Monday, January 22, 2018

SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs - "The Calm Before the SuperPhillip Central's Best of 2017 Awards Storm" Edition

Tonight will kick off SuperPhillip Central's Best of 2017 Awards, celebrating all things stellar in gaming this past year. With top five lists for the best games, best visuals, best soundtracks, and so forth, the Best of 2017 Awards will be quite the festivities when they begin tonight and last all week! In the meantime, before we get to that, we turn to SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs to kick off your work week in style!

This week sees this edition of the Favorite VGMs starting things out at the end of the line with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Then, we give our upper body limbs a workout with the Nintendo Switch's ARMS. Following that is a duo of recent releases, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana and Miitopia. Finally, things get viewtiful with Capcom and Clover Studios' Viewtiful Joe.

Enjoy these VGMs and more, and by "more", I mean the VGM Database, where all past featured VGM on this weekly segment are listed! Now, let's get on to the music!

v1546. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (PS4) - End of the Line

Speaking of SuperPhillip Central's Best of 2017 Awards, we might see some of the games on this edition make an appearance! I won't playfully hop around this with any coyness -- you can certainly bet Uncharted: The Lost Legacy will see an appearance or two during the award festivities. Could it be tonight during the Best Soundtrack category? With an exciting score such as the example here heard in the final mission of Lost Legacy, there could be a chance!



v1547. ARMS (NSW) - Spring Stadium (Spring Man's Stage)

Here's another game from 2017 that has a similar chance as Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. ARMS is a creative fighting game, atypical for the genre. Instead of being on a 2D plane, battles in ARMS are not only fought in a 3D arena, but the camera is behind the back of each fighter. It all comes down to picking the right moments to send out one or both of your arms to attack your opponent, quick evasion skills and dodges, and aiming your shots to curve into foes in tricky patterns. The soundtrack is exceptional for the game as well, offering a diverse range of styles, all incorporating in some way the ARMS main theme.



v1548. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (PS4, Vita) - Sunshine Coastline

I held off on buying this next game due to the hoopla surrounding its less than stellar localization. It was so bad that the publisher in Japan ordered a redo in patch form, which has yet to come out but will soon. That said, maybe it's a good thing I held off, as a new Nintendo Switch port of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana is set to hit the hybrid system this summer in North America. The only thing I've been missing is hearing the awesome soundtrack as heard in the game, but even by its lonesome without context, Ys music is always fantastic, and this is the case with Ys VIII.



v1549. Miitopia (3DS) - Boss Battle

Let's go wholly portable with this fall Nintendo 3DS release, incorporating all of your Mii collection (or by borrowing total strangers' Miis) in a one-of-a-kind role-playing game! It's Miitopia, and it's a game where you can put your family and friends in the roles of the various characters, whether good or evil. This theme with its bongo drum and synth accompanies you as you do battle with one of the many dastardly bosses in this lengthy Mii adventure. Save the kingdom and the world with Miitopia!



v1550. Viewtiful Joe (PS2, GCN) - Another Joe

Let's go back in the past with this final VGM for this edition of SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs. It's from one of my favorite character action games of all time, the remarkable Viewtiful Joe. I originally played the game on its GameCube launch and became so addicted to it that I almost completed the game with all Rainbow V rankings in each act of every level. That's how much I enjoyed it. One aspect of Viewtiful Joe that I also enjoyed was the superb soundtrack, featuring a mix of rock and electronica music, as heard in this theme when facing off against the fourth level boss of the game, Another Joe.


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