Bloodwork - World Without End (2014)

Death metal has changed quite a bit since its formative years in the mid-late 1980's.  What started as a more extreme extension of thrash metal quickly developed into its own form in the early 1990's, and has taken on a number of iterations in subsequent years.  The early-mid 90's saw the rise of technical death metal like Gorguts, Atheist, Cynic, and latter-day Pestilence, as well as more brutal death metal like Suffocation or Dying Fetus.  Death metal mixed with doom metal became prevalent as well, with acts ranging from My Dying Bride, early Paradise Lost, and early Anathema to Paramaecium and Orphaned Land.  The 2000's and beyond have spawned more modern distillations of the death metal sound with ever-improving production values, which sometimes make the music sound more "in your face", but sometimes take away from the raw, unadulterated sound of what death metal was in the beginning.

The last 5 or 6 years has seen a major resurgence in the sound of early death metal, now referred to by most as "old school death metal" or OSDM.  A fair number of indie and underground music labels are putting out cassettes and vinyl releases for a number of bands, and many are retreating from over-produced, sterile sounding records to something more raw and organic, recalling the early 1990's where good production was possible, but the raw sound of the music wasn't compromised by the production, mixing, or mastering.  Endtime Productions has wisely snapped up UK death metallers Bloodwork, and given the vinyl (and CD) treatment to their full-length debut World Without End.  It stands as a shining example of OSDM done right in the modern age.

Right away, I hear many hallmarks of early death metal in the sound.  The guitars are downtuned, like most albums from that early period, but not so far that there's no definition in the guitar tone or in the riffing.  The guitar sound isn't so deep and sludgy that it forsakes some level of bite; indeed, this record's guitar sound is heavy and has plenty of teeth.  There isn't much in the way of solo work on the record, but lots of fast-picked rhythms and segues that really show off the abilities of all 3 guitarists in the band, James, Jeff, and Michael.  There are some nice spots, particularly in the title track, where dueling guitar lines are used to great effect to produce a layered sound that works well.  Other times, it sounds as though 2 or 3 guitars are playing the same rhythm so as to pummel you into oblivion as you listen.  Bass, as provided by relative newcomer Ben, is well played and is prevalent enough in the mix that you feel the rhythms, but can also hear what he is playing, and he chimes in alongside the riffing quite nicely.  Drummer Jon Rushforth has quite an impressive number of bands he has provided drumwork for, and he shows considerable skill here on the album, with lots of blast beats, groove-oriented bits, and really solid, accurate rolls and fills.  Some death metal drummers sound like they're barely keeping pace with the music, but Jon doesn't miss a beat (sorry, pun intended).

Vocally, the album has a lot going on.  Much of the vocal work is a high-pitched, almost rapsy growl that sounds more like black metal than the typical raspy death vocals of Jeff Walker or similar growler.  But similar to an early Carcass album, you also have a deeper, more mid-range to low guttural growl that is layered in with the higher-pitched rasp, creating a good contrast.  Sometimes the vocals are relatively understandable, other times the layering obscures them enough to where it's difficult to make out the lyrics, but it's not overly distracting.  Both sets of growls are quality, though, because there is some inflection and variation throughout.  I didn't get a lyric sheet with the review copy, but based on the band's previous material, it's not hard to guess that the lyrics are based on Christianity, and in a couple spots fairly obvious cries to God for help/deliverance.

There are 2 distinct qualities at work here that keep me coming back to this release.  First and foremost, the album has some level of variety in the songwriting.  There are the usual blast-fest songs that go at full speed throughout, but there are moments of real atmosphere (like the outro of "Shadow Aspect"), as well as slower-paced moments interspersed throughout that give the songs additional flavor.  Also, there are spots where some real groove is present, which keeps the album from veering too far into brutal death metal territory, and help it identify with some early death metal pioneers like Obituary, while surpassing them with a heavier, more brutal overall sound.  Secondly, the album is short and sweet.  Despite the variety present, there's only so much aural pounding one can take before an album wears out its welcome, and this release is long enough to feel like you've been sufficiently been kicked in the teeth when it's done, but not beaten to a pulp and feeling like you need to chase it with something far less heavy or insane.  It's well balanced, well produced, and well constructed overall.  It's also a major improvement over the band's earlier material.  I had previously heard the "Insufficient Flesh" EP, and this sounds like a whole new band, in a good way.  While that EP had the typical markings of a demo-quality band in the studio for the first time, this sounds like a group of seasoned professionals, staking their claim on the metal landscape and putting out a quality album with no filler.  Hats off to Endtime Productions for scoring this release, as well as for making it available on vinyl.  The vinyl has made its way to my short-list, and that says something, especially given the limited income I have to purchase music with these days.  Highly recommended for the death metal enthusiast.

80/100

Taker - It Is Finished (2014)

As a music fan, and a metal fan, I love to dig into the history of bands and find out where they came from.  I enjoy hearing early demo material from well-known bands, because it's often indicative of whether or not the band's musical prowess or abilities are their own, or whether their early records needed a lot of "studio magic" to make them sound good.  It's also interesting to hear demo material from bands that never quite got to that place where they got a record deal, so all that is available is studio demos, live recordings, basement tapes, etc.  Either way, an interesting historical perspective.

In the case of white metal band Taker, the latter is the case.  Taker never quite got off the ground, and as a result, all we have are demo recordings to understand where they were at.  Originating in Virginia, this band never got a record deal, and officially only 2 demo recordings exist with any level of distribution.  Thankfully, we have Roxx Productions to dig up recordings like these and make them more widely available to the underground music enthusiast like myself.  Not all recordings like this are going to be at a level of quality that warrants repeated listens, but thankfully, Taker is at least an interesting enough case to be worth checking out.

Taker plays the traditional American style of melodic, 1980's heavy metal sound.  There's a bit of NWOBHM influence here and there, with some fast riffing in songs like "He Is The Light" or "Living By Faith", and big, anthemic choruses that try and get a hook stuck in your head that you'll be singing long after the song is done playing.  As this is a collection of demo material, the quality varies from song to song, especially because much of this is likely tape transfers, so there is a bit lost in the analog-to-digital conversion.  In addition, there are a couple tracks where some damage to the tape(s) was apparent, as there are spots where the song sounds garbled or cuts out briefly.  This is to be expected from archival releases like this, but it's unfortunate that a better quality or less-played copy wasn't available for use.  Still, all things considered, it sounds pretty decent, and is in some ways a step up from some of the previous archive stuff Roxx did early on (like Eternal Ryte's demo material).

