My Favorite Video Game Music, #6: Battle With Magus

#6: Battle With Magus

Chrono Trigger

Now, you would have to have gotten hold of Chrono Trigger the instant it was released and be somehow cut off from all information about the game (since information on important plot events was already known to many gamers before it was released) to play the game truly organically. But if you did, the game elaborately leads you to believe that Magus, Jackass Dark Wizard and Evil Overlord Extraordinaire of A.D. 600, is the Big Bad, that your mission to save the world will successfully conclude if you can get to Magus and kill him dead before he can create Lavos, the Planet Eater that will destroy life 1,400 years later. Because Magus is a dick. He really is. He slaughtered countless Guardia soldiers and civilians, and he turned Frog into a frog just for the lolz (no, really; he stated himself he did it just for fun).

So you spend a good half of the game running all over time collecting the various MacGuffins you need to gain access to Magus's Evil Castle of Supreme Darkness--no, it really is dark and evil and makes you want to run home to Mommy--and then when you finally get there, it proves to be as wicked and grueling as any Very Definitely Final Dungeon you'd care to name. Probably never has a dungeon's theme been so well executed; by the time you finally whack First Lieutenant Ozzie and gain access to Magus's shrine, the tension is so palpable you're a zombie if your heart isn't racing.

After you heal up and save up, you walk down a very long, dark stairway while ominous chanting grows slowly louder and you get slowly stalked by bats that, unless you sprint down the stairs, you have to kill. Then you walk into Magus's chamber in total silence and total darkness, and with each step forward you take eerie blue-purple flames erupt on both sides of you while Magus chants.

Neuga, ziena, zieber, zom...
Now the chosen time has come...
Exchange this world for--!

That, friends, is a summoning ritual. Which we sure as hell are here to interrupt.

And when it shortly comes down to throw down for the fate of the world and Frog's amphibian honor, the Black Wind will embrace you with this music while you battle the Jackass Wizard. Which isn't easy. But listen to this music; did you think it would be easy?

Magus's theme music, like all good character theme music, fits him. Dark, threatening, dangerous, evil... even a little taunting. Like Magus, the music calls to you: "Give me your best shot... if you're prepared for the void!"

Then you finally whip the bastard and it turns out the game's only half over and Magus didn't create Lavos. He just summoned Lavos. Because he wanted to kick Lavos's ass. Which incidentally aligns with your goals. You can only imagine the awesome insanity that ensues.

So Magus wasn't the final battle of Chrono Trigger, but if you were completely uninitiate, the storyline would very much convince you he was. And he has the heart-pumping battle music to back it up.

My Favorite Video Game Music, #8: Corridors Of Time

#8: Corridors Of Time

Chrono Trigger

Now we reach what's most frequently cited--and deservedly so--as Chrono Trigger's best track.

This is the theme music of the magical, beautiful, and quietly sinister kingdom of Zeal, Chrono Trigger's iconic setting. And if I dare say so, the music itself is so comfortable that on some level you can't help but suspect something's not right. Just like Zeal kingdom.

Every track on this list is tremendous music. I have them all on a playlist on my mp3 player. There are only a handful that I would not hesitate to just lie in bed and listen to for an entire day. This is probably the number one item on that short list. A track is doing the Right Thing when it elicits such a response. It's tremendous background music for almost anything you would want to do short of a building demolition--try putting it on for a couple hours next time you're working on your term papers. Instant stress relief. Just beware you don't get so soothed you don't care enough to finish the term paper.

Something so delightful couldn't possibly last, and Zeal kingdom doesn't. Let's bear in mind that Zeal produced the Ocean Palace (#18) and Black Dream (#36) and those show its evil, deadly side. It was a wonderfully serene place to live for most of its inhabitants--but they were supporting a psychopathic queen bent on destroying the world just so she could dominate the ashes. May we never find ourselves quite that comfortable with life.

My Favorite Video Game Music, #12: Chrono Trigger

#12: Chrono Trigger

Chrono Trigger

Ladies and gentlemen, the only track on this list that bears the same name as its game.

