Music Monday: Magical Mitochondria
Welcome to Music Monday, the best way to start off your week! Each week Jon or Jenny will profile a popular videogame-related musician/band to add to your music library.
Parasite Eve holds the questionable distinction of being the first survival horror/shooter game I ever finished. I love games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, but as a general rule, I suck at them. Limited ammo + limited healing = frustrated Jenny. It didn’t help that at the time all these games came out on the original PlayStation, I was deep into RPGs and wouldn’t look at anything else.
Then came Parasite Eve, from RPG giant Squaresoft (now Square Enix). The game was primarily a survival horror/shooter, but had enough RPG and story elements to keep me hooked. The trend continued, though often more shooter-y than RPG-y, with Parasite Eve II and the recently-released The 3rd Birthday.
For this week’s Music Monday, I thought it would be fun to pick a track from each game to showcase. This is also a bit of a cheat — Parasite Eve‘s soundtracks often contain snippets (or entire remixes) of previous soundtracks mixed within, adding an element to make each song its own new entity.
“Primal Eyes” – Parasite Eve
The opening theme of Parasite Eve, composed by powerhouse Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts, Super Mario RPG).
“Mist” – Parasite Eve II
I told you these were cheats. This song, composed by Naoshi Mizuta (Final Fantasy XI, Megaman and Bass), is actually a slower version of “Out of Phase”, a theme from the first Parasite Eve with a new overlaying melody.
“The End – Back to the Beginning” – The 3rd Birthday
Another track from Yoko Shimomura, and my favorite track of the bunch. A few themes from Parasite Eve are present — most notably, “Theme of Aya” — but both the cinematic quality and the emphasis of piano elevates it to (in my opinion) the best track from all three games.
Also, for those of you who don’t get the title of this week’s Music Monday… clicky.
Having never played a Parasite Eve game, I’ve got no point of reference for these songs. Having said that, they are all delightful. That first theme starts out with a soft, haunting piano, but then it just drops into a fast paced song you’d expect to be a title track.
That last one is just powerful throughout. I could see that backing a really dramatic scene or some open, epic area. Good stuff. And I guess now I’ll try to keep the MM commenting a bit more regular. ;)
I’ve never played these games but the music is lovely.
My warmed up pasta for dinner was ten times better listening to these songs. The first one in particularly made me very anxious about whether a monster would jump me for my pesto.
I’ve got PE1 sitting idle on my PS3; will have to rectify that. Great tracks, Jenny!
and @Ben Stead: Get John to sort out your avatar. that poor little kitty needs a proper home and you’re not it.
@Glassninja: If you can find them, I highly recommend the soundtracks. The first and third over the second, but they’re all great.
@Ben Stead: Nah. Mitochondrially-mutated monsters have a general aversion to pesto. It’s a secret weapon in the game.
@Brett Parsons: If my Music Monday helped push you towards playing Parasite Eve, then that’s awesome. Are you revisiting it or playing it for the first time?