As expected with demo material, not everything here sounds fantastic, especially the first 4 or 5 tracks from the band's 1st demo and rehearsal tapes.  The guitars are crunchy and distorted enough, even on those tracks, so they get the job done, and you can tell the players have talent and have clearly rehearsed the material, because it's generally well-executed.  Things pick up near the middle of the CD when you get to the tracks that the band did for an Image Records session.  I could see Taker fitting well on the Image roster alongside Zion and Dreamer, but it never quite happened.  The recording quality steps up quite a bit from that point forward, and it helps give the material a bit more weight and presence.  You can also hear the consistency in performance between the early versions of "Open Your Heart" and "He Is The Light" between the 2 recordings as well.  Bass guitar is present more on the later tracks, and though standard for the music, sounds good given the time frame of the recordings.  Drumming is powerful and solid, and there are a few spots (especially in the re-record of "Yesterday, Today and Forever") where some studio wizardry gives the drums a bit of extra flair.

Lyrically, being from the 1980's, white metal, and following in the Barren/Neon Cross vein, you know what you're going to get here.  Unapologetic expression of love for and faith in Jesus Christ are the bread and butter here, and for the most part, it works well, except when things get a bit clumsy, like "The Measure" or "Look Into His Eyes".  But then metal lyrics from that era aren't known for being highly poetic, so this should be no surprise.  Vocally, Kevin Potter sticks out to me as the weak point of the band.  He can scream and hit higher notes, but there are times when I feel like he's just a bit flat, and other times when he dips into a-melodic territory in places where it doesn't make sense.  He just doesn't quite hit all the rights notes when it counts, which is something that might have been able to have been ironed out with more rehearsal, more studio time to get the right take, etc.  It's not a huge detriment, given that this is demo material, but it does detract somewhat from the songs.

Ultimately, this is going to be a release that is mostly of interest to hobbyists like myself who are interested in the history of "Christian metal".  If you're looking for the next Barren Cross, you won't find it here, but this is mostly a good listen from start to finish, minus a few embarrassing lyrical and vocal bits, and the fact that about a third of the material is repeated on the CD more than once.  The songs aren't overly memorable, though I did find myself humming the chorus of "Open Your Heart" a few times during the course of listening to this CD for the purposes of review.  This stuff would never have set the world on fire, but it does show a solid band that, with a little more practice and time, could have made a bigger impact.  Recommended for the collector and enthusiast.

60/100

Desert Island 500 - Guardian's "First Watch"

For any music lover, there are some albums which are so ingrained in the mind that impartial judgment as to the album's true artistic merit and potential flaws becomes an exercise in futility.  All but the most ardent of logicists have a handful of releases that escape the microscope and are listened to proudly and without abandon, despite perhaps not containing material that marks the zenith of the artist's career, or even of the style of music present.  I'm guilty of this phenomenon just like the next guy, and while I know it's not logical, it's just the way it happens.  Some albums introduce us to music that becomes the "gateway drug" to the style as a whole, or opens up our world to something new and exciting, and those albums usually escape the harsher judgment we heap upon releases of the same style years later because they hit us at the right time in our lives so that their influence trumps their merits.  Such is the case for me with Guardian's debut, "First Watch".

I cannot understate how important this album is for me, personally, in terms of my introduction to proper heavy metal, or how it helped to shape my perception of what the style was, was supposed to be, and potentially could be.  Indeed, there are few albums in my collection more important and vital to me than this largely forgotten gem of a release.  For me to sit down constructively and try to write an impartial review of the album based solely on the music would be like building a skyscraper out of cheese puffs - an impossible task.  I may take that on one day, in the hope that my education in the ways of music has advanced enough that I could see this with more critical eyes, but for now, I can only heap praise upon the album for all it did for me as a fan of music.  Simply put, this was the first album of heavy metal music I heard from beginning to end with no preconceptions, no concept of what it was or was supposed to be, and no idea what my ears were to behold.  It was a glorious experience.

Let me take you back to the summer of 1991 when this album first graced my ears.  I was a silly kid, dorky and nerdy, uncomfortable in my own skin, perhaps more so than most kids my age.  I had very few friends, and my options were limited.  Thankfully, one of the kids in my church who was a year younger than me latched on to me and we became fast friends.  After all, he had a Nintendo Entertainment System, and his mom's boyfriend had a Sega Master System, so we spent plenty of time together playing video games.  But one thing we sort of discovered together was music.  Another guy in our church, many years older than us, had been following the edgier side of the "Christian Contemporary Music" scene for about a decade, and had gone from the early alt rock of The Seventy Sevens, Steve Taylor, and The Choir to the hard rock and metal stylings of Stryper, Whitecross, and similar artists.  Of the bands they had already "graduated" from was Guardian, and the band's debut came into the hands of my friend Casey in the form of an original Enigma cassette, sans sleeve.  Little did this older guy know that this cassette would become one of the most frequently listened to albums for the two of us geeks.

I had previously been exposed to the idea of "Christian rock" by a long-time friend and former school mate.  I used to hang out at her house after school sometimes while my mom worked part-time, and we'd often listen to an album called "Who Do You Love?" by the group Glad, who later became far more well known for a cappella recordings.  That sparked my interest in the electric guitar, in part because of a handful of skillful solos present on that record.  But when I heard Tony Palacios burning up the fretboard on "First Watch", my love affair with heavy metal was first ignited.  Even on Casey's cheap boombox, the guitar riffs came screaming out of the speakers at me, as if they were meant for my ears.  Paul Cawley's vocals spoke directly to me, because they were easy to understand and I could relate to the lyrics.  I didn't appreciate bass guitar then like I do now, but David Bach's bass work helped bring a bit of power to the sound that would have been absent otherwise.  And though Rikk Hart's drumming wasn't out-of-this-world incredible, it was solid, and helped to tie the whole thing together.

This picture just makes me want to go buy a denim jacket and leather chaps.

I dubbed that cassette from my friend because, by that time, Enigma Records had been swallowed up by EMI, and most of the bands either flowed over to Restless Records, or went their own way.  I couldn't get a copy via the local Christian book and gift shop, and I never saw it in the store anywhere, so that was seemingly my only option.  I listened to that dub countless times, and practically memorized every note.  Some time later, I had the opportunity to get the actual cassette from Casey, and sort of "borrowed it forever" from him.  I haven't seen Casey in years, but based on the last few conversations we had, I suspect he hasn't missed it much.  That's okay, because I have held on to it all these years, so if he ever wants it back he just needs to ask.  Needless to say, the cassette is probably nigh unlistenable due to the years of use and abuse, having quickly become a personal favorite.

Fast forward five years.  I'm in college, my musical tastes have expanded to where I like everything from Poison to Mortification, and I've branched out even more the first couple months in college.  I found out that Guardian themselves were re-issuing "First Watch" via their own independent G-Man Records label, and I had to have a copy.  I knew that this might be my one and only opportunity to score a copy on CD, so I ordered 2 copies.  When they arrived at my dorm room, I turned into that dorky kid again, and as I popped one into my CD player and began listening, a revelation overtook me - there were 2 songs on here that I didn't have on my cassette copy!  With the internet still in its infancy, I didn't have access to the boundless musical databases that we have now, so I had no idea that the CD version had 2 bonus tracks, "Hyperdrive" and "Marching On".  So I listened to the whole thing to hear the CD quality tracks, eagerly awaiting the "new" songs I hadn't heard yet.  While they didn't completely blow me away at that point (I had discovered bands like Dream Theater and Tourniquet by this point), they fit in perfectly with the rest of the material, and it was just one more reason for me to continue to love "First Watch".

