the sounds of metroid

i’ve been meaning to post a review of the soundtrack to the great metroid prime for a long while now. as i mentioned before, listening to the same video game music in and out of the game makes for two very different experiences. in this case, in the game the music is quite fantastic, but outside, though still enjoyable, i found it to be much less so.

i realized pretty quickly that in general some of this difference comes from focusing all one’s attention on what is composed to be supplementary, and so of course elements necessary to video game music, including unobtrusiveness and repetition, detract from enjoying it as a standalone artifact. in addition i found the MIDI sound of the music, sophisticated as it is, stood out on close listening; many times i found myself wanting to hear real strings and real drums, which of course is highly impractical. in the case of metroid prime, i also felt that one of the biggest elements contributing to the difference is the absence of sound effects. the score of the game is often so sparse and gentle that explosive, violent sounds such as beam and bomb blasts form a perfectly contrasting counterpoint; their absence strips the score of more than half of its effectiveness. i was glad to hear this sentiment echoed by famed nintendo composer koji kondo in his keynote at GDC 2007, as paraphrased by the good folk at gonintendo.com:

[Koji Kondo paraphrased:] The balance between sound effects and music. Left and right positioning balance. Sound effects in the level dictate the notes used in a song. Important sound effects should be the most clear, other sound effects should blend more.

despite these drawbacks the score of metroid prime is generally quite enjoyable. i found it interesting that this metroid fan specifically complains about the score:

“Is a cheery whistle-infused tune the right music for exploring an ancient crumbling temple? Does upbeat electronica set the right mood for exploring ice caverns? Taste is one thing, but the game deserved an epic score.”

in a follow-up post he further elaborates:

“Many Metroid fans are attracted to the franchise because of the dark, tense, and mysterious otherworldly atmosphere that the games exude and the music in Metroid 1-3 worked hard to help create this sort of ambiance. … The music in Prime was often too light, cheery, and upbeat to truly convey the same sense of atmosphere that its predecessors did.”

although it’s been a while since i’ve played the original NES game, i think i know what this writer is talking about. the very sections he disliked are the ones i enjoyed the most, and i found them to be wholly appropriate. the original game was all within lava-filled caverns, etc. and the graphics and music were dark and foreboding to give a closed, close feeling. however, in metroid prime many of the environments are on the surface of the planet beneath an open sky saturated with light. the “upbeat” music seems quite appropriate accompaniment for light rain falling on forest greenery, soft snowfall over icy ridges, or dimly lit areas deep underwater. one may argue that the game should’ve made the alien planet itself more threatening, but i think the harshness of the environment and its denizens were perfectly accounted for by the earthy sound effects. definitely a much less alien environment than it could have been, but quite beautiful.

anyway, one more quick link: a guy called stemage has been doing metal covers of metroid songs. on his website www.metroidmetal.com there are 3 metroid prime covers. all three are very well done and well worth checking out, and even if like me you usu. don’t listen to heavy metal you may well find yourself putting these tracks on repeat. he also has a myspace page. lastly, if you’re looking for a copy of the original soundtrack, you can buy an import copy from here.

how do you say “dream job”?

i’ve been mostly focusing this blog on reviews thus far, but to while away the time between reviews (and in spite of the fact i just finished a game) i’ve decided to also post about general topics of video game interest. since great sites like gonintendo.com and ign.com already cover so much, including news and upcoming releases, instead i’ll be focusing on the occasional item that i think is worth archiving for my personal reference and that hopefully you’ll find entertaining as well.

so as you prob. already know, shigeru miyamoto (one of my personal idols and i’m sure many others’ and creator of, among other things, the mario and zelda series) gave the keynote at the game developers conference (GDC) 2007. if you haven’t seen it already, ign has a summary here and videos here.

there were two related items that i found interesting. first, apparently miyamoto also gave the keynote at the GDC in 1999. ign has a full transcript of that here. interesting to compare the two.

second, i came across a much more interesting than usual interview of miyamoto at the 2007 GDC on mtv.com. unfortunately, it looks like the original article is gone, but here’s a copy courtesy of google’s cache. the video accompanying the article is also quite entertaining, and in it we see a lot of bill trinen, who apparently has been miyamoto’s american translator for the past 7 years or so. i’m always struck by how well translators do in real time and had thought the translator had done a great job w/ the translation of miyamoto’s GDC 2007 speech. so it was quite interesting to see miyamoto and trinen side by side. gameinformer.com also ran a really interesting interview with him a few years ago that talks about how he started translating for miyamoto and about his career doing localization for nintendo of america. talk about dream jobs. anyway i think it’s definitely worth reading. geozeldadude says: rock on.

donkey konga-ed

i finished donkey konga a couple of weeks ago i think. this was a game that i have to admit i got in large part to try to get my bf to play video games with me. i wasn’t wholly successful in converting him, but, like the wii itself, the bongoes definitely make this an eye-catching game and a great way to get people intrigued. prob. good for parties as well, although i don’t have any firsthand experience, anti-social slob that i am.

