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I've been glossing over the game notoruous to shoot-um-up fans worldwide called Ikaruga. I've been writing up a review for it for a while now but I don't have time for it anyway and you probably won't be intrested in it except for this one thing: The soundtrack for each level and for the boss sequences are written towards the levels theme or "chapter." In fact what makes this game so great is that the developers took painstaking detail into making each level fit the chapter, or theme as well as the overall story or gameplay. I feel they brought out their best within the third level, "Faith," and every time I watch that level played by this expert, it feels like a cinema expirience as well as a arcade's. It made me wonder though, if all the glory of what I'm talking about came about because of the player understanding the game sequence so well making it look more like the sprite he was playing was a movie character and I was witnessing his journey throughout his/her narrative, or that the game is animated to the beats of the soundtrack. "Faith (this is a different clip of the same level, and I still have the same reaction to it)" also has the best motif IMHO out of the entire game, sorta has a "Raiders of the Lost Arc" appeal to the entire level, but I assume most of us already know most commercial games despite their quality have the most lasting effect within their "jingles" more than anything else. Final Fantasy created a whole genre of gaming music that also hopefully brought it up as an art form (I've never owned a console outside a GB Pocket b&w, so I don't know that much about the gaming industry) to appreciate like any other genre. Mostly my question is stated above as the thread's title, and Ikaruga is my main example, but does anyone see what I mean? Try playing that clip with no sound afterwards and see what you get out of it. I feel this game turns into something else once the score is added, how do you feel about it?

Funny you should mention Final Fantasy. I am a HUGE fan of the music from the SNES & early playstation Final Fantasy games. Though part of my devotion could be quite accurately attributed to my sense of nostalgia when I play music from games which I enjoyed when I was younger, I know that for me, that is not the whole reason. Playing these games is akin to reading a masterful fantasy/sci-fi epic with an amazingly suspenseful plot. Though granted, some of the translations from japan are slightly awkward, this did not stop me from immersing myself in the story.

Notice I said "play" music from; I have a collection of nearly all the available sheet music from the early Final Fantasy games, my favorite being FF III. Though I am a professional classical, opera, and musical-theatre pianist/vocal coach, and obviously works by the classical & modern instrumental and stage masters have more depth, I still find myself attracted to both the beautiful melodies in the FF music (and in fact in most of SquareSoft's games) and to the added dimension and atmosphere they give to the story. Nobuo Uematsu is incredibly amazing in my opinion, though of course there are some who would look down their nose haughtily at anything composed in the genre of video-game music.

Thanks for replying, samthegreat! Adding FF into the mix was probably the only part of my post that people could make sense of, or appreciate (due to it being a more popular genre than shmups)....

Not me. I have the soundtracks to Final Fantasy VI, VII, VIII and IX and I think they're all wonderful. The reason I don't have the soundtracks to the other Final Fantasy series is because I haven't played that particular series before. I believe that one has to play and complete the game to really understand the soundtrack and its context in the game.

Oops, I meant FFVI.