chloe!!

once again rotating the mother series in my mind

So yesterday I did a post about Mother 1/Earthbound Beginnings for my Retro Achievements series. That focused mostly on story and vibe and my history with the game, and its sequel Earthbound, but I didn't really talk about possibly my FAVORITE aspect of Mother 1, that being its music. Mother 1 is one of my favorite soundtracks of all time.

I'm going to start THIS post with a story, too. So, I saw this video a few months ago where people sent this guy bad video game music, then he listened to it and gave it a rating. Simple stuff, I like bad music, so I thought it'd be fun. One of the songs that was suggested was "Cry of Giegue", or Giygas, the final boss. Give it a listen. Also, headphone warnings, make sure it's a little quieter.

This is from one of those "extended" collections where they take music and stretch it to 15 minutes. And you'll notice if you look at those comments on that video that most people are like "ah yes, perfect music for a final boss, a loud shrill whistle, thank you."

IT IS PERFECT MUSIC FOR THE FINAL BOSS.

See, Mother 1's ost is absolutely fucking amazing.... in context. In the moment this music is in, it's tense, and scary. But you don't just listen to it for like, 7 minutes straight while fighting a traditional final boss. See, Giegue is too strong for you. WAY too strong. So how do you defeat him? By reminding him of the love of his mother and wearing down his desire to fight. By singing at him. So this tense, overwhelming, incomprehensible sound is trying to overpower you, as you break through it, little by little, with the beautiful and haunting 8 melodies. With the power of love. It is PERFECT for the moment its in, but out of context, you look up "final boss music of Mother 1" on Youtube, get this, and are like "wow what were they thinking poopy ass buffaloo shit" etc etc etc.

Now, if you want to listen to the Mother 1 soundtrack out of context, I recommend THIS:

Yes! In 1989 they made an entire lyrical soundtrack based on the music of Mother. This might be the first time I can think of where music from a video game was given official lyrics in this capacity. All of the music is completely reimagined from NES bloops and blips and given a full makeover, with beautiful singing (for the most part) and instrumentation.

This version of Pollyanna will be in my head for the rest of my life. And while yes, the singer of All I Needed (Was You) MIGHT have been a 4 year old Elmer Fudd singing in falsetto, I really REALLY love that one too. Honestly the entire soundtrack is fantastic, and every time I play Mother, these lyrics are in my head. Because almost the entire soundtrack IS in English! It makes sense. Mother takes place in America, it's built on Americana, why wouldn't its music have English lyrics too?

The entire soundtrack is fantastic, and absolutely worth listening to. It does genuinely change how to go through Mother, those lyrics won't leave your head. And nothing fits the Mother universe and vibe quite like a cheesy song about friendship with really ominous backing instrumentation.

Alright so I think I've sold that Mother is really really good, and its music is fantastic and fits extremely well for the game its in. It takes that kinda ominous but optimistic energy that the game uniquely has and multiplies it. But what if it was BETTER?

The VRC7 is a mapper chip for NES cartridges. Mapper chips are basically chips that were added into an NES cart to improve how the NES ran. The console is actually REALLY weak, it relies on these mapper chips a lot. This mapper chip has some unique properties to it, in that it can produce 6 channels of 2-operator FM synthesis audio! This was only used for a single NES game, Lagrange Point, and while the chip has kinda languished into obscurity, I found this video recently while listening to the Mother soundtrack....

The entire Mother 1 soundtrack, reimagined with the VRC7 soundchip. This sounds AMAZING to me. The new synth kinda gives me snes simcity vibes in some areas, in a weirdly good way. Yes, I DID say the Mother OST out of context isn't as good as it is IN context, but it's not like this video plays Cry of Giegue for 15 minutes. Anyways this music has been my wakeup music for the past week. I wake up and open face palm slam this Pollyanna directly into my veins.

If there's one thing you need to take away from this, it's that Pollyanna is a fucking AMAZING song. Okay I'm done.

we are all begrudgingly trying the old sites again and we are all sighing in unison

Yeag 👍 thanks fur the heads up