The more I write music for Kunark's Dungeon Diver and the more I listen to Earthbound and FF6 music for inspiration, the more I want to go back in time and make music for video games during the SNES RPG era.
I look at all of these fancy new Final Fantasy 12 previews and whatnot, and I think back to the time of Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana/Evermore. Hurgh, I miss you, childhood.
Play Dungeon Diver beta testing tomorrow! It will be rockin' awesome.
There was an episode of "Icons" on G4 a few weeks ago about the guy who composed the music for the first few Final Fantasies... It was pretty amazing what he accomplished with so few tools...
Apparently, Square would have gone under if Final Fantasy 1 had failed and they even suggested that perhaps his musical score was a crucial part of its success (and thus, Squaresoft's continued existence, and the continuation of the FF series) And they even have live concerts over there with nothing but Final Fantasy soundtrack music... (they do this for a lot of things, too... the guy who did all of the music for DBZ used to play those songs in concerts) If I remember correctly, the soundtrack CDs are among their top selling albums... And Earthbound... The music in that game is spectacular... It ranks right up with the Zelda and Mario themes for most memorable in my mind... I doubt anyone who's played it will ever forget the Onett theme... I don't think I have to mention how memorable the Zelda and Mario themes are...lol But as for past vs present (and future): One thing that can be said about the games of yesteryear that can't always be said about games of today is that they emphasized fun and entertainment over looking pretty... Far too many games these days seem to focus on the latter, to the sometimes exclusion of the former altogether... Don't get me wrong, though... There are plenty of really great games out today, that cover both aspects... But there are still plenty of titles that leave an impression of "wow that looks awesome! too bad it's a cookie-cutter copy of some other awesome looking game..." | |
Sarm: yeah, I guess you're right. I guess Morrowind is pretty darn good.
I guess. grumbles SSGX: Yeah, I would kill to see one of those live orchestral Final Fantasy score concerts, hurgh. Nobuo Uematsu has a rock band called The Black Mages that he plays keyboard in, and they play Final Fantasy music in an American rock style. I'd suggest checking them out, they're pretty awesome. | |
Man, I love the 8bit and the 16bit RPGS the most. They were some of the best RPGS ever made.
I wanna go back to the 1990s :( The oldest will never drift away in time as long as there are fans, computers and emulation! | |
Games back then might have been fun when you were younger, but if you keep looking at games in that light then you're automatically setting yourself up to not appreciate newer ones as much as you could for the sole reason of them being released while you're older.
20 years from now you're going to have people pine for the "good ol' days" of Revolution/X-Box 360/Playstation 3 gaming while the oldest of the old, like Atari and eventually the Nes, drift away into time.