If you put a gun to my head and made me name one, I would tell you Chrono Trigger features the best soundtrack of any video game ever. And this is the Chrono Trigger theme song. It stands to reason that it is so awesome it just might blow your ears off.

Technically, this particular track is what you hear if you refuse to press start at the main menu and watch the intro movie. Crono's character theme is identical except it doesn't end with the spectacular flourish that the intro movie music does; it just loops.

This is the music that captures the spirit of Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger is epic, grandiose, noble, and a little frantic. So is this music. Nobuo Uematsu and his crew really hit the ball out of the park right from the first pitch in this game; I believe this is the only track on this list that is the very first piece of music you can listen to in its game.

It doesn't matter what the occasion is. It could be the Battle of Helm's Deep, the state championship game, or your final exam. If you listen to this music beforehand, you will get inspired. You will get pumped. And I can only hope my life turns out so well that someone might suggest setting this music to it.

My Favorite Video Game Music, #18: Undersea Palace

#18: Undersea Palace

Chrono Trigger

This is the greatest dungeon music ever composed.

The Undersea/Ocean Palace actually isn't Chrono Trigger's Very Definitely Final Dungeon; that's the Black Omen/Black Dream (#36 on this list). But it sure as hell feels like the final dungeon. So did Magus's Castle; Chrono Trigger really threw some epic dungeons at you. And this is, apologies to Magus's Castle, the most epic of them all.

Actually, the setup is almost the same as Magus's Castle: Race to the arch-villain and hope you get there in time before the power-crazed idiot unleashes Lavos a few thousand years too early. But while the build-up to Magus may have been more elaborate, the build-up to the Ocean Palace and Queen Zeal is much more intense. The pace of the game picks up dramatically when you reach Zeal Kingdom in 12,000 B.C., and doesn't really stop until after your meeting with Lavos at the Ocean Palace.

And when you arrive at the Ocean Palace, you get punched right in the nuts by this music. Get your ass in gear, son, this music yells at you, drill sergeant style. You either haul ass to the end of this eerie nightmarish temple NOW or the world dies. Go go GO! And so you do. There's a save point at the beginning of the dungeon, which is itself unusual and another clue that this is a manly dungeon you're about to venture into. And just in case you haven't gotten the message yet, when you save the file is titled Lavos Beckons.

And the programmers knew exactly what awesome music they had on their hands here. It is so badass that it does not stop for battles (unique in the game), not here and not in the other place in the game it appears. You see, near the game's end, a scenario arises where the circumstances are desperate, you are the only hope and you have only minutes to get what has to be gotten, with numerous monsters opposing you. So the game designers thought about how to set that atmosphere just so, for about ten seconds, and then said, "set the whole thing to Undersea Palace and don't stop it for battles. Done." And they were right. This music is badass.

My Favorite Video Game Music, #24: Last Battle

#24: Last Battle

Chrono Trigger

This is it. You've fought your way through countless dungeons, past myriad abominations and Evil Overlords, and even across millions of years of time. Your heroics have been accompanied by more awesome pieces of music than you can count. You have finally shown Lavos who's boss--perhaps by crashing your DeLorean into it at approximately 250,000 miles per hour and somehow surviving--only to discover the real Lavos was deep inside, a hideous cycloptic alien monstrosity with appropriately awesome Final Battle music. You bashed its brains in.

Only to discover that was actually just a giant alien mech, and, no, really, the real Lavos, the Lavos Core, was inside that. And just so you know this time it's really real, the Lavos Core sends you spiraling through an insane mishmash of time warps while it makes its last stand, its final attempt to kill you so it can get back to being Devourer of Worlds.

You have to admit, that is really damned epic. And it requires an epic piece of music to accompany such a battle for the fate of time itself.

And it got an epic piece of music.

