My Favorite Video Game Music, #2: For The Savior

#2: For The Savior

Lufia II

It was an endless, brutal journey through danger after danger, all the way to the end of the earth, but you endured, you fought through the pain and despair, and you've done it. You have defeated the Sinistrals and saved the world--but at a devastating price. Your wife, mortally injured in the battle, has just died in your arms. The Fortress of Doom is collapsing around you. You refuse to leave her side; your friends have teleported to safety and you, savior of the world, are left alone to die in the wreckage.

But Daos, Master of Terror, is an evil bastard, and with his last gasp he sent the airborne fortress careening on a course that will cause it to crash on, and destroy, your hometown--where you and your beloved wife's infant son sleeps.

You have one chance to stop it, to alter the crumbling island's course. You have three minutes to live. You'll never hear the accolades or the thanksgiving for saving the world from the Sinistrals, but that doesn't matter anymore. One thing matters.

You rise from your knees, your hands and armor stained with her blood. If you can't get there in time, the last of her blood will be gone forever. Three minutes.

This music encapsulates the flavor of that scene, one of the most heart-wrenching in any storytelling medium, so perfectly it gives a man chills. Triumph. Determination. Desperation.

My Favorite Video Game Music, #9: The Land Nobody Knew

#9: The Land Nobody Knew

Lufia II

Every RPG includes a Mysterious Ancient Long-Lost Town. The specifics can widely vary: EarthBound offers the goofy Saturn Valley, Final Fantasy VI offers the awkward Thamasa, and Super Mario RPG offers the whimsical Star Hill. Then there's Final Fantasy IV, which offers the damned moon, and Chrono Trigger, which offers all of 12,000 B.C.

But the really memorable ones are the really mysterious ones. The ones that were so mysterious they felt dangerous--and they're set to music that thrills you and makes you nervous. This is a special place. A spiritual place, even.

There are three games that offer really spectacular Mysterious Ancient Long-Lost Towns. Final Fantasy V includes the Town of Mirage, which has been trapped in the Void, lost beyond time, for 1,000 years; its theme music is very haunting and just barely missed the Top 50 cut.

Final Fantasy VII offers the Forgotten City, which we already covered. Epic.

And Lufia II has Narvick, the city that sits on top of the world, the city cut off from the world for thousands of years, where Maxim and the gang are the first mere mortals to set foot for centuries. And unlike the Forgotten City, Narvick is the very last town you reach in the game; from there it's straight to the Fortress of Doom to throw down with Daos and his Sinistrals. And from the moment you set foot in Narvick, this music makes very, very clear that you're a hell of a long way from Kansas. You're messing around with gods now.

Few pieces of music exist that can get your heart pumping just from the overwhelming sensation of importance.

My Favorite Video Game Music, #27: The Fortress of Doom

#27: The Fortress of Doom

Lufia II

Lufia II's debut entry on this list is a spectacular one.

Lufia II (and its little brother, Lufia I) was lost in the shuffle of the great RPGs of the mid-1990s, mostly because Taito/Natsume distributed very few copies of the game in the United States. But Lufia II was a tremendous game fully worthy of placement alongside Square's masterpieces. It was unique and different. It somehow pulled the simultaneous feats of presenting a tremendously epic story alongside a maddeningly endless string of fetch quests for a plotline. Seriously, the entire game was fetch quest, story, fetch quest, story, fetch quest, story, fetch quest, story, until you're done. But the story is really phenomenal--even better if, like me, you manage to play Lufia II FIRST and then the original Lufia after.

As for the gameplay, well, it couldn't be farther from Lufia I. The first Lufia was the most grinding-intensive RPG ever created Lufia 2 focuses very little on grinding, and instead borrows some roguelike elements--enemies appear onscreen rather than random battles, and move only when you do--and presents probably the closest thing to Zelda gameplay in the RPG realm. Every dungeon presents unique puzzles to solve in between your battles, which you frequently need the aid of your bag of tools to conquer. Sound familiar?

Now, this track is a very strong contender in two categories: "Most awesome opening riff"--it really might be the most awesome opening riff ever--and "best video game music for a fighter to play while he walks to the ring".

But, and this is a little weird, this track is misnamed. The Fortress of Doom is in fact the Very Definitely Final Dungeon in both of the original Lufia games--in fact, the full title of the first game is "Lufia and the Fortress of Doom"--and it has its own unique theme music.

This is not the Fortress of Doom's theme music.

Seriously. That's a different (and inferior) item on the Lufia 2 soundtrack. In fact this supremely awesome music, among the very best ever produced by video game composers, is used in only two spots in the entire game, one of which has LOL glitched graphics, like someone used a game genie and messed up, and the other of which is optional, EXTREMELY difficult to reach and most players never go there. That would be the Submarine Shrine, where you first find the legendary Dual Blade, and the bottom level of the Ancient Cave. (The Ancient Cave is a full-on roguelike sidegame which can easily take as long as the entire normal game to complete. And you can't save without leaving and starting over.)

Anyway, it's weird, and it's unprecedented for such an awesome track to be tucked away in a secret compartment. But it's here for you to enjoy nonetheless.