Lurker > Paratroopa1

Harebrayne sort of kicks ass to be honest, I respect how much he's not fucking around

5. Wave Man (Mega Man 5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI0_v340OPM

I've mentioned how much I like Mari Yamaguchi's works, right? She kind of dominated the top 25, and lo, so too does she dominate the top 5. This is prooooobably the most obscure pick remaining but I don't think it's super controversial. An oft-forgotten robot master with a fantastic theme. Wave Man's theme is downright gorgeous; the angelically pure tones and pitch-perfect mixing of this track make it sound about as smooth as NES music can possibly get, and it remains easy on the ears through several loops, which is good because this is one of the few stages with an autoscroller so it's a really long one. Yamaguchi's hallmark style of rapidly shifting between harmonizing the lead and exploring polyphonic ideas to really fill out the 'design space' so to speak is put to amazing use here and it's definitely one of the blueprints I use frequently in my own works - even though almost all of the concepts are simple, it still manages to sound complex enough to the ear to trick me into thinking there's more going on than there really is and that's sort of a marvel to me. The decision not to use vibrato on the lead melody is interesting - it's something that almost every NES Mega Man track does to the point that there's sort of a cliche 'style' of vibrato that I attribute solely to Mega Man, but Wave Man completely foregoes this in favor of keeping the flute-like tones of the melody, which I think works. My only quibble is that it never returns to that great intro section.

6. Shadow Man (Mega Man 3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usl7cw6VnLU

I don't think I'll ever write something as cool as the first two seconds of this track, but if I do I will probably retire on the spot, having miraculously reached the peak of my composing career. Yeah, the whole song is really good, sure, but that funky riff that just rips out at the start, that's magic. I've seen a theory before that the first few seconds of a Mega Man theme are the most important - that first three seconds before Mega Man teleports in set the tone, and amp up the excitement for the stage you're about to play. Shadow Man's theme ranks high in this metric - that riff followed by that "cool" chromatic bassline sets the mood well for a challenging and cool stage. This is my favorite Bun Bun track and like I said before, I think more than anyone he embodies the concept of "Rock Man" better than anyone else, if indeed rock music is supposed to be his concept; this is thick with funk and blues elements and just kind of oozes that particular vibe that MM3 has. I really like the bridge at :44 - I usually call these the "Mega Man 3 bridges" because almost every theme in this game has this element of a short, complex melodic fill that leads into the outro section, and it just flows incredibly well back to that sick opening riff. All-timer of a theme, could have been top 3 if I ranked stuff differently, sucks that it doesn't make the top 5.

40. Winston Payne - 453
41. Taketsuchi Auchi - 451

lmao

I suspect that GAA's line counts may be a touch inflated just by there being a lot more random interjecting from bit players, especially jury and such. G1-5 is pretty long, but is it really longer than 2-4 and 3-5?

oh god I hate the jury please don't bring juries back

7. Air Man (Mega Man 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieaaCWE0Vig

These writeups are getting really fucking hard to write, I tell you. What do I need to say about Air Man? It's Air Man. Everyone already knows this song is an all-time great, I don't need to sit here and make a spirited defense of this theme. Even moreso than MM2 Wily 1 I think it's like, the platonic ideal of MM2 music - this is what MM2 music just sounds like. Given my long history with the game in my childhood, hearing this theme just instantly transports me back to a particular time and place. It's like the aural version of a homecooked meal for me. Okay, a little bit about the song. It's striking to me just how well constructed the melody is that the song gets away with barely having any accompanying lines or even harmonies, mostly just using the second square wave to achieve an echo, and that singular melody and the solo-like riffing on it carries the whole theme. Legend has it that Manami Matsumae wrote part of the melody, and if so, it was her best contribution to the series, and she wrote Mega Man. Another thing I like to note in this theme is that distinctive tom sound (that little 'pew!' percussive noise) is created using the triangle wave, which is also used for the bass - so the bass basically has to play 'around' the tom and it's done really seamlessly and I always thought that was really neat. Okay that's all I've got for you, Air Man's theme is just really good, okay.

