Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
Maybe it’s weird this has never happened before. Both Earthbound and TMBG are both very weird and fun musically, after hearing this mashup of the two it’s surprising how well the two go together.
And I’m not sure which I should be more embarrassed about, that I know all these Earthbound songs so well, or that I know a good four-fifths of the They Might Be Giants tunes from these excellent mixtures from idiokiot (25 minutes).
The dislike for me here is the title, since Earthbound is so much more than “beating Giygas,” but I admit it’s a pretty good match of TMBG’s name.
Earthbound is, of course, the classic SNES JRPG, known in Japan as Mother 2, created by Shigesato Itoi. It has my vote for the greatest JRPG of all, for while it isn’t as popular as Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy, it has a knockout story, full of wit and detail. Mother is one of the very few video game series that, I think, transcends its medium, and becomes something great, not great in the since of being better than good, but in the sense of profundity, and yet at the same time it isn’t pretentious at all, it’s light and funny and whimsical but also deep and dark and terrifying. It’s easy to play and lots of fun too. I’ve heard it described, I think it was by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, as Peanuts Fights the Cthulhu Mythos, and that begins to get to it.
Animation collaborations are, of course, a thing where a bunch of people get together to make an animation together, each taking one small part of the whole. Not only do they not attempt to maintain a consistent art style, that’s in fact the last thing they try to do. Each clip is wildly different from the others, and that’s the point, the clash of styles making the whole surreal and surprising.
Both of these come together, in this piece that animates a portion Earthbound where the player is accompanied by the Flying Men, and I guess I have to explain that too.
So in a place near the end of the game your protagonist Ness visits the realm of Magicant, a bizarre realm created from the depths of his own mind. It is full of dangerous monsters, culminating in an artifact called Ness’s Nightmare, a powerful enemy that can wipe Ness out if the dice don’t roll his way.
Ness is also alone for this segment, except for the aid of the Flying Men, who call themselves Ness’s courage, helpful bird people who tag along with Ness, providing both muscle and extra hit points. But while they are strong and useful, they are not invulnerable. There are five Flying Men, and they join Ness one at a time. If one of them runs out of HP it dies, and in the house where they live, one of them is replaced by a tombstone. If you go back and recruit another one, and he also dies, then another tombstone appears. The dialogue from the successive Flying Men becomes less happy and more desperate as their numbers decrease, until finally they’re all gone, and Ness is left to finish the area alone.
This is just one example of the many wonderful ideas in Earthbound, as a unique a video game as there ever has been.
The animation that’s this week’s subject is a collaboration between many people, set to the Flying Men’s theme song, which is never actually heard in its entirety within the game. The music heard comes from a soundtrack album.
I won’t pretend it’s very comprehensible to those who’ve never played the game. Sometimes Earthbound fanwork, unlike the game, gets obtuse and navel-gazey, and difficult to understand to those not drenched in the lore. This one’s a bit like that. But maybe it’ll spark something in you, anyway. The music’s nice at least!
That’s what I have for you today. See you tomorrow!
This is the conclusion of my chat with composer Mark Benis about composing music for games. We talked more about working with designers, and how designers can best utilize composers for their games.
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
For this perceptive podcast, I (Josh Bycer) spoke with composer Mark Benis who has worked on a number of game soundtracks to discuss his role and what it’s like creating original scores for games and how indie devs can understand the job when thinking about getting music created for their titles. This is a two-parter as we spoke at length about composing music.
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
I was going to use Pannenkoek’s Christmas video this week, but then realized that I used that one last week. Serves me right for doubling up!
Instead have a listen to this collection of video game songs with a Christmas vibe. There’s no length notice because it’s a 24-hour-a-day livestream. Here!
I am back from DragonCon, but got hit by a staggering blow from life (which I will not mention the details of here) that’s going to take me a long time to recover from. So in the meantime, please enjoy this 19 minute video in which someone on Youtube describes his plan to get arcade Commando (a.k.a. “Wolf of the Battlefield”) to play Ron Hubbard’s excellent soundtrack from the C64 port.
Arcade Command didn’t have bad music at all, but Ron Hubbard’s score is generally regarded to outshine it. The two hardware platforms are really different: the C64 has a 6502-workalike and the legendary SID chip, while the arcade version used a custom platform. This is a first video in a projected series, so at this point we don’t even know if he’ll be successful. Let’s hope.
