[Unreleased Game Music] Izumic Ballade - Dungeon - Sage Senoi's Tower (FM version)

Описание: Some RPG heroes fight for love. Some fight for justice. The heroine of Japanese homebrew developer M-Kai's 1996 MSX RPG, "Izumic Ballade" -- a rich high school student who lives in the department store her dad runs (works at?) -- fights to... let the world know the importance of the bass clarinet.

There's like, alien invasion and crap that happens too. But that's all secondary. The number one priority at all times is the bass clarinet.

All magic consists of bass clarinet songs (which you have to learn through practice sessions with the boy you like, many of which play out as rhythm minigames; it's kind of a neat idea!). And your main attack is called ベークラサイ, which I eventually realized was ベークラ (short for ベース・クラリネット) + サイ = "bass clarinet sai." As in, you use your bass clarinet as a sai.

It's a very (very!) clunky and buggy game, as it appears to have been programmed at least partly (if not entirely) in MSX-BASIC, which is... shall we say, not the most optimized platform for creating a game this complex? And it's certainly not very pretty to look at, with tile sets that often stretch the boundaries of the imagination, representing objects in a somewhat abstract fashion. (Though at other times, there are some really nice water and wind effects and such, so it's... kind of a weirdly mixed bag!)

But there's just something oddly intriguing about its utter obsession with the bass clarinet... among other design decisions.

For example, in keeping with developer M-Kai's love of high numbers, this is an RPG with the single most numerically ludicrous stats I've ever seen. Like, EVER. There was a save-game on the disk image I downloaded that was located in the final dungeon, so I loaded it up just to see what the endgame looked like... and the main character was level 343, had nearly 14 billion experience, an attack value over 10,000, and was regularly striking enemies for well over 100,000 damage per hit. And upon completion of a random battle against one random foe (that was so weak, I one-shotted it before it could get even a single hit in on me), I received nearly FORTY-THREE MILLION EXPERIENCE POINTS, plus just a bit over forty-two million Kol (the game's currency).

I've found the game rather addictive thus far, despite its constant load times, jerky scrolling, and the fact that it often freezes on me during battle (necessitating saving often, which is unfortunate since saving your game actually costs MP!). As I said, there's just something oddly intriguing about it.

And one aspect that's just plain excellent across the board is its music, so I decided I'd record a little bit of it and share it on YouTube! My capture equipment isn't very good, however, so any accompanying video footage is going to be... rather messy. Sorry!

Please enjoy this track, however:

The game's first dungeon theme. Dig that percussion, man! This is actually my favorite track so far -- it's just really unique and cool!

If you like this song, be sure to share it! Let's spread the joy of Izumic Ballade far and wide! ;)