Weekly Game Music: Credits (The Dog Island)


Every once in a while, I find a well-composed music from the least expected places. Case in point? The Credits music from The Dog Island. It’s composed by a huge team: Junko Ozawa, Etsuo Ishii, Minamo Takahashi, Junichi Nakatsuru, Rio Hamamoto, Yoshihito Yano, Tetsuya Uchida, and Tomomitsu Kaneko.

Edit 3/31/13: Apparently the previous video got deleted, so here’s a voiceless walkthrough which contains the credits music.

Lets get the most important detail out of the way: The Dog Island is a children’s game. And the story is depressing. The game first takes place in a small town at the coast of an ocean, populated by speaking dogs with disproportionately large heads. You play as a mute, but loyal dog. With your powerful nose and power claws for digging any surface, you help out your mother tend your sickly younger sibling before trotting off to the town festival. Unwilling to miss the fun, your younger sibling tries to join in the party. But on that faithful night, your sibling (predictably) collapses. Later, the local doctor reveals that your sibling’s disease is only curable by a wise doctor at The Dog Island, but the seas to get there is too dangerous. Even your mother finds this hopeless, exclaiming that your father went missing when he ventured to the same island. Despite the risk, you decide to venture to the The Dog Island to find this very doctor.

The Dog Island is sort of a dowsing game. Each mission involves finding a certain object in the ground, and you use your trusty nose to detect how close you are to the said object. Naturally, since the object are usually underground, you attempt to dig that location to gather it. Each mission provides you a currency that can be traded for accessories to decorate your own character.

The Dog Island was released for the PS2 and Wii.
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Strange Free Games: QWOP


Here’s a popular flash game: QWOP. It’s a game about controlling the leg muscles of a track runner on a 100 meter track. The ‘Q’ key rotates the thighs in a clockwise rotation, while ‘W’ rotates it counter-clockwise. Similarly, ‘O’ rotates the calves clockwise; and the ‘P’, counter-clockwise. This deliberately unwieldy controls, and the floppy rag-doll physics makes QWOP one of the most difficult games.

QWOP is playable at foddy.net.

Despite the difficulty, QWOP is strangely addicting. There’s a certain satisfaction when you learn to crawl to the first 5 meters, then learn the timing to hop to 10 meters. The simple music that plays as you start moving towards the finish line adds the gratification of moving forward. As the commenter below explains, slow and steady wins the race.
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Weekly Game Music: Super Mario’s Sleigh Ride (Super Mario World)


Happy Holidays, everyone, and Merry Christmas to the respective Christian followers. Here’s a little special remix called Super Mario’s Sleigh Ride. It’s an excellent live music arrangement that mashes together Sleigh Ride with various Super Mario World themes. Can you name all of them?

Super Mario World‘s music is originally composed by Kondo Koji; Sleigh Ride, by Leroy Anderson. The band who remixed this piece is the OneUp Mushrooms: Mustin (Bass), Dale North (Keyboards), Nathan McLeod (Alto Sax), David Embree (Trumpet), William Reyes (Guitar), and Chris Strom (Drums).

And no, no description of the game today. Everyone should already know Super Mario World: the game that introduced Yoshi. And besides, it’s my favorite game of all time. Anything I write will be terribly biased!


Extra!

Title: White Feather in the Storm
Game: Super Mario Galaxy
Composer: Masaya Matsuura, Yoshihisa Suzuki
Remixer: CarboHydroM

Title: Secret Level
Game: Super Mario Sunshine
Composer: Koji Kondo, Shinobu Tanaka


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Strange Free Games: Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa


Ever wondered what a JRPG would be like if a bunch of basketball fans made it? Look no further than Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa (shortened to Barkley from here on out). This game has everything you love from JRPGs, including our brooding hero, Charles Barkley; the camp villain, Micheal Jordan; an evil company, Square Enix Goya; and even a cameo appearance, Master Chief. With strong inspiration from Super Mario RPG and Earthbound, this is one free game no RPG lovers (and haters!) should miss!