I'm glad you did finish G1-5, I think GAA1 finally finds itself near the end and the case starts to become pretty interesting - and it's VERY fortunate that you can move right onto GAA2 without being annoyed by all the loose threads, lol.

I rank GAA1 just a bit ahead of AA4 and AAI1 because I just ultimately found it more fun with the main cast and the setting and the overall presentation. It winds up a bit more than the sum of its parts, even though most of the murder mysteries are pretty lame. AAI1 has stronger murder mystery mechanics but the overarching plot is boring, and AA4 just makes me feel tired to think about. I felt more energetic playing GAA1 than those two so there's that.

That actually is the last of the Dr. Wily themes on this list

...sort of

8. Dr. Wily 1 (Mega Man 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukDYkaN5Ekw

This theme stands so far above its contemporaries in terms of sheer notability and recognizability that ranking it on this list almost feels a little bit unthinkable. If I were writing a listicle of the best Mega Man songs for Kotaku or something, I'd just write this down as #1 in pen - it's the safe, easy answer and the one least likely to receive strongly worded emails.

Writing about this feels simultaneously like a monumental task, while also being sort of pointless. This theme kind of feels like a whole self-explanatory thing unto itself. I can write a paragraph or two about most of these themes - MM2 Wily 1, I could probably write an entire book documenting the enduring, popularity of this motherfucker if I really felt like it. There's something that's always kind of fascinated me about it. Mega Man 2 was my favorite game growing up, and while I loved every song in this soundtrack, I really gravitated towards this theme in particular, and I've always kind of described it as a big awakening to being really interested in music as a kid. The weird thing was, growing up, to learn that this song wasn't just a personal experience for me and me alone - there was a weird sort of synchronicity to the simultaneous discovery that everyone had of this theme. I played this game by myself and didn't really talk to any of my friends about it, and had no idea anyone else even really played it until I got a hold of the internet in 1998, and it was a bit of a shock to discover that not only was Mega Man 2 a phenomenon, but this particular song from the soundtrack was especially popular. It was a lot of other peoples' favorite, too. It's hard to deny that there's something to it.

I can't really think of a lot to say about the piece itself. You've heard it, you know what it is. It's almost passe, at this point, but putting that aside this song still holds a lot of sentimental value for me, and I still love it to this day.

Want to hear something really funny, by the way?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T8jn4YFcyU

This was another soundtrack that Takashi Tateishi wrote in the short few years that he wrote music. Sound familiar? I mean, I've always given away the answer, it's just the Wily 1 riff again. Takashi Tateishi might have had exactly one good soundtrack's worth of music in him, but goddamn was it a good soundtrack.

9. Dr. Wily 1 (Mega Man 7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYqzaCkMFsA

Every time I watch this video, I'm always reminded of the top comment and I have a chuckle to myself.



I'm certainly prone to flowery sentimentalism, as evidenced by basically this entire list, but man Youtube comments are funny. It's *dark* and *brooding* because this is *truly Mega Man's last stand* and this is theme of Mega Man *being about to murder Dr. Wily* okay kid, chill out. But for some reason I can't hear this song without thinking of those words - "this song is the future." I think it accurately describes the sentiment with which this song was written. This is a newer, darker, edgier Mega Man, not like the cheery Mega Men of ages gone by (by which I mean like a year before this), and this song is a departure from previous Wily themes, having a kind of moodiness and ambiance to it that most of the NES tracks don't really have the ability to engage in. This was the age of the SNES and they wanted you to know that! This is the FUTURE we're talking about. This is Mega Man's last stand against Wily.

My stance on this song is this. If people are allowed to like Sephiroth or Shadow the Hedgehog or whoever, I am allowed to like this edgelord of a Mega Man theme. It's *brooding* and *melancholy* and it's the *future.* Okay, maybe that screechy MIDI guitar lead in the main section is a lot but I'm not gonna try to pretend like it doesn't get me kind of amped up. But the part I really like about this is that introduction - something about that repeated three-note jingle, the pad slowly coming in, and that first heavy bass note, it just fucking does it for me. My favorite part is actually when all that comes back at the loop after the drum fill at 1:12. I really can't overstate how nice the drum samples in MM7 are, they're as crisp as a corn chip. Listen to the fucking hats from 1:13 to 1:28! They have actual velocity to them. They're gorgeous. I'd struggle to make them sound that natural today. This really is the future.