In response to Bowser’s “Peaches” song from the Super Mario Bros. Movie (the later one, not the 90s one), and a certain Smash Bros. announcement from a few years back, Alex Henderson Animation made a villain’s anthem for Donkey Kong’s (other) nemesis, King K. Rool, ruler of the Kremlings. My suggestion is to turn on subtitles; I’d never have understood all the lyrics without them. (10 minutes) The animation is pretty good for a small production.
I hope this isn’t spoiling anything by now, but just in case here’s a bit of space….
In Donkey Kong Bananza, King K. Rool is the secret final boss, and not only that but at the end of the game the Mario and Donkey Kong series kind of cross over, as the final level and boss fight are in New Donk City, which is attacked(briefly) by K. Rool, but saved by Donkey Kong and Pauline. I wonder if this explains why streets in NDC, in Mario Odyssey, bear the names of Donkey Kong characters?
Anyway, I guess the only real take away is Mario’s world has a long-standing problem with big reptilian megalomaniacs stirring up trouble. And big primates too, but sometimes they’re heroic. Come to think of it, Mario’s been a villain too, and in a Donkey Kong game….
Founder of Digital Eel and friend of the blog Rich Carlson sent word that they’ve released a number of albums collecting their music on Bandcamp! I’m not much of a music-knower, admittedly, but the songs on their games always stuck in my ear, and I think there’s a good chance they’ll stick in yours too!
The Midway Sessions: I’m fondly recalling MIDI, the dawn of digital audio, the Macintosh, Windows for Workgroups, the Pentium, DAT, Mark of the Unicorn, Windows 95, the Proteus, Sound Canvas, Cakewalk, the Roland D-50, the Kurzweil K2000, the Roland RAP-10…. It was an astonishing, revved-up and magical era in music; we were spoiled with innovations. And this was when, at a modest studio in an industrial park in Midway near St. Paul, Minnesota, the music-making period that I call the Midway Sessions occurred.
The Midway Sessions: Short Stack EP: These three tunes were recorded at the same time and place, and were rescued, last minute, just after the Midway Sessions compilation was released. Note that most of the music on the Midway Sessions album as well this EP was created for commercial purposes but, for one reason or another, were never used.
Hidden Cookies: This final installment of the “Midway Sessions” features a mix of newly uncovered tracks and original versions, rescued from the vault, dusted off and revived using old tyme tools and methods.
Sea of Stars: The Symphonic Score (Evelyn Sykes): In 2015, indie game makers Digital Eel (including yours truly) decided they (we) wanted fancy theme music, like the Star Trek TOS theme, for their (our) third space game, Infinite Space III: Sea of Stars. Enter UK composer, Evelyn Sykes, an instrumentalist, recordist and creator of music for radio dramas, videos, films, and live performances.
The Weird Musical World of Digital Eel: This compilation offers a wholly unique and eclectic mix of musical and music-like material from nearly 15 years of Digital Eel games. […] These “suites” feature a diverse collection of sounds and mayhem from Plasmaworm, Dr. Blob’s Organism, Big Box of Blox, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, Brainpipe: A Plunge to Unhumanity, Data Jammers: FastForward, and Infinite Space III: Sea of Stars.
Plasmaworm: This album contains the level music from the 2001 Cheapass Games/Digital Eel computer game, Plasmaworm. […] Out of context (and in, for that matter) many of these pieces–extended loops really–are rather hypnotic and trancy, so get comfy and enjoy!
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
Not a Youtube link this time! Over on Bluesky (“blu-skee”) there exists the manifestly ludicrous account Pugberto Dancing Universe, in which a Photoshopped pug animated to various pieces of game music that, I’d say, greatly improves them.
Embeds don’t work as well from Bluesky as from Youtube, so I’m just going to have to link them and insist that they’re worth the clickthrough. Here’s the music from the first level of Super Bomberman:
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
Been focused so hard on the Loadstar Compleat project over the past couple of weeks that my brain can burn ANTS with just the power of SUNLIGHT. So have a quick one minute video of some people performing the music to the famous first level of DOOM, but with just the sound of their mouths.
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
It’s been ten years since a little line drawning animation called URappinBad! shows up on Newgrounds. Now its creator Kevin Fagaragan has gone back and not only made it into a full color animation, but shows it side by side with the original.
Be on the lookout for cameos by Parappa’s friends PJ Berri and Katy Kat, Cheap Cheap the Cooking Chicken, and UmJammer Lammy. Both videos of course feature music taken directly from the Playstation classic Parappa the Rapper, which still has one of the best soundtracks in gaming. They got the music stuck in my head all over again. “When I say boom boom boom you say bam bam bam, no pause in between! C’mon let’s jam!