Fast forward a few years later, and I'm married, working full time and living back in my hometown again.  I had been casually collecting vinyl for a number of years, having started during my senior year in high school.  My younger brother bought me a vinyl copy of the album (same track list as the cassette) as a Christmas gift.  It was awesome to finally have an original copy of the album that was my own and had the sleeve and everything.  And a couple years later, I nearly scored an original Enigma CD copy when my brother and I were browsing a used CD store, but he found it first, so he got it instead.  But it didn't take me long after that to finally have an original Enigma CD copy in my collection.  In 2009, RetroActive Records re-issued the album in a digipak format, with 2 bonus tracks, "Spiritual Warfare" and the 1987 version of "Marching On", both of which were culled from the classic "California Metal" compilation.  This features a remaster by J. Powell, which just gives the album a slightly "bigger" sound to it, but doesn't mess with the mix or feel of the record.  Save for CD and LP issues out of Europe via RoadRunner Records, and possibly a Japanese pressing via Enigma/EMI, I have at least 1 copy of each major issue of the album.  Yes, I'm a fanboy, and I'm not ashamed to say so.

Now more than 20 years from when I first heard the album, it's not overly difficult to put my finger on exactly why it thrilled me so much that first time, and why I still enjoy listening to the album frequently.  Sure, Paul Cawley is a bit of a Don Dokken clone, but honestly I think I like his voice a bit more, because I feel that his combination of gritty and smooth is so good.  I wish I knew who wrote which riffs on the record, because with Paul playing rhythm guitar, it would be interesting to know whether some of my favorite riffs on the album were written by him or by guitar whiz Tony Palacios.  My guess would be, Tony wrote most of the riffs, because his Nuno Bettencourt type of style is all over that album.  Tony has always been one that wrote and played riffs that did more than just chug away, often incorporating small licks and such.  As for recording, it would also be interesting to note whether Paul played the rhythm parts, or whether Tony tracked most (if not all) the guitars in the studio, and whether or not producer Oz Fox (Stryper guitarist extraordinaire) contributed any of his guitar magic.  And while Oz's production sounds a touch thin in places where either 70's full analog big budget production, or modern Garage Band methods would give the album a more "full" sound, it fit what other bands were doing at the time, and takes nothing away from the record's overall presence.

Now, if I had to pick a version to take with me, it'd probably be the 2009 remaster, if only because it includes all the tracks, the remaster, and the "California Metal" tracks as a bonus, but even the original Enigma version would be a perfect companion to a lonely man on a desert island.  I can think of few records I'd want with me more than this one.  I can't say it's my absolute favorite at this point, nor can I say that it'd be the one I'd take if I had to choose only one (I'll speak to that topic more in later posts), but certainly for a personal top 5 or top 10, this would most definitely make the cut.  And that is reason enough for me to add it to my list, and make it one of the first records I thought of when coming up with this Desert Island 500 idea.  I encourage all fans of melodic 80's metal and hard rock to seek out this one and give it a try.  You really can't go wrong with this quality platter.

Carcass - Symphonies of Sickness (1989)

Carcass is a band that, to fans of the large umbrella known as "extreme metal", certainly needs no introduction. The band has been credited for starting at least one musical style (goregrind, via their debut, "Reek of Putrefaction"), and contributing heavily toward the start or refinement of at least 2 others (melodic death metal via "Heartwork" and the 'death and roll' style played on "Swansong").  Their 3rd record, "Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious", is often the subject of much praise and is generally lauded as their best, though my vote has always gone to "Heartwork" for that honor.  So with all of those accolades and recognition, one Carcass album is often forgotten, or at the very least, not mentioned in the same breath with the rest.  That's a shame, because "Symphonies of Sickness" is every bit as important as its brethren in the historical context of death metal, a style the band ultimately became synonymous with.

It seems to me that when it comes to early death metal, and the progenitors of the style, Carcass were among the most vicious-sounding and brutal of the lot.  They weren't the fastest, nor did their riffs have the tightest attack.  What they had, however, was a brilliant combination of heavy, muddy production, groove, riffing that could speed up or slow down to fit the mood being created, powerful drumming that alternated between creating cacophony and maintaining the aforementioned groove, and vocals that did more than just showcase some guy growling behind a microphone, but really set the bar for brutality and versatility within the style.  Despite all of this, "Symphonies of Sickness" is often left out of the conversation when talking about ground breaking albums at the beginning of the death metal movement, and is not mentioned alongside other brilliant records like Death's "Scream Bloody Gore" or perhaps "Leprosy", Bolt Thrower's "Realm of Chaos", Morbid Angel's debut "Altars of Madness", Pestilence's "Consvming Impulse" or early works by Obituary, Autopsy, and labelmates Napalm Death.  It should be, however; let me explain why.

In 1989, death metal was still a style in development.  The rise of death metal was inevitable, as bands like Death, Celtic Frost, and Possession had been pushing the boundaries of thrash metal for a number of years in the underground, but most of what is considered the earliest death metal is still grounded very much in thrash, like Pestilence's "Malleus Maleficarum", Bolt Thrower's "In Death There Is No Law", or even Death's debut "Scream Bloody Gore".  Many of the early records still had very much a thrash metal base, only taken to new extremes.  It wasn't until the sound became less focused on super-fast playing and precision riffs that death metal began to really come into play as its own style.  As vocals became more throat-ripping, guitars began to be tuned down, and tempos had a bit more leeway to speed up or slow down as necessary, death metal began to shed its thrash roots and become its own entity.  This can be seen with an album like "Realm of Chaos", which is every bit as punishing as its thrashier predecessor, but begins to turn up the brutality past 11, and sounds distinctly different than what came before.

Carcass wasn't born of thrash metal, however, they were forged in the fiery pits of hardcore punk, and their take on grindcore was so massive and brutal that it would have been nigh impossible to follow it up with another record as blistering as "Reek of Putrefaction".  Instead, they followed up that bullet train of an assault with something more akin to a fleet of Sherman tanks cruising down the road.  Yeah, they can still go fast if need be, but they're far more menacing and imposing than the train is, because the tank can slow way down and target something specific, or stop altogether and bring a full-on assault.  Such is the case with "Symphonies of Sickness", which takes the heavy nature of its predecessor and while turning down the speed knob, cranked the intensity and brutality knobs up to the max and broke them off in the process.  What they developed by doing so is arguably the heaviest and most insane record of 1989.

