Game: SimCity 2000
Track: Title Theme
Time: 2:03
Size: 16.6 KB
Originally I was thinking I'd put up the To Zanarkand theme from FFX this week, but I decided I already have enough Final Fantasy music in the archive. So the search began, and after hours (read: 10 minutes) of arduously scouring vgmusic.com, I found this little theme tucked away in the PS2 section. Beats me why they'd choose the PS2 section to put the SimCity 2000 midis in, seeing as it was originally on the PC and has been ported to nearly every console since the SNES, but whatever.
My first personal experience with the SimCity games came with SimCity 2000 (I had watched my brother play a port of the original SimCity on the SNES before), playing it occasionally on my brother's friend's PC. Being pretty young, my city ended up being layed out kind of haphazardly, but with their help it actually managed to be fairly successful.
And to this day, I still have one of the game's songs stuck in my head. It's not the title theme here -- it's one of the themes that plays while building -- but this midi is the best out of the ones they had. And besides, the title theme always reminds me of that funky robot thing on the title screen which, you know, is awesome. Don't ask questions, it just is.
In other related news, I'm looking into setting up Flam Player (the same flash music player Tony uses on Wrapped in Plastic) for use on myOtaku here. The midis just aren't good enough anymore -- though I will still keep the archive around -- and I'd really like to be able to share with people more of the songs I'm currently listening to. So hopefully we'll be able to set that up soon (sorry I skipped out yesterday, Tony -- PlanetSide and The Minish Cap took hold and wouldn't let me go), and then I'll just need to change around the layout of my introduction.
One thing about Zelda: The Minish Cap that really annoyed me, though: They let you miss a sidequest entirely if you wait too long to do it. One that gets you a good upgrade, no less. And of course, in my eagerness to play through the dungeons, I missed it. So it looks like I'll have to play through again, this time being careful to do things as soon as I can and not miss anything.
It's no surprise that I'll be playing through the game more than once (I mean, come on, it's Zelda), but I've been debating whether or not I want to play through it again right away. On one hand, playing through the main quest again would be fun -- I'd have no objections to that -- but the amount of sidequest stuff like Kinstone fusions and getting every figurine seems like it would be almost overwhelming to try and do it all twice in such a short time span. We'll see, I guess.
And speaking of figurines, the way you get them in The Minish Cap annoys me. Not only is a long, tedious process, but it's even moreso than in The Wind Waker. At least in TWW you were actually out doing something -- taking pictographs -- to get them, rather than just standing there, betting shells, and hoping for new ones. And then on top of this, they don't let you get all 20 hearts unless you get every single one. Now, the sound test I can see as a good reward for it, but a Piece of Heart should never be a prize for something so menial. All it does it piss people off who want to get all the hearts but don't want to spend hours collecting figurines.
In my opinion, Flagship has really dropped the ball when it comes to sidequests and minigames in the Zelda games they've developed. (Those being the two oracle games and TMC; Four Swords doesn't count because it has no sidequests to speak of.) A few of them are good -- I actually really like the Kinstone fusion thing -- but most are just annoying if you're a person that wants to do everything in the games. Thankfully they've gotten better with this in TMC (the oracle games' minigames were crap, plain and simple, and trying to collect every ring was worse than the figurines), but they've got a long way to go before they're as good as the ones seen in Majora's Mask and The Wind Waker, the two other sidequest-heavy games in the series.
Personally, I'm getting a bit annoyed with how much sidequest stuff they're packing into the newer Zelda games. It's gotten to the point where it seems to even be displacing the dungeons, to a certain degree. MM, TWW, and TMC all have fewer than the old standard of eight dungeons, and are then stuffed with sidequests to make up for it.
Now, sidequests are all well and good (so long as they're done well), but don't sacrifice the length of the game's main quest for them. There's lots of reasons why A Link to the Past is my favorite in the series, but among them is the fact that you get eleven -- not just eight, but eleven excellent dungeons, and there's not a ton of sidequests to wade through. LTTP keeps to the basic Zelda gameplay formula that made the original such a hit, while expanding on it rather than trying to add to it with a ton of sidequests. It's simple, pick-up-and-play fun that doesn't have you going through long and involved sequences of events just to get to the next dungeon, while still managing to have a good number of optional items and secrets for you to find.
I shall be sorely disappointed if the new GCN Zelda continues the trend and places as much emphasis on sidequests as MM, TWW, and TMC have. I want a game that plays like LTTP does, only in 3D, which is what I'm hoping this new Zelda does. The potential is there, with a combat system that should be at least as good as TWW's, being able to create a vast overworld with room for plenty of dungeons, and the technical capability to have hordes of monsters on screen at once. In my opinion, there has still yet to be a 3D Zelda to match the brilliance of what LTTP does in 2D, and this new game is just crying out to fill that void.
