The nomination period for the latest GameFAQs VGM popularity contest has come and gone. As you may have noticed, I didn’t get around to doing daily listening digests this time around, so instead here’s a longer listicle of ten new-to-me pieces that stood out to me for one reason or another.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales – Sign in An Echo of Light on the Water’s Surface
Composed & arranged by Yuto Moritani
Starts off with some nice orchestral minimalism before dropping into a jazzier section with cool chords.
DARIUSBURST ANOTHER CHRONICLE – Opposition
Composed by Shohei Tsuchiya
Weird space prog
Enemy Zero – Confusion
Composed by Michael Nyman
Okay yeah I guess this is exactly what Michael Nyman VGM would sound like, I’m a little interested in how this fits in a survival horror game now.
HOP TOP – Cranky Clocks ~ Stage 4
Composed & arranged by IMAKON
Quirky FM jazzprog is always fun.
Kensei: Sacred Fist – Cave
Sound Effect: Taku Urabe
Sound Program: O.K.
Sound Tracks Composition: Kyoban Suzuki, Nories Miura, Akira Yamaoka
Noise
osu! World Cup 2022 – THE EARTH
Music & lyrics by II-L
Vocals by amelie xoxo
This isn’t strictly “from a video game” but rather from a video game tournament, specifically osu! World Cup 2022 (osu! is a free rhythm game based on the gameplay of Elite Beat Agents). For tournaments like this, it’s pretty common for there to be at least one brand new song commissioned for the finals, so the players are forced to react to a piece of music they’ve never heard before. It’s the ultimate way to ensure no one has a familiarity advantage!
Anyway this song is polyrhythmed to hell what the fuck
Sid Meier’s Civilization III: Play the World – Menu
Audio: Mark Cromer
This isn’t from the base game, but rather a multiplayer expansion that also apparently added three(?) songs to the game. Constant mallet percussion riffs with screaming electric guitar in the background is a super vibe.
Sora no Fudousan / Saisouban – Qiyun Shengdong.
Composed and arranged by Hiroyuki Mizuno
This is from a 2007 remaster of a 2001 visual novel and is some of this artist’s classic Metheny-ass bullshit. (The title of this piece, incidentally, is a ancient term of Chinese art analysis that I extremely wasn’t going to try to come up with a snappy translation for; the most common English rendition of it seems to be “spiritual resonance” and it’s something like the concept that capturing a subject’s spirit is more important to making an artwork feel alive than its physical likeness.)
Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven – Limestone Cave
Composed & arranged by Noriyuki Asakura
I don’t remember this at all but apparently I posted a song from this game two years ago, which is probably a sign that I should absolutely listen to this soundtrack. This is some nice slinky ambience with good synth noises in it, love 0:41 in particular.
Visions of Mana – Bestia Magna
Composed & arranged by Ryo Yamazaki
Up until recently I hadn’t really heard anything I’ve known specifically to have been written by Ryo Yamazaki, but lately I’ve heard a few really good tracks and they’ve made me consider that he probably had a bigger part in composing Fantastep than I’d been assuming. Love the instrumentation and transposing string stabs in this.
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