Musically, "Symphonies" is a monster.  I'm not sure how Bill Steer's guitar tone was so thick and chunky in 1989, but the band deserves some kudos for both their choice of equipment and their production technique (or perhaps lack thereof) in achieving the sound of this album.  Bill's guitar has such a grind and grit to it, completely forsaking the razor-sharp sound that thrash metal bands aim for, instead, sinking into the murky depths of what became the signature of the death metal guitar sound throughout the Florida scene.  Jeff's bass rumbles confidently alongside Bill's riffing, and often underneath his solos, giving the album a lot more weight than many of Carcass' contemporaries lacked until years later when they had bigger budgets and a producer like Scott Burns at the mixing board.  Jeff's bass sounds truly menacing with that thick, dirty and distorted tone.  Meanwhile behind the drums, Ken Owen sounds a whole lot more in control this time around. He still has a bit of fine tuning which will become evident across the rest of the band's discography, but compared to the hyper fast, barely-on-the-rails drumming of "Reek of Putrefaction", this is a lot more precise an attack, no doubt from the years of playing the "Reek" material and building up stamina, as well as a better handle on the timing needed to pull off this kind of material.  And while dynamics aren't normally something you would think of when discussing death metal, when the music slows down to groove a bit or let the song catch a quick breath before ramping up again, Ken follows suit and the drumming matches what's going on elsewhere.

Vocally, this is some pretty raw and intense stuff.  For death metal in the late 1980's, it was common for vocalists to employ a real throaty yell/scream or a mid-range growl, not unlike John Tardy of Obituary.  So the dual vocal attack of Jeff Walker's high-pitched growl/shriek and the much lower-end growl of Bill Steer was both new and exciting at this stage of the game.  Death Metal hadn't reached that stage where everyone was playing playing the vocal limbo, i.e. "how low can you go", so this kind of guttural sound was still relatively untapped, save for a handful of other bands.  Personally, I think had the band employed only Jeff's higher pitched growls, while the album would have still been unique and innovative, it would have been less so, because this kind of vocal trade-off and layering didn't become a major component in the style until better, more experienced producers came along and added the layering/overdubs for maximum effect.  Lyrically, this treads the same medical journal-infested waters as the band's debut, requiring medical textbooks and a thesaurus handy to understand all that's going on, but as most fans know, the early lyrics were all about bodily processes, such as rotting, intestinal disease & other ailments, and additional, similarly appetizing topics.  Not the stuff of emotionally charged debate, but from their vegetarian perspective, pertinent, and certainly years head of its time, culturally speaking.

The album is not without its flaws, however.  Being a self-produced album with such a dirty, grungy sound to it means that sometimes the clarity of the guitar is lost unless you're cranking it up to the max.  As such, the complexity of the riffing can sometimes be muted a bit, and the songs are a bit less memorable when you don't have those key riffs playing in your head for hours after you've spun the album.  "Symphonies" has less a problem than some of its contemporaries in this regard because it's not all about break-neck speed, so sometimes the groovier passages will stick with you a bit longer, but it's a valid concern.  As with a lot of metal albums from this time as well, the drums should be more powerful and sound larger than they are, so obviously the band didn't spend as much time in post-production adjusting the volume on the drums to bring them up in the mix enough to give them a bit more weight.  This is a minor complaint, as the drumming is generally always audible, but as compared to latter-day Carcass efforts, I'd like to be able to hear Ken more as he's pounding away.  Also, while they all sound good, many of Bill's solos are still quite primitive and show that he hadn't yet come into his own in that area.  All the solos here fit the songs and work well enough, but compared with what he provided over the course of the 2 albums that followed, his work here is a touch sloppy and almost apprehensive, as if he's afraid to cut loose too much.  When he does, it sounds good, but you can tell that the precision he later achieved was still absent.

These minor complaints are spoken in hindsight, of course, as this whole release was completely ground breaking and unprecedented upon its release in 1989.  Save for labelmates and countrymen Bolt Thrower and Napalm Death, arguably fellow European death metallers Pestilence, and quite possibly Florida's Morbid Angel, Carcass had a corner on the market in 1989 with "Symphonies of Sickness" in terms of sheer heaviness, as well as employing the unique dual vocalist approach, which gave them an element their peers lacked.  The band modified this approach with their next album 2 years later, which propelled them into legendary status within the scene, but this album should have already cemented that place on its own merits.  This is a landmark release that doesn't always get the credit it deserves in context with other albums of its time, and that's too bad, because it's a powerful statement from a group who showed the metal world that the best was yet to come, alongside a set of peers that never quite escaped the shadow of the albums they released the same year.  Essential, if not for the music alone, for the historical significance.

82/100

My Love Affair With Lightening Force, part 2

Here's Part 1 of this series, in case you missed it!

Here in Part 2 of "My Love Affair With Lightening Force", I want to focus on a portion of the game that has been a constant companion for me over the last 20+ years: the music.  Over the last few years, the Chiptune music community has grown from a handful of guys and gals writing music based around the Chiptune aesthetic, or some even authentically using NES, Game Boy, Genesis, or other console sound chips to generate new, original music or sometimes remakes or re-imaginings of existing game music.  Some of this music is decidedly "game music" in nature, whether it belongs to a game or not, because it has much the same construction or "feel" to it as many game soundtracks do.  Others are wholly different creations, spanning genres as diverse as classical, metal, synthpop, EBM/techno, industrial, and even factoring into nerdcore hip-hop.  Chiptune artists have begun to gain more widespread appeal, with groups like Anamanaguchi having garnered more media attention than the average obscure band.

During the early stages of computer & video game development, music was often used sparingly to accent certain scenes or situations, often signaling the achievement of a power-up, start or end of a level, indicate a boss encounter, or to let you know you just met a key level objective.  Many early arcade games had little or no music, and many early computer games did the same, because the basic "beeps and boops" of simple PC & game hardware sound chips would grate after a while, or perhaps because there wasn't enough processing power to make music AND sound at the same time successfully.  As computers became more complex, and in turn, gaming hardware followed suit, we began to have simplistic song loops that complemented the game we were playing, often trying to evoke a certain mood or feeling that matched the level, game, or overall theme of what we were playing.  There are certainly some iconic tracks accompanying games, like a chiptune version of the Peter Gunn theme playing in the game Spy Hunter, or the now infamous level 1-1 music for the original Super Mario Bros.

I'm sure the Peter Gunn theme is stuck in your head now.  You're welcome.

During each era, there are music teams and/or composers who stand out on a particular game console as masters of their craft, because either they make really effective use of the console's sound hardware, or because they push that hardware to the limit and make it do things that perhaps even the creators of the hardware didn't even know were possible.  Such was the case with Sunsoft during the heyday of the Nintendo Entertainment System.  One listen to most any of their original soundtracks, and you'd know you were listening to something that had pushed beyond the mere boundaries of what other game companies were doing to take the tunes to that next level.  One listen to the soundtracks for Sunsoft's Batman title, or Journey to Silius, and you'll know what I mean.  Compare those 2 soundtracks to any other on the system, and you know they found a way to push the hardware to new heights, with great success.  More realistic drum sounds, "fuller" instrument sounds, and just a more atmospheric overall feel.