as for the game itself, though, this was a game that is perhaps best left to the social, because unlocking everything turned out to just be tedious. it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why the game gets so boring, because it starts off being quite fun. i think i would lay a lot of the blame on the arrangements, which seems odd b/c a lot of the time the arrangements are actually quite clever and enjoyable (the arrangements for the multi-player modes are particularly entertaining). and i had absolutely no problem w/ the fact that the songs aren’t performed by the original artists. the performances are so well done that i never even missed them.

the arrangements are generally fine on the lowest and medium levels of difficulty, but on the highest level of difficulty they get to be pretty annoying. the reason is pretty clear: other rhythm games (that i’ve encountered anyway) are set up so that every action is pretty much on the beat or clearly within the beat. in those games the difficulty comes from pressing the correct buttons at the right times. in donkey konga much of the game requires actions on the beat as well, but on the higher levels the arrangements feature more complicated rhythms that either follow the melody or go off into some sort of counterpoint. this wouldn’t seem like a big deal, but since the game only shows where the downbeat of each measure is, you only see one beat instead of 4 per measure. so it’s very difficult to get any sense of how the notes fit within the main beat. in fast songs with complicated rhythms (e.g. “para los rumberos” and “sing sing sing”), repeated tries don’t make the intended rhythms any clearer b/c everything is going by so fast. and it becomes pretty much impossible to just follow the notes on the screen. putting it another way, if the game required you to tap each note of the melody of a song you don’t know, you could do it, but it’d be much, much easier if you did know the song. there were times my bf and i were both just left saying, “if they wrote this out as music this would be a cinch”. this is obviously impractical, but the game would def. benefit at least from a practice mode that would let you build up complicated rhythms at faster and faster speeds, instead of just throwing them at you all at once at top speed. to some extent the three levels of difficulty for each song help with this, since the arrangements of the higher levels generally build on the arrangements of the lower levels, but that doesn’t solve the main problem when you’re presented with a complicated, non-intuitive pattern. i’m sure there could be a lot of other interesting features to a practice mode as well.

anyway, it seems a bit unfair to complain about the depth of what is intended to be a shallow game, but i can’t help feeling there was a lot of missed opportunity here. the three mini-games are pretty throwaway, and the other modes are pretty lame. the one where you have to memorize entire songs is pretty much completely worthless. i doubt 1 in 100 people have actually sat down and memorized one song, let alone more than a few. and the one where you have to do multiple songs in a row is also pointless. i should also add that even after i’d beaten the hardest tracks (with little sense of accomplishment), i found that i enjoyed the fun of the “easier” tracks much more. playing the kirby games has taught me that easier games can still be compelling, but donkey konga could’ve (and should’ve) made even their harder modes more fun.

looking over this donkey konga series song list on wikipedia makes me wish that the US version was more like the european version. the list for donkey konga 2 doesn’t really grab me (although the european version looks much better), but if i ever found a version of donkey konga 3 (only released in japan) and a japanese gamecube to play it on, i’d def. get it. it’s got loads of video game theme songs, which of course would be awesome. why do the US releases have the least number of video game theme songs? so sad.

last thing: instead of donkey konga 2, i’m actually (cautiously) looking forward to playing donkey kong jungle beat, a platformer that uses the bongoes. i’m still unconvinced that the bongoes would make a good controller in general, but matt casamassina’s glowing review for ign is convincing enough for me to pick it up. i don’t agree with everything he says in general, but i respect his opinion. stay tuned, gentle reader …

carry, fight, and increase! (and be eaten?!)

second in an ongoing series of soundtrack reviews is a soundtrack that’s actually on CD (through import anyway): pikmin worlds, featuring music from the now-classic pikmin.

in my video game music listening it’s become apparent that a great in-game soundtrack does not necessarily make the best out-of-game listening. the soundtrack to pikmin, by hajime wakai, is worthwhile listening both in and out of the game, though. wakai, who has also worked on star fox 64, f-zero x, and the wind waker, was mistaken for koji kondo (super mario bros. 1-3, pretty much all the zelda games) in two places i saw online, and it’s not surprising because his sound has a very similar feel. like kondo he’s clearly masterful at setting moods, and the music has a whimsical, cartoony, old-school feel that fits perfectly with nintendo’s biggest classics in general and this game in particular. since the vast majority of the music of the game is packed into the tracks for the five areas of the game (which on average are each more than 5 minutes long), a lot of the rest of the tracks are short, although perfectly serviceable riffs.

although some have complained that the music of the five areas gets repetitive, i didn’t get tired of them. each has its own mood and all are quite nicely done: there’s a backyard exploration feel to “the impact site”; a dreaminess to “the forest of hope”; a pensiveness to “the distant spring”; and an impending feeling of both doom and triumph to “the final trial”. and worth a separate mention is “the forest navel” which brilliantly matches that barren and fiery environment with sparse slide guitar and exotic tablas. lovely. the orchestrations in particular are very nicely done all around. in general the score favors the vibraphone and the piano, giving the score a nice breezy feel. electronic sounds are nicely woven in throughout, fitting for a spaceman exploring a lush “alien” world.

all in all, this is a fine soundtrack with a very classic nintendo feel and an easy favorite. as a bonus the soundtrack includes japanese and french versions of a song that was featured in overseas commercials and which according to wikipedia apparently became a big hit in japan. this site has a translation of the full song’s lyrics. and now i have the soundtrack of pikmin 2 to look forward to.