Barkley is a hilarious self-referencing game. It’s surprisingly long for a free game, too. You can download it at Tales Of Games’ website.

The year is 2053; location, Neo New York. The famed basketball player, Charles Barkley, is struggling to support his son, Hoopz, in a post-apocalypse world. While secretly teaching his son the outlawed basketball dribbles, Charles is falsely accused by the head of B-Ball Removal Department, Michael Jordan, for killing 15 million people with a Chaos Dunk. Clearly innocent, Charles escapes from Michael’s grasps, and hunts for the real culprit that used his signature (and destructive) slam dunk.

Barkley takes many elements from multiple RPG game sources. Like Earthbound, enemies appear readily on the map. Approaching behind them gives you one extra turn during the battle phases, while getting hit by enemies behind your back causes you to lose one turn. The turn-based battle, like Super Mario RPG series, uses a quick-time-like mechanic to enhance your attacks. The puzzles may remind some people of the Golden Sun series as well.
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Weekly Game Music: Big (PaRappa The Rapper 2)


“You wanna be big?” That’s how this rap song — composed by Masaya Matsuura and titled Big — starts. It’s silly line from an equally silly game, PaRappa the Rapper 2. In this song, a pint-sized Guru Ant (Dean Bowman) tries to teach PaRappa (Dred Foxx) to be confident and strong through a simple repeat-after-me session. And, well, there’s several miscommunication in the whole process.

PaRappa the Rapper 2 is, thematically, about growing out of childish selfishness, and becoming a mature person. Still, the whole game is narrated in a Sunday cartoon fashion. It begins when PaRappa, who’ve won a month’s supply of noodles, become fed-up by his girlfriend one day when she served some pasta. She exclaims, “you’re a baby,” and PaRappa…doesn’t take that comment lightly. At one point, he goes back to his father’s (an inventor) office for guidance. Instead, he gets shrunk into a size of an ant by his father’s shrink-ray. Guru Ants finds him scared and frightened, and mistakenly believes that PaRappa’s problem is merely confidence. While calming PaRappa, the guru himself becomes frightened when the shrink ray blows him (“A trick with a twist!?”) and PaRappa up to planet size, then back to an ant again repeatedly.

PaRappa the Rapper 2‘s prequel was a highly popular Simon-says games, and the grandfather of Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero. Like those series, the game had you repeat the button-presses described by the “teacher” with the correct timing. Unique to this series is the ability to improvise the rap, allowing you to score more points. With vibrant paper graphics like Paper Mario, and a completely cartoony lyrics, it’s hard not to smile when playing this comical game.

PaRappa the Rapper 2 was released for the PS2. No other port exists.


Extra!

Title: Prince Fleaswallow’s RAP
Game: PaRappa the Rapper
Composer: Masaya Matsuura, Yoshihisa Suzuki
Vocals: Lenky Don, Dred Foxx
Comments: Prince Fleaswallow is teaching PaRappa how to work in a flea market.

Title: Instructor Mooselini’s RAP
Game: PaRappa the Rapper
Composer: Masaya Matsuura, Yoshihisa Suzuki
Vocals: Sandra, Dred Foxx
Comments: Instructor Mooselini is examining PaRappa for his driver’s license.


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Strange Free Games: This is the Only Level


If we’re talking about strange games, we’ve got to go into the flash game category. This is the Only Level – Adventures in Singularity is a game where, exactly as the title implies, there’s only one level. Despite its seeming simplicity, the game makes fun of you as you’re forced to think out of the box.

As a short game, This is the Only Level will make you think for quite a long time. The game is playable at Armor Games.

Playing as a forgetful elephant, you learn that your controls or level physics changes every time you visit the same level. Various changes in physics and controls include using the arrow keys to control the character, using the mouse, refreshing the browser, floaty jumps, and the inability to move backwards. The game keep tracks of how many times you die, so your goal is to complete all the iterations while suffering the least number of casualities.
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