"I'm Batman."  Stage 2 theme.

Definitely a forgotten gem of a game, and game soundtrack!  Title screen theme.

In the Genesis era, while Sega made great use of the sound hardware for its first party titles (Sonic the Hedgehog rings true), it was Techno Soft that developed into one of the masters of the Z80 sound hardware.  This didn't happen all at once, however.  Thunder Force II and III had good soundtracks, but they still relied on some of the same typical "instrument sets" as were utilized by other game makers at the time, while pioneering some of their own.  In fact, despite the similarity in sound and approach between games, the music for Thunder Force II was actually composed by Tomomi Ootani.  He worked with Toshiharu Yamanishi for Thunder Force III, but Thunder Force IV (aka Lightening Force) was primarily done by Toshiharu Yamanishi.  Toshiharu Yamanishi's credits also include the nicely done soundtrack to the Genesis game Elemental Master, a bit of a hidden shmup gem for the console.  He's also worked on soundtracks for several obscure, Japan-only releases for PlayStation and PC.  On the Sega Genesis (or MegaDrive, if you prefer), he found his voice with his compositions for Thunder Force IV.

This man is a genius.

His soundtrack for LF/TFIV is nothing short of incredible.  It takes the same "bigger" approach that Sunsoft did with the NES and threw out the rule book.  The instrument set has a "fuller" and thicker sound than before, there is actual bass sound, the drum sounds in use are heavy and driving, and the music encompasses several genres of rock, heavy metal, avant-garde, electronic, and more traditional video game balladry or pomp & circumstance.  One listen to the intro music to the game's title screen (a track known as "Lightning Strikes Again"), and it's abundantly clear that this isn't going to be your typical Genesis game soundtrack.  Screaming heavy metal guitars, drum sounds that are more than just thin snare hits and limp bass drum, bass guitar sound that is present in the mix, and a layered sound that belies the fact that it is still mere sound chip-based video game music.  Each subsequent track takes you on a journey through some of the most meticulously composed and arranged music you'll hear in a video game.  While some games work best with spare music and effects, Lightening Force was all about the "bigger, better, more" approach that shoot-em-ups were taking, and the music reflected that perfectly.  Everything you love about a good, high-energy shmup soundtrack was taken to the Nth degree here.

In fact, the soundtrack for Lightening Force has been a favorite of mine since practically the first time I booted the game up.  I was instantly impressed by the music in the game so much that I would sometimes boot it up and go into the hidden options screen (accessible by holding down the A, B or C buttons at or before the Title Screen and hitting Start on the controller) for the sole purpose of listening to the music, it is that good.  Imagine my delight, then, when I found out that after beating the game, you unlock the 10 "Omake" tracks, all tracks composed for the game, but ultimately not used within any level or portion of the game.  I poured over those songs like I did the main soundtrack, because by and large, they were just as good.  Some of the Omake tracks have become just as much favorites as some of the level themes.  It's a shame there wasn't more game to include those songs, but the game is so good as it stands, it's hard to argue with them just being bonus songs.

I'm going to switch into "hyper nerd" mode for a moment, and explain my obsession with the LF/TFIV tunes a bit more in depth.  A year out of high school, I got married, and when I went into the work force shortly thereafter, I got a job with a telemarketing firm.  Initially, I was just calling leads like everyone, but a few months in I worked my way into the IT department.  From there, I advanced whenever and however I could.  Having access to the equipment that I did at that time was a real treat, and I was able to do some pretty cool things.  I began rekindling my love for gaming which had been slightly cooled between college and marriage, and pulled out my beloved Genesis console and hooked it up at home.  Pulling out Lightening Force again and playing it, I remembered what a fantastic soundtrack it was, and how much I wished I could take that soundtrack with me on the go.  Keep in mind, this was in mid-1998, when the graphical Internet was just beginning to really get a foothold, so there were no game music MP3 downloads, no .VGM files for complete soundtracks, nothing.  If I wanted to accomplish that desire, I had to do it myself.  So I moved my Genesis into the home office, connected a cable from the stereo out jack on the face of the Genesis to the Microphone/Input port on my PC's trusty Soundblaster card, and began the arduous task of using GoldWave (STILL fantastic software) to record each song from the game.  As is now standard with .VGM soundtrack rips (and indeed, most finite-length console game music rips), I recorded just over 2 loops of each track and manually programmed a 5-20 second fade-out for each one, depending on the total track length and level of repeat in the main melody line.  It wasn't an exact science, to be sure, but I feel as though my original recordings were well timed.

All those recordings were done to .WAV files, which was quite space consuming on my then-huge 1.5GB hard drive.  In order to burn them to CD, I had to somehow get them to the office.  I didn't have a CD burner yet, because those were quite expensive at first.  We had a single speed, external parallel port model at the office, that had the full tray you would drop the CD into, close the lid, then insert into the drive.  When done, you'd eject the tray, pull it out, open the lid, take out the CD and then label accordingly.  It was a thing of beauty for a guy just starting out in IT.  We didn't have USB thumb drives back then, because half the PCs around were still running Windows 95 and wouldn't even have supported such a thing, so I had to compress the files down to 256KB .MP3 files, copy them onto a pair of 100MB Iomega Zip Disks (remember those?), take them to the office, copy them back to a PC, then convert those .MP3 files back into .WAV files, since that was the only audio format the burner software recognized.  Prior to that conversion, I did a little fiddling with the files, using GoldWave to boost the bass levels a bit, so that I could get a bit more low-end when listening on a stereo system.  Unfortunately, this made the tracks slightly "buzzy", in that the added bass made the bass level just a bit too high, so when the tracks were compressed, then converted back to .WAV files, there was more a bit more noise in the mix than would be preferred.  I still think they sound good, but I'm more acutely aware of such things today as I was then.  Besides, I didn't have much choice at that time, due to limitations of the technology at my disposal.

These babies were awesome for carrying around files larger than would fit on a measly 1.44MB floppy drive.

I used the company's Photoshop 4 license to design and create the CD sleeve artwork, as well as the tray card.  At the time, text with flames was a big thing, so of course, I found a Photoshop Action file to assist with that.  For the tray card, I also wanted to include screenshots of the game from various locations, but there weren't really any image search engines or great scans of most games yet (Google Images was just a glint in the eye!), so I had to make my own.  I downloaded the now-defunct Genecyst emulator for DOS (still a remarkable feat of coding) and proceeded to play through much of the game via keyboard controls in order to get the level screenshots I wanted.  I ended up with great shots from the Air Raid & Daser stages, as well as a shot over the Level 5 battleship, and a nice boss fight shot of Level 6, complete with discharge of the powered-up CRAW.  I didn't have the right software or materials to print a CD label, so I had to make due with just using a fine-tip marker to label the disc itself.  But after designing the sleeve and tray card, I used up A LOT of ink in my Epson printer in order to print them out.  Due to the limitations (at that time) of CD-R technology, I was relegated to a 650MB CD, topping out at 74 minutes of music.  The way I lined out the tracks, I filled that 74 minutes completely, and had to omit "Omake 10", the continue screen music, as well as the standard Ranking Screen theme, and even the Game Over music, and then slightly shorten a couple tracks to make it all fit.  With today's 700MB, 80-minute CD-R discs, I think I *might* be able to make it all fit on one disc.  In any event, it was an exercise in calculation and careful planning to get it all recorded, converted, formatted properly, and laid out in a manner that would allow me to get it onto a blank CD-R disc.  As you can see by the finished product below, a lot of love went into this project.