Final Mega Man 7 Rankings:

1. Dr. Wily 1 (9)
2. Dr. Wily 2 (28)
3. Burst Man (36)
4. Slash Man (66)
5. Shade Man (Alt) (101)
6. Intro Stage (104)
7. Shade Man (123)
8. Dr. Wily 3 (161)
9. Junk Man (162)
10. Freeze Man (163)
11. Dr. Wily 4 (164)
12. Cloud Man (166)
13. Spring Man (167)
14. Turbo Man (170)
15. Robot Museum (192)

Thoughts: Ah, the duality of Mega Man 7. Although 10 and Soccer came close, this is the one and only game in the series that attained both a top 10 and a bottom 10 ranking. As much as I dumped nearly half of this soundtrack in the bottom half, it sort of ended up making pretty good for itself in the end - not a bad showing towards the top of the list at all. I did know that I always had a few favorites from this game, of course. I actually do think that as SNES games go, this one's got a pretty good chipset (a lot better than Soccer's that for sure - and probably better than X's as well), so while it doesn't have the purity of that beautiful 2A03 sound, it still sounds fine. I just wish that like, half its tracks weren't so grating.

Regrets?: Yep! I should have ranked some of those songs higher. Probably Freeze Man's theme especially - 163 was too low. In general, I really failed throughout this ranking to acknowledge how good the drumming and the drum samples in this game are. Really kind of the game's redeeming quality, I think. All of the drum lines in this game are really slickly written, even in tracks I'd otherwise have written off, and I should have highlit these where possible. Turbo Man's theme is a good example - it's not a theme I like, because I find most of the content to be grating, but just isolating and listening to the drums alone is a treat, they're classy as hell and again, the hi hats sound fucking great.

Are you ready to finish off this stupid list? I am!

10. Dr. Wily (Mega Man Soccer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMNgHgWgwEo

Well, you did your very best, Mega Man Soccer! You got a song in my top ten. I've been sitting on this one for a while, and I know there's multiple interested parties in this one, as it's the one remaining underdog of the list. This one's always been a childhood favorite of mine and I wouldn't dare deny that it remains one of my favorite tracks to this day. I mean, holy shit, it just kind of kicks ass. It's a grand culmination of Mega Man Soccer's western, blues rock-style weirdness and general composition quirkiness into a thesis statement of a soccer showdown with Dr. Wily at high noon, and it kind of rules? The truth is, not only is this theme the reason I decided to include Soccer in the list of stage themes, it's kind of the reason I decided to make this list at all - because some 25 or so years after I played this game and haven't played it since, this theme just sort of popped into my head out of nowhere, and it was all still there, like it was totally fresh. It just sort of spontaneously created itself in my head. That's a testament to just how memorable that simple opening riff is and how well everything after that clicks. I swear the high ranking of this isn't some kind of weird meme! It's a proper sentimental favorite. Godspeed, Mega Man Soccer, you fucking weird game.

Final Mega Man Soccer Rankings:

1. Dr. Wily (10)
2. Pharaoh Man (69)
3. Elec Man (72)
4. Wood Man (73)
5. Skull Man (107)
6. Dust Man (142)
7. Fire Man (153)
8. Enker (159)
9. Mega Man (173)
10. Cut Man (175)
11. Proto Man (176)
12. Needle Man (179)

Thoughts: Did you know that Mega Man Soccer was actually the first Mega Man title developed for the SNES? It predates MMX and MM7 both - it's true! Both MMX and MM7 have a big more mastery of the sound chip, and it shows - the sound palette in Soccer is a little bit gross. But it makes up for it with, for better or worse, some truly interesting creative chops. I wouldn't say this is a *great* soundtrack by any means, but it doesn't really sound like anything else I've ever heard before and that's always worth some form of credit.

Regrets?: Actually, yes, this time! I was too harsh in my appraisal of the Mega Man/Cut Man/Proto Man trio and I'd rank them all higher if I could do this over, since I don't think any of them are that bad (Needle Man's theme is still a weak link though and stays where it is). I'd probably give Elec Man's theme a little boost too. I think I failed to take Mega Man Soccer's music quite as seriously at the beginning as I started to as the list wore on. Also, I regret that the youtube videos I used in the rest of this topic disappeared because of an account takedown. Stop it, Youtube!

