Hey everyone, I forgot to mention on Friday that Monday was a holiday. I've been working so much that I totally forgot, mainly because I didn't get a day off. Well, to make up for missing last Monday's post and not having one yesterday because of the holiday, I decided to make a post on two people for this week's GameOn topic on Japanese Videogame Music Composers Jun'ya Ota and Daisuke Amaya.
太田順也 Ota Jun'ya
Better known ZUN is the creator of the super popular Shoot em up Danmaku (bullet hell) series Touhou (東方). I can't even begin to express how much I respect this man. Establishing Team Shanghai Alice as the sole developer, ZUN went on to create 23 games on his own working on the programming, art, music, and design to each one of those games. This isn't considering the other few dozen fan-made or 3rd-party made games based off of the Touhou universe. The catchy tunes, challenging gameplay, intriguing characters, and strong community fan base has made this man and his creation one of the most popular topics among Japanese Animé and videogame fanatics. Last thursday, I put in a filler video and said I would explain the video a little. Here's the breakdown:
This video...
Source: Youtube Channel taifunbrowser
Is a Lucky Star video remix of this video...
Source: Youtube Channel DaSniper2
Which is a remix audio and video of the original song composed by ZUN for Imperishable Night...
Source: Youtube Channel PineappleDisciple
His music is memorable, iconic, intricate, and has an elegance to its midi sounding instruments. Touhou's gameplay has established much of today's Danmaku or bullet hell sub-genre within Shoot em ups. The characters themselves have become iconic figures, although it has been popularized by fan-made drawings (ZUN isn't exactly the most talented artist, but it's enough to create the games they are today). But ultimately, it is his music that has the largest wide-spread popularity that accompanies his game and characters. Type in Touhou in any search engine and you'll find tons of remixes and reiterations of his music. Here are some of my favorites songs:
Source: Youtube Channel PineappleDisciple
Source: Youtube Channel PineappleDisciple
Source: Youtube Channel PineappleDisciple
I'm hoping to one day meet ZUN among other Videogame Composers. His work has truly inspired me in my music and influences my decision to create my own games as well.
Daisuke Amaya
I respect this man as I do ZUN, for he also created his own game which took 5 years of programming, composing, designing, drawing, and such in order to create the game he is most well known for: Cave Story. Cave Story (洞窟物語 Dōkutsu Monogatari) was a game created by Daisuke Amaya who is also known as PIXEL that took 5 years of hard work. It's a action-platform adventure game that has many elements to old retro games that is regarded as charming and a masterpieces. The catchy 8-bit tunes are memorable written alongside a quirky story about a war robot finding his way off the island full of creatures calll the Mimigas. There are tons of secrets, special items, and hidden pathways that many retro games had that had gamers playing through the game several times over to find out other possible outcomes of the story and gameplay when played differently.
Source: Youtube Channel Chaddicl
As you can hear from the fan-made trailer, the music PIXEL creates are simple but has a clear hook to its melody. The 8-bit quality adds to the nostalgic feeling of a game made in the past with its pixel-like graphics and simple dialogue. The game's story, character and gameplay is much more deeper than one would expect from a one man development. Pixel really thought out how he wanted the game to look, sound, and play. The game has gotten the attention of the game industry and should be on WiiWare by now for Nintendo Wii and it should be coming to PSP. I also heard that they were going to have it on Nintendo's new 3DS as well. Anyways, the PC version is still free and can be found on the tribute site: http://www.cavestory.org/
Source: Youtube Channel Metoolx597
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