As the original "monster collecting" game, the heroes converse with hundreds of demons across various world mythologies and convince them to join their cause.
UNOFFICIAL AND UNAUTHROIZED! Beginning as a 1986 science fiction/horror novel, Megami Tensei has since grown to become one of the most expansive Japanese RPG series of all time, comprising of over thirty titles in variety of subgenres. Also included are reviews of several notable Japan-only Famicom games, including Layla, Otocky, Moon Crystal, Cocoron, Cosmic Epsilon, and several others, as well as the infamous unreleased title Bio Force Ape! While these all may not be the A-listers of the NES library, this book represents some of the more interesting, offbeat, and lesser discussed titles of the system, and is essential for anyone looking to expand their knowledge of the platform!
But what of the numerous other developers, the ones that put out games you may have read about in Nintendo Power or have vague recollections of renting on some Saturday afternoon? This book covers many of those titles, from developers like Sunsoft (Blaster Master, Journey to Silius), Natsume (Shadow of the Ninja, Shatterhand), KID (Low-G-Man, KickMaster), Irem (Holy Diver, Metal Storm), Atlus (Rockin' Kats, Xexyz), and many others. the World's score, shows a huge interest in retro-style music.Īt any rate, please enjoy the music, and we hope you'll vote in our next poll!ĭerek Duke/Glenn Stafford/Tracy W.Whenever anyone thinks of the best developers on the Nintendo Entertainment System, the most popular are typically Konami, Capcom, and, of course, Nintendo themselves. This, combined with the popularity of Amanaguchi's Scott Pilgrim vs. Many tracks from Chris Huelsbeck's legendary Turrican scores placed, although the single most voted on game is the 2010 indie title VVVVVV, with nearly the entire soundtrack placing somewhere on the list. Some other decent songs that previously inhabited the dregs of the list placed much higher, like New Junk City from Earthworm Jim and the theme from The Last Ninja. Naturally, many of the songs from the top 1000 list made recurring appearances, including Baba Yetu from Civilization IV and the theme from Monty on the Run, although the Diablo town theme overtook Stickerbush Symphony from Donkey Kong Country 2 as the top role. If nothing else, hopefully it will help you become familiar with works from European legends like Chris Huelsbeck, Rub Hubbard, Ben Danglish, Jeroen Tel, Matt Gray, Matt Furniss, Tim & Geoff Follin and Stephane Picq, Sega mainstays like Spencer Nilsen, Howard Drossin and Richard Jacques, other talented American folks like Tommy Tallarico, Alexander Brandon and Frank Klepacki, and all the way up to recent musicsmiths like Jake Kaufman, Danny Baranowsky, Souleye (Magnus Pålsson), and Module (Jeremiah Ross). There's probably still quite a few gaps as far as establishing a canon of awesome Western composed music, but this site is all about education and exploring outside of our comfort zones a bit, so hopefully everyone will at least find some great new songs to stick on their playlist. So think of the first 200 as the actual poll, and the remaining 50 as sort of an "editor's choice" bit. It's hardly the most democratic method of doing things (though all songs did get some levels of votes) but makes for a slightly more comprehensive playlist. In order to fill in the gaps a bit, I chose an additional 50 songs myself to round the whole list out to 250.
It also seemed to be missing some of the more well known or well regraded Commodore or Amiga soundtracks, which I was trying to promote. Using the same cutoff of three points, the result was slightly under 200 songs, which seemed a little bit paltry. The rules were similar to the last poll, although the number of votes was cut in half to 50 songs due to the smaller pool to choose from, and the point structure was reworked so "Top 5" choices were given two points instead of three. So, my goal was to run another poll, this time focusing entirely on Western music, and put to rest the stereotype that all music that comes out of the United States and Europe are all wannabe Hollywood-style orchestral blockbusters.
This is not a result of Western music being inherently inferior, but rather, I think, that not enough of the readership (myself included) has really been exposed some of the better songs. The result was over 1000 excellent songs, but had one curious deficiency - roughly 90% of the entire list consisted of music composed for Japanese video games. In September of 2011, we at Hardcore Gaming 101 ran a massive reader-voted poll to determine the best video game music of all time.