It doesn't look as nice today, but at the time I printed the sleeve & tray card up, I thought it was absolutely fantastic.

Something else you may not be able to tell immediately from the picture (unless you look at it full-resolution) is that I came up with all my own track names.  The Internet was still quite new, and there weren't endless resources regarding video game music yet.  No Video Game Music Database yet, no Galbadia Hotel (no, I'm not linking there!), not even a fully formed VGMusic site yet.  I had no way of knowing, other than watching the game's credits roll, who composed the music in the game, let alone the song titles of each track.  So, without the benefit of a track list, using only the instruction manual & intimate knowledge of the game as my guide, I set about naming all the songs in the game so I could come up with a nice tracklist for the tray card.  I broke each stage into a "suite", and then created 2 suites at the end, 1 for the various endgame music tracks, and 1 for the omake bonus tracks.  Below is a chart (yes, I'm that nerdy) detailing my track titles & order, along side the actual titles, and what stage/area they each correspond to.

My Title	Actual Title	Stage/Area
Intro to Kha-Oss	Lightning Strikes Again	Title Screen
Prepare For Battle	Tan Tan Ta Ta Ta Tan	Options Screen
Decisions, Decisions...	Don't Go Off	Course Select
Conflict Above the Strite Sea	Fighting Back	Stage 1A
Testing the Waters	What!	Stage 1B
Battle of the Stritian Sea	Evil Destroyer	Stage 1 Boss
Daser Deluge	Sand Hell	Stage 4A
Desert Assault	Where!	Stage 4B
Iron Phoenix	Strike Out	Stage 4 Boss
Target Practice	Space Walk	Stage 2A
Left In Ruins	Danger!! Danger!!	Stage 2B
Ruined By the Clawed Wonder	Attack Sharply	Stage 2 Boss
Intercepting the Fleet	The Sky Line	Stage 3A
Air-Raid in the Eastern Sky	Air Raid	Stage 3B
Multi-Faceted Techno Terror	Simmer Down	Stage 3 Boss
Battleship	Battle Ship	Stage 5
Indestructable Behemoth	Stranger	Stage 5 Boss
Knighted With Thunder	Neo Weapon	Stage 5 Docking
Braving the Waves of Volbados	Great Sea Power	Stage 6
Frozen Aquatic Menace	The Breaker	Stage 6 Boss
Entrance to the Bio-Base	Sea of Flame	Stage 7
Armordillo	Rancor	Stage 7 Boss
Bio-Infiltration	Metal Squad	Stage 8
Infestation vs. Electro-Pesticide	Phantom	Stage 8 Bosss
Heart of Vios	Down Right Attack	Stage 9
Menacing Mass of Machinery and Mayhem	Recalcitrance	Stage 9 Boss
Paradox (Cannon In Death Major)	The Danger Zone	Stage 10
Supercomputer Shutdown	War Like Requiem	Stage 10 Boss
Reflections of a Shallow Victory	Shooting Stars	Easy Ending
Still No Impending Danger	Silvery Light of the Moon	Normal Ending
Almost Overtaken	Light of Silence	Hard Ending
True Victory	Love Dream	Maniac Ending
Victory's Theme	Stand Up Against Myself	Staff Roll
Next To Excellence	Remember of Knight of Legend	Name Entry
Spoils of War	Because You're Number One	Name Entry Ace Ranking
Rynex Theme	Omake 1	Omake 1
Fight Theme	Omake 2	Omake 2
Stukk's Theme	Omake 3	Omake 3
Galaxy Federation Theme	Omake 4	Omake 4
Kha-Oss Theme	Omake 5	Omake 5
Vios Theme	Omake 6	Omake 6
Emperor Lohun's Theme	Omake 7	Omake 7
Lightening Force Theme	Omake 8	Omake 8
Cruise Home	Omake 9	Omake 9

Now, keep in mind, the main purpose for this chart is to preserve my own work.  I don't expect anyone else to care about it, really, but since the Photoshop files for this stuff are probably long gone and I can't easily re-create them without going through all the steps again, part of what I'm trying to do here is to just save this for my own posterity.  Plus it gave me a chance to see a couple gross errors in my track listing.  I had the tracks for the Daser, Air Raid and the Ruins stages switched around and they were labeled wrong on my custom tray card, so that's something I would want to fix.  In addition, I noticed that for "Omake 7", I had a typo resulting in the title showing up as "Eperor" instead of "Emperor".  I'm generally meticulous enough to avoid such things, but mistakes like that happen, and it's good that I'm finally catching some of that.  Not because I can do anything about it now, but because I'm picky about such things and I have some teensy sense of closure this way.  It also factors in to my decision to possibly tackle this project again, with the key differences being that I'll try & fit all songs onto the one CD, I won't enhance or change the tracks in any way prior to them being burned to CD, no compression will take place prior to the CD burn, and the sleeve & tray card prints will be done via my personal color laser printer, probably on a heavier card stock for a more durable, long-lasting and professional look.  If I do that, I will probably make the finished product available for download in various parts, probably a combination of high-res .PNG or GiMP formatted graphics and then FLAC files for the audio.  My big decision will be whether to use the "official" track names, or keep my own and augment them with a few new ones.  I really like some of the original names, such as "Recalcitrance", "War Like Requiem", "Sand Hell", "Because You're Number One", and especially "Stand Up Against Myself" - awesome stuff.

So with all of my blubbering on about how excellent the music is, and all my nostalgia for the CD project that took so much love and effort, I think it's about time I stop talking about it and just share.  Below, I'll be linking to a couple things.  First, a YouTube video that contains a nice play-through and the entire soundtrack to the game straight through, in a nice sequential order.  In addition, I'm going to link to the soundtrack download via Project2612, a great website which offers downloads of Sega Genesis/Megadrive rips in .VGM format, the current recognized king of Sega Genesis (and other consoles) music formats.  VGM way outperforms the older .GYM specification in nearly every aspect, but keep in mind that Genesis sound emulation isn't 100% accurate.  It's so close that you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference, but it's not 1:1 sound.  For a really authentic experience, the way to do it is to get the cart yourself and experience it firsthand.

Project2612 page to download of the Thunder Force IV soundtrack

Stay tuned for part 3, where I gush about the game's graphics!

My Love Affair With Lightening Force, part 1

You beautiful Engrish, you.