LeonhartFour posted...

one of the low key "I can't believe they actually said that" moments is when Edgeworth tells Adrian he doesn't care if she kills herself or not

Like, I get he's mostly just calling Adrian's bluff to get her to confess, but still

I think it's okay because they aren't treating Edgeworth as anything other than ice cold in that moment but yeah I agree, that was a big 'wow holy shit, that's a lot?' moment

also the irony of Windibank is I'm really glad he died so we didn't have to suffer through jokes about him threatening to shoot himself in court. Also thank god they never went the route of 'well maybe he shot himself, since he was always threatening to do that!' like oh my god this could have been WORSE somehow

Suicide feels like an uncomfortable topic even when they handle it seriously, like in 2-4, there's almost something perverse about the relatively clinical (even if thoroughly sympathetic) way they talk about Adrian's attempted suicide. so it's super weird to treat someone who obviously has manic depression as a joke

LeonhartFour posted...

man I wonder how many times a day a customer has to talk Windibank back from the ledge

this doesn't seem like a good business model

I feel like Windibank is possibly the most ill-advised comic relief this series has ever attempted

something about Windibank madly rushing off to get his gun so he could threaten to shoot himself was NOT FUNNY to me

CoolCly posted...

i'm most excited for the EVIL doctor strange

And he's bad, bad, bad guy

It's beyond baffling to me that being against protecting family farms and ranches would be a right-wing opinion

I still don't really understand McGilded's plan. I assumed that he was going to try to buy off the judge/jury either through literal money or just through sheer goodwill, since he's such a popular guy the jury would easily side with him, but THEN it would turn out that Van Zieks isn't fucking around and actually convinces the jury he's guilty, and THEN suddenly McGilded would be really surprised and the whole thing would be off the rails, and that's when McGilded would enact his plan B. That isn't really how it played out though? The way it played out, the whole jury voted guilty right away without McGilded attempting to really do shit, and it was only Susato pulling out the summation examination that saved him - otherwise he was fucked. McGilded was absurdly lucky to be able to pull off anything he did! If Ryunosuke and Susato weren't really good at their jobs, then his scheme wouldn't have worked.

Hot take: Cryptocurrency should be banned

I'm bothered by that vestigial tail of -vania at the end because to me, "Metroidvania" strongly implies RPG elements, but it doesn't seem to mean that for most people

Sorry I haven't gotten to it yet! I've been totally swamped with engagements this week. Wasn't even procrastination, I just literally haven't had the opportunity.

I don't really understand the problem, I like this group of characters more than most, why would other people not be the same as me

While I think the term Metroidvania is colloquially understood to be a certain sort of thing, my problems are:

1) It's annoying that the genre name is born out of a misunderstanding of its origin, but this happens in language sometimes (to me, Metroidvania describes "a Castlevania game that is like Metroid" - SotN, GBA/DS Castlevanias, and probably Bloodstained but that's about it)

2) Most of the games that people describe with this genre term aren't really that much like Metroid or SotN

Immune: Miles Edgeworth (Ace Attorney)
Boot: Solid Snake (Metal Gear)

And just like that, Susato is already over Dahlia, Dhurke, and Oldbag

I'm a little disappointed that it seems like you can only jump at selected spots, dampens the hilariousness of the inevitable speedrun

Immune: Missile (Ghost Trick)
Boot: Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles)

The DLC for Monster Train is great

I'd really urge anyone who likes Slay the Spire to check this out, I've had a hard time getting Monster Train to catch on but I think it's equally as good if not better

Immune: Miles Edgeworth (Ace Attorney)
Boot: The Boss (Metal Gear Solid 3)

Sorry, just bumping this for now. I had a lot of engagements this week and one of them was GAA lol

Leonhart4 posted...

It feels like there's a lot of banter between Naruhodo and Susato, and then you throw in Holmes on top of that, we might get a pretty high line count.

