Sad thing for the day

I just learned how meager Battle of Olympus composer Kazuo Sawa's worklist is - just a few sports titles, beat-'em-ups, and run-of-the-mill platformers; the few notable games on it aren't remembered for their music. It's a crying shame his talent never got a broader audience.

(Though I will have to check out the SNES version of Ultima VI now, especially considering how well the Japanese console ports of the series have been scored. And - good Lord, what's going on here?)
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31 Days of Game Music: Ultima: Exodus (NES)

Mainstream Ultima fans are kinda accablés at their franchise's adaptation and popularity abroad. To quote the very first response to a news article on the Quest of the Avatar manga: "40 years of reading comics and I have yet to find a single manga or anime that makes any damn sense."

The NES Ultima: Exodus port that kicked all this off isn't gonna provide this crew any reassurances. The Paladin has pink hair and a heart-shaped shield and the NPCs are all jabbering about how they're on a diet and you should buy their poetry book and the entire sprite style looks like it came from a paper dollhouse.

Naivete can have its charms, however. Like the uncomplicated console method of gameplay, there's just a simple, happy accessibility to this overworld theme, a merry intrepidness. The tumbly flute-come-woodblock leading line brings to mind grassy rolling hills and galloping horsies - or at least grass-green bush overworld tiles and 8-bit thoroughbreds bought for 800 GP at Devil Guard. It has that Castlevania III "Stream" level of hummability; it's direct and sticks in the mind.

And yet it's not dumb. There's a strong basic melody at its core; it wouldn't be an earworm if there wasn't. It's like the NES console port itself: you don't have the freedom that the PC version's keyboard entry allowed, but the game still demands a brain. It's just been remixed with charm instead of grandiosity in mind. I'm all for experiencing a game in its original form, in its purest distillation of its creator's intentions...and yet I can't cast this version aside. It's not a pell-mell don't-care rush job; there's a unique creative spark at play, even if the end product doesn't particularly care about making any damn sense.
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