My Favorite Video Game Music, #28: Schala's Theme

#28: Schala's Theme

Chrono Trigger

This is one of two tracks I most commonly see cited out there in Internetland as the best piece on the juggernaut Chrono Trigger soundtrack. The other one we'll get to in a little bit; I rate that one about as highly as everyone else. This one I rate lower than most.

I think this music is a little overrated because Schala is a little overrated. It's not hard to see her appeal: she's a mysterious and kind-hearted teenage girl trapped in a nightmare by her eldritch monster of a mother. Everything about her character screams "rescue me" and she takes an immediate liking to the mute hero--it's everything teenage boy wish fulfillment dreams on. She was far and away the Ensemble Darkhorse and probably has always been the most popular character in the game (only Glenn/Frog is even close).

(Incidentally, I think the Schala obsession also has a lot to do with the appalling lack of an interesting female playable character in the game. Marle is irritating and useless, Lucca is probably the most asexual female character in RPG history, and Ayla is a slut but she's a cavewoman and you can only run so far with that in your dreams. Schala fills the "I wish SHE was my girlfriend" vacuum that in most other games is filled by more sensible PCs like Rydia, Celes, Paula, Selan, Aeris, etc.)

But if you step back and see Schala for what she is, she's a mid-importance NPC on about the same level as Cyrus or Kino or Tata; but it is clear the writers intended her to be a little more important than that, because after all she gets theme music that kicks more ass than any of the playable characters' theme music save one. Schala is also a little more memorable than those guys because of her sacrificial death in the Ocean Palace, sending the tattered remains of your party to safety. (Although, you remember how I mentioned Shadow was the only PC that ever committed suicide? I actually think if you consider Chrono Trigger alone, there's a strong argument Schala, though not a PC, actively chose to stay in the Ocean Palace and die.)

But. But there is no denying this music is Grade A awesome.

My Favorite Video Game Music, #36: The Black Dream

#36: The Black Dream

Chrono Trigger

As far as Very Definitely Final Dungeons go, the Black Omen is unsurpassed in magnificence. It has everything going for it: critical importance to the story, arch-villain at the end of it (the deranged Queen Zeal), the feeling of impending finality, grand architecture, a tinge of weirdness, and above all, the inescapable feeling that this is some major, major shit going on right now.

Oh, and of course the ass-kicking music plays into that a lot.

Oh, and did I mention that if you really want to, you can run this dungeon three times? In the same game. Hey, it's time travel after all.

What was, acceptably translated, called the Black Dream originally was renamed the Black Omen in the U.S. version, for reasons completely mysterious to me. Maybe they thought they'd run afoul of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy, I don't know.

My Favorite Video Game Music, #45: Boss Battle 2

Boss Battle 2

Chrono Trigger

You'll notice as this list goes on that I'm very fond of drama and climax in video games. And nothing is as dramatic or climactic as a good boss battle. This is why most of your classic RPGs have two (usually exactly two) non-Big Bad boss battle themes: one for the common bosses, and one for the handful of REAL bosses. (Chrono Trigger has three, but that's a bit of a special case; we'll get to that later.)

You'll also notice as this list goes on that I'm fond of music that has a good opening riff. This track qualifies on both those counts. It's used for five or six boss battles in Chrono Trigger: Masa&Mune (their individual forms Masa and Mune get the normal boss music,) Azala/Black Tyrano, Great Ozzie/Super Slash/Flea Plus, Rust Tyrano, Son of Sun, and Zeal (if Magus isn't in your party). The latter four are in the endgame, so really that leaves just the two bosses that the game declares, by giving them this music, to be the most important in the game (other than Magus).

This music's tone is unmistakable. The first time you hear it, when you encounter the Masa&Mune battle, you immediately realize: it is on. Cue big gulp. (Masa&Mune turns out to not be a particularly tough boss, but still. It's an important battle, is what you instantly realize.)

Then, near the end, in lieu of any textual development, the programmers just use this music to make the player understand that Son of Sun, who the player has never heard of before even once, is a serious boss and that the Sun Palace is not a plaything. And it works, because the music is just that good.