My Gaming Audio History: Final Fantasy Legend (1990)

Crossing mediums from the NES to the Game Boy for this entry on the first handheld RPG I played, Final Fantasy Legend.  I've learned that this is actually from a different line of games, Saga, but as a young player growing up in North America, I didn't know about Saga.  This game fit in well with what I knew to be Final Fantasy: towns, talking to NPCs, battles, raising stats, etc.

Who created the audio experience?  Nobuo Uematsu.  Amazing to return to Uematsu right after a Team Fat game-- Maniac Mansion.  Here melody is the focus and tracks are so classically shaped, clean, and balanced.  I do think Uematsu is at his finest in early games like this.  My favorite tracks are definitely the Prologue, with a beautiful, balanced structure.  Wipe Away Your Tears is also easily a favorite, again, another exquisite Uematsu melody that simply pours out longing within the confines of the Game Boy audio.  I especially appreciate the slight ritardando at the end of the loop.  Also, the way that the main theme and Wipe Away Your Tears come back in the final track during the closing cutscenes of the game is rather like a finale in a musical, bringing back the best numbers from the show.  Really amazing detail and such beautiful music for one of the first handheld RPGs.  A much more eloquent ending that the NES Final Fantasy.

Two things strike me as I study through this game again.  First of all, I hear a remarkable cross-game Uematsu similarity.  In the Epilogue track, there are high background alternating pitches (1:34-1:43) that reminded me immediately of the Ancient Forest Temple track from Final Fantasy 7 (first 8 seconds).  Give it a listen-- you'll hear it.  They're even in the same key!

The second fact to catch my eye/ear is the amount of music compared with the gameplay.  The longplay I see online of this game takes over 7 hours.  There are just shy of 12 minutes of music in this game.  That's about a 6:225 minute music to gameplay ratio.  Perhaps even more stunning, over four minutes of the game music comes in the last half hour or so of game play (Warrior's Ascent, The Top Floor, Enraged Battle, and Epilogue)!!!  While games have almost always saved some music as an endgame reward, I think decisions like this show how new the gaming genre was and how composers weren't yet sure how to balance the music throughout the game.

Below are my detailed notes as usual.  These notes were compiled using this soundtrack.

-Prologue: 64 sec.  E major.  Intro (4) A B.  The B theme uses material from the Intro.  Love the canonic voices of the intro.
-Main Theme: 44 sec.  G major.  A B C (9).  Through-composed.  Fascinating that such a regular piece has that one extra measure at the end of it, which adds to the feeling of resolution at the end of the loop.
-Town Theme: 47 sec.  G major.  A B Really like the melodic emphasis on the rising Major 7th interval as well as the use of flat sixth scale degree in the melody in the second half of A.  The end of the loop uses a bIII-V resolution that just seems so "Uematsu."  Not sure what I mean here, but more to think about...
-Battle Theme: 35.5 sec.  C minor.  A B C.  Very musically regular.  Patterns and sequences make the motivic material memorable.
-Victory (Eat the Meat):  16 sec.  C major.  Intro Fanfare (2) A.  Fascinating that the intro fanfare has the same whole tone motion and feeling (bVI-bVII-I) as the original NES game, although here the motion is technically bIII, IV, V.
-Bandit Cave: 48 sec.  E minor.  A A' A''  i-bII-bVII.  A bass vamp begins this tune, the second A adds a melody, the third A is the same melody with a slight change at the end of the loop for a more definitive ending.
-Hurry Up!: 34 sec.  A minor.  A B B'.  The use of bII in this piece toward the end of the loop and it's A minor tonality remind me of the over world theme for FF IV, which was just a few months away from this game.
-Fierce Battle: 43 sec.  A minor.  Intro A A B.  Intro doesn't repeat in the loop.  The A sections have irregular measures (4+3).  Slightly longer than the normal battle theme, perhaps because these battles likely last a bit longer?  Plays with a Picardy third at the ends of phrases in the A sections.
-Requiem: 27 sec.  D minor (Picardy third).  Intro (2) A.  Opposite motion from the introduction's intro, which ascended, this intro descends!  Beautiful, balanced classical phrase.
-Forbidden Tower: 36 sec.  F minor.  A B C.  Really interesting use of bII here, as well as Uematsu's beloved  bVI-bVII-i.
-Wipe Your Tears Away: 66 sec.  E minor.  A A' B.  Such a beautiful, longing melody.  Love the slight ritard at the end of the loop.
-Warriors Ascent: 35.5 sec.  F minor.  Intro (4) A B  Intro Eb minor material doesn't repeat with the loop.  The A section is basically a rising sound... imitating the name of the track?
-The Top Floor: 22 sec.  C.  A A' (down whole step).  A simple short loop that teeters between major and minor.
-Enraged Battle: 52 sec.  A minor.  Intro (6) A A B B.  Intro doesn't repeat with loop.  A section is in A minor, B section is in the relative major, C.
-Epilogue: 2:25.  B major--> E major.  Reuses the main theme of the game.  The music is synced with a slide show of various scenes and bosses in the game.  Requiem?  Main theme in B, Wipe Away Your Tears in E minor, then to major, main theme in A, then back to E.  Moment of Final Fantasy 7?  In the Ancient Forest temple, I hear a similarity here.  Beginning of this reminds me the celebration music at the end of Star Wars 1.