I feel like the series got away from a lot of the back and forth between the protagonist and the assistant, which might be why we have lower line counts relative to case length for the newer games. That might be an argument for counting total text boxes instead of just unbroken speeches.

I've never been one to criticize the work you do because it's so exhaustive and interesting, but I have always thought that total text boxes would be a more interesting count than unbroken lines of speech, even if it does favor some characters over others for various reasons (oldbag lol)

My gut feeling tells me that Ryunosuke probably talks less in each case vs the standard protagonist like Phoenix or Edgeworth, just because it feels like Kazuma/Susato/Sholmes/Iris take up a lot more oxygen than most deuteroganist casts (it's somewhat rare for two other characters to talk to each other in another AA game but they do it much more often here)

6/10

It's pretty much the most standard thing it could be

Immune: Missile (Ghost Trick)
Boot: Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII)

I'm not even joking when I say that this is probably the most impressive patch that Nintendo has ever put out for a game

Immune: Mega Man
Boot: The Boss

Line counts are of course a little misleading too, since it's entire unbroken sentences and not total text boxes, and Godot has a little bit of a habit of monologuing even by AA character standards.

Anagram posted...

Godot has barely over 900, but still has one of the biggest presences.

It sort of makes sense. Every character above him except for Klavier and the Judge is either a protagonist, an investigation assistant, or has at least two separate cross-examinations.

Immune: Kyle Hyde
Boot: Cloud Strife

Sensibility

I really wanted to like it, I was really excited to see where things were going, but it just sort of ends with little to show for it but unanswered questions. I'm sure some of them have to be answered at some point, but at the moment all I'm left with was kind of an unsatisfying mystery full of characters I hated

With the disclaimer that I haven't beaten the game yet, I really did not like case 3 and I think it's one of my least favorites in the series, it seemed like it was going to go somewhere super interesting with McGilded's ambiguity and then it just turned into a meaningless anticlimax, I was super frustrated by it

I feel like a big part of that was the jury taking up so much oxygen, which was obviously not for the better in my opinion because I absolutely fucking hate the jury in this trial, I am pulling no punches here, easily my least favorite characters in the franchise so far

Significantly fewer n2 kill advancements than I'm used to seeing!

I thought that might happen! Juries tend to set aside space for players who had a really solid gamestate read but got talked over

Snake5555555555 posted...

5/10

I love the experience of radioing your co-worker day in and out, as your only piece of human interaction. This is a bit of a dream job of mine so it was nice to role-play as Henry throughout the game. The dialogue is well-written, and the way the deeper story unfolds is reminiscent of Gone Home, with elements of mystery, conspiracy, and horror that just end up being total red herrings, instead focusing on something a lot more real. Yet, I don't think it works that well here; it's less red herring to me, and more, "oh we are just kind of lying to you to make the story seem more interesting than it is". The pacing ramps up to these shocking revelations and just halts it all with a disappointing payoff. The ending is also unsatisfying and feels rushed, and overall I just feel the time spent with these characters was just a waste by the time the credits roll.

This is an almost perfect summation of my feelings, right down to the part where I romanticize the idea of being a firewatch

Phoenix Wright Omnibus is hilarious because I'm sure it was like "oh, cool reference!" in Japan for those who caught it, but for us it's like "WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???"

Sorry, I realize this is really sidetracking things, but are there any examples of games that are explicitly set in Tokyo but where the names are localized? I feel like they wouldn't have set PW1 in LA today, but then I think about how the names would have all been left Japanese and I'm not so sure. PW1 has a pretty universal and not distinctly Japanese flavor to it, so setting it in any part of the world works, at least until the more distinctly Japanese-flavored cases happen but none of those are in PW1

Mewtwo59 posted...

There were some names that still made sense even unlocalized. Cosney Megundal was not one of them.

Capcom did a good job in this game, imo, of only changing that which would really benefit from needing to be changed. I think leaving (most of) the Japanese names unchanged is a good call and shows some faith in the audience (especially with a name like Ryunosuke!), there might be meaning to their names that I'm missing but that's fine. The rest of the names they only really changed them if they weren't working in English at all. The key to good localization is preserving the feeling of seeing a name, imo, not the precise meaning.