not a perfect kart-racing experience, Mario Kart Wii is a fantastic entry into the series with a great amount of content, cool characters, and wonderfully-designed courses. The soundtrack is no exception either. Seldom has there been a Mario Kart with a mediocre soundtrack (I didn't care for Mario Kart DS), and the greatness continues with Mario Kart Wii. Upbeat and catchy, the music of Mario Kart Wii earns this soundtrack the number seven spot.
6) LittleBigPlanet (PS3)
This is the only game on this list that includes music from licensed artists. They're lesser known artists, but licensed all the same. There's an ample amount and variety of tunes to fit any level an aspiring designer wishes to create. Throw in some "Volver a comenzar" for a latin flavor, or opt to include Alexander Nevsky's "Battle on the Ice" for a touch of latin chanting!
5) The World Ends With You (DS)
The World Ends With You has an eclectic mix of music. You have your usual instrumental themes occasionally, but the vocal tracks lead the march including Japanese pop, hip-hop, rock, and rap. Most of which is in Japanese with some English tracks, but that is quite alright. The lyrics are just the icing on the cake. For me personally, the actual music and melody are what I take from the listening experience. If I cared about the words, I'd probably read poetry!4) Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon (Wii)
Without a doubt, I award Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon with the best game with remastered and remixed Final Fantasy tunes. It even beats out the upcoming Dissidia game which I feel has weaker arrangements. Listening to the full sounds of the various songs sent shivers up my spine the first time I heard them in-game. It really is a terrific soundtrack, and I do hope more people get the chance to play this fabulous game!
3) Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (360)
It only took ten years, but now the many themes of the Banjo-Kazooie universe can be heard in full, glorious orchestral sound! Yes, there are plenty of recognizable themes returning such as Grunty's, Mumbo's Garage, Click Clock Wood, Hailfire Peaks, Freezeey Peak, and so forth, but the original songs are top of the line, too!
2) Wario Land: Shake It! (Wii)
Even though synthesized sounds are used for every instrument, it doesn't deter from making this soundtrack runner-up. The songs are relentlessly catchy, fun to listen to, and difficult to resist humming and/or bobbing your head to. Just listen to the examples given, and if you're like me, you'll be hard-pressed to not want to listen to more!
1) Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
I took *some* flak awarding Super Smash Bros. Brawl with Best Original Soundtrack of 2008. However, as I stated in the introduction of the category, "original" was defined as anything that was not licensed such as a Tony Hawk game or even LittleBigPlanet. Regardless, the amount of music contained in this soundtrack is unbelievable, and the consistent quality is even more astounding. There's no doubt that a soundtrack like this is monumental, so why not have it as 2008's best soundtrack?
Did you like this article? Do you agree/disagree with some/all of my picks? Let me know in the comments below! Talk to you soon!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
January NPD Results - A Duo of DS Games Return
PlayStation 2 101.2K
PlayStation 3 203.2K
PSP 172.3K
Xbox 360 309K
Wii 679.2K
Nintendo DS 510.8K
WII FIT (WII) 777K
WII PLAY W/ REMOTE (WII) 415K
MARIO KART W/WHEEL (WII) 292K
LEFT 4 DEAD (360) 243K
CALL OF DUTY: WORLD AT WAR* (360) 235K
SKATE 2 (360) 199K
GUITAR HERO WORLD TOUR* (WII) 155K
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS (DS) 135K
MARIO KART DS (DS )132K
LORD OF THE RINGS: CONQUEST (360) 113K
(*includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware)
Most surprising to me was the resurgence of New Super Mario Bros after all of this time. Now NSMB joins Mario Kart DS as a DS game returning to the top ten from seemingly nowhere!
Numbers are via the NPD and posted on NeoGAF. All sales are limited to the United States only.
PlayStation 3 203.2K
PSP 172.3K
Xbox 360 309K
Wii 679.2K
Nintendo DS 510.8K
WII FIT (WII) 777K
WII PLAY W/ REMOTE (WII) 415K
MARIO KART W/WHEEL (WII) 292K
LEFT 4 DEAD (360) 243K
CALL OF DUTY: WORLD AT WAR* (360) 235K
SKATE 2 (360) 199K
GUITAR HERO WORLD TOUR* (WII) 155K
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS (DS) 135K
MARIO KART DS (DS )132K
LORD OF THE RINGS: CONQUEST (360) 113K
(*includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware)
Most surprising to me was the resurgence of New Super Mario Bros after all of this time. Now NSMB joins Mario Kart DS as a DS game returning to the top ten from seemingly nowhere!
Numbers are via the NPD and posted on NeoGAF. All sales are limited to the United States only.
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