In the summer of 1992, I was the proud owner of a brand new Sega Genesis console, complete with Sonic the Hedgehog pack-in cartridge.  I had previously played Sonic, and indeed a Sega Genesis, via a casual friend from school.  He was the guy that lived with his grandparents and seemed to have a limitless supply of new cool stuff to show off to the other guys in school.  So when the Sega Genesis came out and was the "next big thing" in video games in our little corner of the world, he was the first one in town to have one, and we were all lined up at his house to watch in awe as he booted up Altered Beast with its then-awesome graphics, sound, and presentation.  Those huge characters!  The beyond-awesome transformation screen completely with cheesy/cool fire effect!  Those big bosses!  It was magical.  And even though hindsight tells us differently, Last Battle was even impressive those first few times we played it.  I was witnessing the beginning of something incredible.

Thankfully, this wasn't indicative of the future of gaming.  Except the blood part.

Fast forward a year or so later, and this same guy had come home with a new game that was highly anticipated: Sonic the Hedgehog.  Once again, we all lined up to play, and when I finally got my chance at the control pad, I was awestruck at the incredible graphics, fun music, great level design, and simple but effective mechanics.  By the time I had played long enough to get through the Green Hill Zone and reached the Marble Zone, I was sold on the game.  Once I saw the Labyrinth Zone and how much variety there was in the game, I absolutely knew I just HAD to have the game, and a Sega Genesis system to play it on.  My mission was clear: attain a Genesis console by any and all means necessary, within my Jr. High kid's allowance limits.  Unfortunately, that meant waiting until I had nearly graduated, if I was to go at that pace.  Thus, I made the difficult choice to sell my Game Boy system I had bought just 3 years earlier, along with all my carts, to earn enough money to go in half-way with my younger brother to purchase the Genesis console, along with a used TV to play it on.  My parents never allowed me to purchase or own the NES console, because they said I would monopolize the TV, and they were right.  By the time the Genesis came into the picture, my parents at least told me I could get a TV to play it on, since my brother and I could purchase this stuff together.

I spent weeks pouring over Sonic the Hedgehog, playing until I had mastered each level and got through the game all the way.  I then went back and played through again while gathering all of the Chaos Emeralds and perfecting my technique.  After that, my younger brother, a friend, and myself all played the first couple levels doing "speed trials", seeing who could complete the first couple stages the fastest.  I held the record for Green Hill Zone stage 1, at just 30 seconds.  I don't know that I've ever been able to complete it that fast since, but it sure was a rush zooming through tubes, around loops, and spinning through the air propelling toward the end of the level.

Run, blue hedgehog, run!

So why all this talk about Sonic the Hedgehog?  What about Lightening Force?  I'm getting to that, gentle reader, but I feel it's necessary to set up my history with the Genesis console, and just how much it meant to me as a young lad to finally have my own, having only played at friend's houses for years.  Point being, I spent an awful lot of time on Sonic.  I also clocked a lot of hours on the puzzle game Columns.  I played Quackshot starring Donald Duck a lot, and dumped a heap of time into Decap Attack too.  I played Strider a ton until I finished it, then set it aside and didn't touch it again for some 10 years.  I (mistakenly) sold Fantasia and Toki after finishing them.  But I don't think I spent more time on the Sega Genesis with ANY game outside of Lightening Force.

I had read positive reviews for Thunder Force II and Thunder Force III, but hadn't actually had the pleasure of playing them.  Matter of fact, I hadn't even had the joy of playing a Sega Genesis shoot-em-up yet, because I didn't own any, and no one I knew that had a Genesis had one at that point.  Guys were too busy with Sonic the Hedgehog to invest time in yet another scrolling shooter.  But when I saw Lightening Force (known as Thunder Force IV outside of the US) on the shelf at Kay Bee Toys, despite the humorously misspelled name, I knew that was a game I had to have.  It was a similar reaction to the box art, screenshots, and description as my first reaction to the Genesis when I played it, or Sonic when I first laid eyes on the game.  I was filled with a complete wonderment and desire to jump right in and play.  So a few months after I bought my Genesis, I plunked down the $40 I had been saving up to buy a new game and took it home, anticipating what an incredible game it was going to be.  I had made my mind up already that it was going to be great.

Say what you will about "Western" box art, but I think this is just as effective as the Japanese artwork at communicating just what's in store.

Thankfully, when I actually got it home and plugged it into my console, it was just as magical as I had hoped.  My clunky old 19 inch tube TV crackled with incredible music and vibrant colors, and I was wowed at the parallax scrolling, fast moving game play (Blast Processing!), interesting locales, and intuitive weapon system.  I was struck at the Mega Man-like ability to choose the order of the first four stages, which lent an element of strategy and planning that I hadn't previously seen in a shooter.  I was immediately sucked-in when my ship suddenly went underwater in the Strite stage, presumably to face off against the giant battleship, only to discover that was but a ruse.  I was thrilled with the giant Blade weapon, and awed by the powerful Rail Gun.  When I made it to the Ruins level, I was impressed with the Hunter weapon, a truly useful homing weapon that made things easier, but still no cakewalk.  This was the shooter I had waited all my gaming life for.  Gradius had entertained me, and R-Type 2 had impressed my socks off in the arcade (my local bowling alley!), but this...THIS was the game that all those previous shoot-em-ups had teased me about, the game that would be the culmination of all that had come before it.  At least in my 15-year old mind, it would.

The thing to understand about Lightening Force is that, it was the penultimate scrolling shooter game on the Genesis, and rivaled even the Super NES for sheer quality.  The SNES port of Gradius III was plagued by slowdown.  Super R-Type wasn't quite the conversion of R-Type 2 many had hoped for, and was just a slow game overall.  Axelay was impressive, but the 2.5D overhead perspective of some stages was confusing and it was difficult to judge the perspective.  And other than Mode 7 effects, it didn't offer anything more impressive than what Lightening Force was already doing.  And the ill-fated Thunder Spirits, a SNES port of the arcade conversion of Thunder Force III (aka Thunder Force AC), was a mediocre translation of Thunder Force III that was actually inferior in many ways to the Genesis original.  That doesn't mean these games are inherently *bad* by any stretch, but compared to Lightening Force in terms of all it has to offer, all it can do, and all the entertainment value it brings, they just don't add up.  I feel the same way about the rest of the shmup library on the Genesis as well - there are plenty of gems like Gaiares, M.U.S.H.A., Robo-Aleste, Android Assault, and the Japan-only releases of Gleylancer and Eliminate Down, but I still believe Lightening Force stands tall above the rest due to its sheer quality and execution.

So now that you've read an entire novella of me gushing about the game, how about reading some more on the subject?  Because I'm far too emotionally connected to this title to do a proper, objective review, I'm simply going to break it down into various components and talk about the game at length.  I'll do a whole part on the music, as that was highly influential for me, and talk about some of my obsessiveness over same.  I'll do an entire section on the graphics, and may delve a bit into the technical details that prove why this game was head and shoulders above the competition for the Genesis.  I plan on writing a portion on the game play and level design, because I think it bears exploring more specifically.  I will also likely write a piece musing about my memories of playing, beating the game, discovering the "omake" music tracks, the "99 lives" trick, and more.  I realize that is a lot of content to write about a single game, but I feel like this game often gets skipped over when people talk about the best games the Sega Genesis has to offer, and that's a shame, because it's an absolute gem.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series!

