Monday, April 14, 2014

If you like Yoshi's Island, you're going to love the Videri String Quartet's take on a handful of that game's classic tunes

In honor of the recent release of Yoshi's New Island, the members of Boston's Videri String Quartet decided to arrange, perform, record and share a medley of tunes pulled from the soundtrack of that game's Super Famicom (or SNES, if that's your thing) predecessor.



The entire composition is so wonderful I can't even point to a particular section as my favorite--although I guess if I were pressed I'd have to go with the quartet's sublime rendition of the game's "castle and fortress" theme. How about you?

See also: 'Raise your hand if you, too, are conflicted as hell about Yoshi's New Island'
Posted by Bryan Ochalla
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16 comments:

Justin Difazzio said...

I'm still vacillating on whether or not to take on all the optional boss fights in BD. I'm certainly not redoing the conjurer fight. That was a nightmare. So 100% finishing is out of the question, which makes me think that skipping them all is the best thing for me at this point. I have DK:Tropical Freeze to play, along with Pokemon Battle Trozei and Rusty's Real Deal Baseball. And that's on top of the impressive backlog I'm accumulating as I buy cheap games or download free ones with my PS+ membership. It's all just a binge because I SO WANT TO BE DONE WITH BRAVELY DEFAULT! *ahem*

9:21 AM
Justin Difazzio said...

Also, I'd love to know what your team in BD looked like. What jobs did you love? What did you find the most helpful?

9:21 AM
michaelstearns said...

I grabbed the "free" Rusty as well and it didn't stay free for long! If I have one thing about it that I don't like about it, it's that in order to advance the story it seems that you have to buy the games in a certain order, rather than what interests you. For example I'd like to get the back-and-forth batting game next, but it isn't designated as a story-advancer right now. If I buy it now (for instance with my coupons), would it cut the story short? A certain amount of ambiguity makes it really enjoyable (it seems like such a cheat that his kids tell you when he's been haggled down to the lowest point!) but it could be less ambiguous in other places.


It's such a weird thing though! These games are really simplistic even by free-to-play standards, and yet Nintendo has somehow found a way to get people (me, anyway) to buy them, and for more than $1, even! Fundamentally they aren't any deeper than a WarioWare minigame (and certainly don't have the diversity you find there) but here I am, batting and catching like it's actually fun or something. (They are kinda fun.)

9:25 AM
thegaygamer.com said...

I understand your feelings completely, Justin. Some of the optional boss fights are annoying terrors, if you ask me. Oh, they're kind of fun at first, but after a while I was like, "who cares anymore?"

9:50 AM
thegaygamer.com said...

My favorite jobs in the game were pirate and performer, Justin. Oh, and spell fencer, I think it's called?

The pirate is especially useful, IMO--assuming you have the two-handed ability plus some others that boost your character's strength/power.

Build up your BP during boss fights, hit "Brave" four times and then hit said boss with "Shell Split," "Skull Bash," "Defang" and finally "Double Damage"--or some combination of those abilities and "Scale Strip" and/or "Shin Smash."

My party for the final battle, by the way, was one performer/white mage (w/ "Epic Group-Cast" enabled), one pirate/vampire, one pirate/spell fencer and one freelancer/pirate.



In the end, I probably should've made the freelancer/pirate something else, as I didn't need the freelancer's skills, but I defeated the final boss fairly easily (of course, I fought it on easy...) so it didn't really matter.


Which jobs and abilities have you enjoyed the most so far?

9:59 AM
thegaygamer.com said...

Hey there, Michael! Ah, sounds like we're in the same boat.


I'm not sure it matters which games you buy or which order you buy them in, but don't quote me on that. I have a feeling, though, that if you buy one that doesn't advance the story, you simply won't advance the story until you buy one that's designated to advance the story, if that makes sense.


Anyway, I agree with you completely that these games aren't any deeper than, say, a Wario Ware mini-game, but for $2 each (w/ that $2 scoring a good number of specific challenges), I'm not about to complain.


And like you said, most of them are so damn addictive that it would be hard to complain about them even if you paid full price ($4) for them.


Finally, yes, you're right about the ambiguity aspect of this game, too. In the end, the devs decided to make it very clear when you've reached Rusty's lowest point. Which means, of course, that the haggling aspect is pretty pointless, IMO.


Oh, well, at least it doesn't take him too long to get there, so the annoyance is only temporary :)

10:05 AM
michaelstearns said...