My Gaming Audio History: Super Mario Land (1989)

Super Mario Land was released at the same time as the Game Boy, and everyone who got a Game Boy knew you had to get Super Mario to go with it!  What a blast from the past to watch this!  I've done a little reading about the GB and its audio capabilities were similar to the NES.  Four channels of sound possible.  Usually a percussive track was one of them.  Otherwise, bass, melody, and an often homorhythmic harmony voice that dropped out to produce sound effects as needed.  I actually remember playing this game a lot and liking the music.  The graphics were hard to see on the Game Boy screen, but it was a hand held game!

Hirokazu Tanaka.  Here's a composer I didn't know I knew so well.  That's one of the coolest things about this project: learning who's res.  I suppose the same thing might be possible if one actually searched out the composers of pop music from the radio.  It's really interesting to learn whose music I'm hearing and connecting the dots between the music of games I grew up playing.  Perhaps as I continue, and certainly when I'm done with the My Gaming Audio History, I'll be able to examine similarities in the styles of composers across genres, platforms, and throughout their careers.

Love the classical references in the score: Offenbach's Can Can is the invincibility music, and Rock-a-Bye baby for game over!  My favorite themes are the Submarine/Airplane music and End Game music, which reference SMB in certain moments with melodic and rhythmic shapes.  My other favorite theme is the Chai theme-- pentatonic and so stereotypically Asian sounding!  Almost 5 minutes of music in this game, though internal repetitions mean there's slightly less memory needed than the amount to store 5 full minutes of music.

Here's a link to the soundtrack and my notes on each theme:

-Birabuto: C major.  27 sec.  2 sec intro doesn't repeat.  A A' B.  The high off beat punctuations at the end of the two A sections remind me very much of part of the ground theme in SMB 3.
-Coin room: C major. 4 sec.
-Invincibility: Ab major.  8 sec.  Can-can!  (Infernal Ballad- Offenbach this 8 bars starts at :40)  Love the classical reference!
-Level complete: E.  3 sec.  Planing 5ths.
-Oh! Daisy: G major/G minor.  10 sec, 8 sec intro doesn't loop.  Starts in major, 8 sec (5 bars-- similar to SML ground theme) then switches to diminished arepeggios when "Daisy" transforms into a bug.
-Muda theme: A major.  26 sec.  <3 sec intro doesn't repeat.  A-A-B
-Submarine/Airplane: C major. 19 sec.  1 sec intro doesn't repeat.  A A' B. Compositional similarities to the original SMB theme, but inverted-- not strictly.  I loved the underwater worlds and remember thinking the music was similar to SMB even as a kid.
-Easton theme: G minor.  23 sec.  A A B.  Sounds very "Eastern" (otherworldly, old) with the harmonic minor scale.  The lowered 2 scale degree adds even more interest to the melody.
-Chai theme: G major.  49 sec.  A-A-B.  2 sec intro doesn't repeat.  Starts with P4s planing in a stereotypical Asian sound.  Pentatonic.  Old world but with a rock beat to it too.  This is by far my favorite music in the game, simply because of its cleverness.
-Boss fight: Eb. 3 sec.  Very chromatic.  Descending Eb-Bb and arpeggiating diminished chord.
-Final battle: D.  18 sec.  6 sec intro doesn't repeat.  Very chromatic!
-End game: E major.  89 sec.  A-A'-B-C-C'-D(11).  Begins with the same music from an unsuccessful castle rescue (27 sec) then an 8 bar transition (B) and then into the final music which loops (C-C'-D).  The C sections begin very similarly to SMB ground theme in shape and rhythm, but is not an exact replica.
-Bonus game: G major.  5 sec.  Ragtime?
-Game over: C major.  5 sec.  "Rock-a-bye baby" sound-a-like!

My Gaming Audio History: Tetris (1989)

Here's the first Game Boy game I'm revisiting in My Gaming Audio History.  I played this game a bit, but my mom really liked it a lot!  I wasn't very good at the game-- I got too stressed out when the pieces started speeding up.  But, I loved the option of selecting what music I wanted to hear.  As best I can tell from looking back at the games I played, this would've been the first game with a musical option to choose the audio I wanted.

Music is commonly credited as being by Hirokazu Tanaka.  This is true to an extent, as, to the best of my knowledge, he did compose the B theme, opening music, and high score screen music; however, he only arranged the A and C themes for Game Boy, he didn't compose them. A is a traditional Russian song and C is a movement of a French Suite by Bach.   It's very fitting that the A music is a traditional Russian folk song since Tetris was created by a Russian computer engineer.

The music's pretty simple, with three choices that play throughout the game.  Since there's no way to win, even if you max out your score, there's no ending music needed.  Since I've not examined any GB games before, I'm not sure how much music to expect in a typical game, but I'm keeping in mind that this game has about 3 minutes of music, and of course, some sections repeat.  Here's a little gameplay if you've been under a rock and don't recognize this game somehow.

Opening: Eb minor to Eb major.  38 sec.  A B B' I love the countermelody that comes in at B'.  This music makes use of all four GB channels, as you can hear, Bass, Melody, Harmony, and Percussion.  The other musical pieces don't use all the voices to allow for sound effects during gameplay.  This is a cool piece of music; I love the B section!

Theme A: A minor.  39 sec.  A A B  An arrangement of the traditional Russian song Korobeiniki.  The translation of this song talks about a young guy selling and haggling to a young woman while flirting all the while.

Theme B:  E minor.  35 sec.  Irregular phrase pattern: Intro (4) A6 -A'10 -B8 -B'8 -C8.  I can't find anyone who recognizing this song on the internet and I don't either.  I'm thinking it Tanaka's own composition then.  It's definitely the most musically "interesting" of the three pieces (forgive me, Bach).  I like the irregular phrase patterns.  It also just sounds more like typical video game music.

Theme C:  F# minor.  38 sec.  A A' B C.  This is an arrangement of the Menuet section of Bach's 3rd French Suite in B minor.  You can hear the amazing Glenn Gould play it in this video (5:48-6:25).  The only difference between the Tetris version and the original, other than the key, is that the last four bars of the piece are removed, probably to allow for looping without an ending cadence.

High scores: A minor.  30 sec.  A-A'.  Samba.  Reminds me of FF7 Costa del Sol music, which is in the same key!