Game On! "Guardian Saga" for iPhone

With all the powerful, fancy technologies available today, gaming has risen from the status of "Slightly less than nerdy" to a very mainstream, acceptable thing to do.  People play Farmville and Bejeweled on their Facebook accounts, Angry Birds on their phones, and Wii Sports with their families.  Where gaming was once a bastion of geekery everywhere, it has become so ubiquitous now that it's becoming harder to remember the time when geeky kids (like myself long ago) gathered around a TV and a Nintendo or Sega console to fend off hordes of demons, take out rival gangs, stomp on walking mushrooms and turtles, and collect golden rings at high speeds through a grassy green area.  Indeed, those halcyon days of childhood gaming bliss are sadly no more.

What we have today is a group of very powerful game consoles that do their best to impress you with realistic graphics, sound that can match the latest blockbuster movie, and gameplay mechanics that are not always easy to pick up when initially sitting down to play.  Now, don't get me wrong: I enjoy the impressive nature of today's games.  I like the faux-realism of a title like inFAMOUS (makes me a want a PS3 real bad!), and a title like L.A. Noir reminds me that we have come so far in the pursuit of realism within gaming.  But, call me crazy, sometimes I long for the simpler days of yore where small sprites that barely resembled the character they were portraying jaunted across the screen in pursuit of the big bad foe and the "action sounds" of a game like Double Dragon sounded more like snapping wafers than snapping necks.

Thankfully, I am not the only one who feels this way, as the Wii Virtual Console service would attest, as well as the string of casual games available on various smartphone platforms.  Not to mention the handheld gaming market is still a place where more retro-styled games can happily exist without being tampered with too much.  So while there have been a number of retro-styled RPG games developed for the smartphone world, none can claim to be as purposefully retro as Guardian Saga for the iPhone.  Indeed, this 8 or 16-bit wonder (developed by 9th Bit Games) is the most retro-styled game I have played so far on the iPhone, and is one of the most enjoyable games I've played on any smartphone platform (yes, even against Angry Birds!).

Guardian Saga is a nice amalgamation of classic RPG gameplay and slightly updated graphics.  Visually, the game resembles 8-bit classic RPG's, with Dragon Warrior being the primary influence.  Graphically, though Dragon Warrior is the main influence, elements of early Final Fantasy titles also creep in, though everything is much more bold and bright.  The graphics are cleaner than an 8-bit title, so they have a more polished 16-bit look to them, though some of the effects (like the fog over the water) are far too clean even for 16 or 32-bit, so obviously some of the graphical power of the iPhone is used.  Fade-in and fade-out effects are nice, and what little animation there is in the game is done nicely, with that touch of old-school feel to it.  The music in the game is reminiscent of 8-bit RPGs as well, and I'm reminded very much of the GameBoy title Final Fantasy Legend (the original), which actually isn't a true Final Fantasy title, but rather the English translation of Makai Toushi Sa·Ga instead.

I've been walking o're the world map, all the live-long day...

Gameplay is very simple, with lots of map crawling, loads of random, turn-based battles, and talking to NPCs in the various towns and locations.  Conversation with most NPCs is pretty dry, though there are a few funny moments (a redneck girl in one town cracked me up) and a handful of characters that will say more than one sentence to you.  Indeed, these aren't the lengthy conversations that recent RPGs give you, but resemble the kinds of things programmers had to sacrifice when they had only so much memory to work with on a game cartridge.  Overall, this game has a nice clean, bright, familiar but enjoyable graphic appeal to it.

All this fog has to be a harbinger of some kind!

Music is nice in that old chip-tune way, though pretty sparse.  Sound effects are also wonderfully retro, though again, sparse.  The world map is actually fairly decent in size for the relatively small scale/scope of the game Guardian Saga actually is.  Control is fantastic, wich a nice NES-styled see-through "control pad" on the screen (lower-left corner) and then a single "action" button when you need to either talk to an NPC or activate something (like switches in the Earth Shrines).  Directional control with this simplistic method is very fluid and works fantastically.  Battle scenes are directed by simply tapping the option you want to choose (Attack, Magic, or Run) and it does just what you tell it to do - simple, elegant, and it just works.

This enemy is called "Bubbles" - sure doesn't look cute and cuddly!

The menu system (accessible by tapping the stats pop-up in the upper-left corner when remaining stationary) is also intuitive, giving clear indication of what you need access to.  Equipment can be swapped out merely by tapping on the existing equipment you want to replace and picking the new out of the list.  Spells are accessible via the Magic screen, and are available via a single tap.  Items and qeuipment are just as easily reached.  The "Quick Save" option is useful if you need to save somewhere outside of a town (you normally save at the local pub, of all places), though it does exit to the main menu when you choose that option.

Yeah, I got your options right here.

So with all this great gameplay and content, what's not to like?  While I applaud the designers for what they've done here, there are a few improvements that could be made.  Firstly, the music and sound effects are incredibly sparse.  There should be more of both, and the music should change based on being in different locales more than just world map music, cave/dungeon music, and "the storyline is advancing via cutscene" music.  The few sound effects are good but there just needs to be more of them.  Also, while the game is easy to pick up and relatively easy to play, there just aren't enough options - a larger world map would be good with more towns and a bit more "easing" into weapon and armor upgrades.  After your first 2 upgrades things start to get really expensive and you have to do a lot of grinding just to build up enough cash to get that sword or armor you want, which is a bit more tedious than it needs to be.  Random battles are always a point of contention with traditional RPG games, and while the battle frequency is nicely balanced, I feel like the battles could be better somehow.  I also feel like the game is a bit short - I'm only about 4 hours or so in to the game and I'm already about to down the 3rd Guardian (out of 4), so it seems like even the shortest early console RPGs had more gameplay than this.  I would really love to see a sequel to this game with a larger map, more music & sounds, more varied areas/landscapes, a longer and more involved story, and more NPC interactions (with more humor).

Despite my few qualms with the game design, this is a well constructed adventure that really evokes that feeling of late night Dragon Warrior  or Final Fantasy marathons, which ultimately is what this game appears designed to do.  It takes me back to my childhood where RPGs were somewhat daunting and intimidating (before they really started to interest me), so they make me recall the Friday night sleepovers at my best friend's house, and me staying up late to try Dragon Warrior after he fell asleep, only to be bested by the stupid blobs.  This is a fun adventure that is well worth the $1.99 9th Bit Games is charging for it, even though I snagged my copy free via the FreeAppADay service.  If you have any interest in classic RPG gaming or want to relive the early stages of the genre's heyday, this is the adventure for you.  Highly recommended.