Heh! I kinda want more haggling, though! Partly I guess I'm just a skinflint, but I really like that aspect and it gives me so many doughnuts I'm pretty sure I can use them to compensate for any "wrong" haggle paths I happen to take. I guess I want deeper haggling, like get him to his lowest point and then spring the coupon on him... ;D


Meanwhile in real life, I used to work in a small retail shop and I *hated* it when people would try to haggle prices down! xD


On their own though, I don't think I would ever buy any of these games. I can play similar ones for free, but the act of checking out and sometimes buying games is in itself fun... ah, it really gets to my "it doesn't matter how much it costs if you like it!" philosophy, but the question is, how does that gel with the attitude of a person who makes a post on a forum asking if a game he saw on the app store is "really worth" the 99 cents? Augh this issue frustrates me! xD

11:50 AM
thegaygamer.com said...

I can see where you're coming from, Michael, but I also can see where Nintendo's coming from. The powers that be there likely were worried that if they didn't make the haggling end point pretty darn obvious that people would complain they were duped, etc.


That said, the route they ended up taking makes the whole thing pretty pointless, IMO. I mean, it's hard to feel too accomplished after haggling Rusty down to $2 after seeing how easy it is.


One thing that's bothering me now that I've spent a good amount of time with the game (nearly 7 hours, I think): why on earth am I getting so many doughnuts if I can't use them all? I have over 40 now, which is completely ridiculous.


I'm not a mobile gamer (Android, iOS, etc.), so I can't say if I agree that it would be possible to acquire all of the games present here for free using a smartphone, tablet, etc. I kind of doubt it, to be honest, but either way it doesn't much matter to me. I like that *these* games have the "Nintendo touch," Nintendo's aesthetics, etc. Those qualities alone make them worth $2 (give or take) each for me.

12:11 PM
michaelstearns said...

Oh yeah, the Nintendo touch is very present, and you don't get that with App Store games, and even the apps that can pull of something similar are pretty rare (I've been checking it out recently, in fact). I didn't mean that these exact ones would be there, but if I wanted to just kill some time with something simplistic--that's what I mean. I think I could get the same "play" value elsewhere, but the package is what makes it unique and worthwhile imo.


I think the donuts are so if you mess up during haggling you can return Rusty to a good mood, but yeah, it seems like after a certain point it should take note of how many you have and stop doling them out until you use some of them up.

Oh, one other thing I love about the game is the "4DS" itself and all the gags around it. When Rusty III (which pup did you take?) explained that it was "immersive" and then jumped inside, I had a good chuckle there. :)

1:17 PM
thegaygamer.com said...

Oh, OK, I agree with you then. Or I agree as much as I can, considering I don't really have access to smartphone apps and such.


Other than that, one thing I'd like to start getting is different costumes, etc., rather than donuts. I've received two optional outfits so far, but that's not very much when you consider I've played through nearly all of the three games I've bought so far.


Hopefully more will be unlocked shortly--or maybe I'll be able to use donuts on them at some point?

1:38 PM
Monster_Hunter2882 said...

I think Yoshi's Island might have one my favorite Super Famicom/SNES soundtracks.

5:59 PM
thegaygamer.com said...

Me, too, Sam. And thanks! It's nice to know people like stuff like this. Not sure why I don't post them more often, to be honest. I guess I just get too lazy to search for them sometimes :)

9:10 PM
Monster_Hunter2882 said...

What I think they should of done for Bravely Default's last few chapters is take the beginning of chapter 5, the end of chapter 6, and the side quests of 7 and make them 1 chapter and then make Chapter 8 the 6th and leave it as is. I liked how in the final boss that the other worlds it shows were supposed to be your friend's games and would show what jobs they had the heroes set up as. As for Rusty's Real Deal Baseball I download it and I'm interested in the haggling mechanic but I haven't bought any of the games yet.

Right now I'm mostly playing Wario Ware INC. (the orignal GBA 1) and Mario Kart 7. I did think of getting Earthbound instead of Wario Ware but the last few games I've bought are platformers or JRPGs. As for future plans right now the only games 100% sure I'll be buying in the next 2 months are Mario Kart 8 and Tomodachi Life.

2:43 PM
thegaygamer.com said...

I'm not exactly sure how I wish BD's devs had handled the last four chapters of the game, but your suggestion sounds as good as any I've heard. I also could've seen them condensing most of what you go through during these chapters into some sort of pre-rendered sequence or sketch (aka video), or it could've just been handled in text.


It's interesting that you brought up the games you're planning to buy in the next few months, Sam. For me, I'm hoping to buy just Tomodachi Life and The Denpa Men 3 between now and, say, August. We'll see if I actually stick to that, though.

3:22 PM
The annoying starlow said...

I am speechless.I don't like it at all.....I LOVE IT!I am so happy.
BTW the wonderful picture belongs to cammiluna on Deviantart

7:53 PM
thegaygamer.com said...

Glad to hear you love it! And thanks for the photo :)

9:00 PM

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