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View topic - [VGM Pack] Wonder Boy - The Dragon's Trap (GG)

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[VGM Pack] Wonder Boy - The Dragon's Trap (GG)
Post Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2016 11:31 pm
http://www.smspower.org/Music/WonderBoyIII-GG

It's been a while since I worked on a pack, so I took a look at this game. I wasn't originally going to submit it necessarily (I was mainly checking old work), but I did so much new work, and it was so time consuming, I finally decided in its favor. (The bane of tagging scrupulously)

I knew there was an SMS version available, but I knew there were fewer tracks in the existing pack than I knew existed, so I set out to label the tracks based on their in game use. Took me a while to realize the titles in the existing packs came from the GG credits. I couldn't find reference to them in the existing album.

I finally went through the trouble of decoding all the differences. I opted to just redo the GG version from scratch since you guys didn't bother to alert us that the GG had been integrated into the psg pack by linking to it from the GG page:)

Tagging is always more time consuming than anticipated.

I used all available resources. Bock's great posts from little over a year ago and other (older) related posts helped alot!

The final authority was the ost on Egg Music. Most titles lined up as expected. It's a bit odd in that the in game titles tend to line up in most cases to what's expected even though you could easily have no idea which track it refers to.

I added the in game titles to the coments area since I preferred to use the official ost titles and take advantage of the available japanese tags.

I tagged the packs with a different spelling of the author's name as found on other sites. I'm not fluent, so I used those sources rather than what's on the existing vgm's pack.

Tracks are the same between versions except that the GG version has a title track and the SMS has silence. Everything else is the same. I never saw the item theme actually used and the test BGM loops under a second so I made a ~12 second version to give a better taste.

The titles:
I also originally thought that Side-Crawler's Dance referred to the sea even though I thought it sounded more like Mind or Hero. I assume process of elimination and associating the title with crabs, lobsters and other "side crawlers" on the beach prompted the choice. Understandable. There is no confirmation with the official ost, but through process of elimination, it seems to refer to Mouse-Man's ability to literally walk vertically up the side of walls (upside down as well). It's not much of a dance unless you imagine him "dancing" while he is falling down a long passageway. It is the only time that theme is used. The ost uses another inscrutable title Monsterland ? (Dungeon Fall) to refer to the track, so this is more of weighted evidence than explicit confirmation. It seems to be only used once in game (only one dungeon where you are Mouse-man and seem to fall a long distance). It actually interrupts the music of the dungeon (Take It Easy) and when it ends, Take It Easy resumes where it left off. I originally thought there was a timer that extended the theme until I a) could find no such timer and b) confirmed what resumed was a later part of Take it easy.

Mind of Hero (Sea) is confirmed as the track the existing vgm pack calls Side-Crawler's Dance.

Adventure Zone (Forest) is confirmed as the track the existing vgm pack calls Mind of Hero.

Endless war is an ironic title for the Ending. I assumed the same due to the track order, even though the list of tracks is a bit out of the order you encounter in game. It does mention that the long-battles have finally come to an end and the longevity to come of the hero's story. I associate the two with a bit more weight than Side-Crawler's Dance (which is really process of elimination), despite its title not matching the peaceful tone.

The Dragon's trap seem to be a good match for the Staff Roll, as that is the subtitle of the game.

Take It Easy seems to be The Monster's Lair since the theme literally plays in every pre-Boss area when you get close to the boss's room. There's no good reason to have the subtitle (Sunken Ship) when that is not the only place where it is used, but I included it as written.

I prefer many of the GG titles to the ost, but I traded the reliability of confirmation and japanese track titles for what we had.

I never came accross "Obtain Item" in game. It may be used somewhere but I never heard it. It has the playback priority of a sound effect, so its exclusion makes sense despite its precence on the ost. During my own work (pre-logging) I actually included it as a loggable track despite this fact.

update: I have checked the game code and it is loaded at [05D57] and [1E93A]. Still not sure where it is actually used.

The test Bgm is rather lackluster, so the only thing this pack adds is a few tracks and some clarification. Playing musical chairs with the GG titles added some confusion. Fortunately most were confirmed by the ost to be as expected.

I may/may not fuse this with the existing vgm pack.

Now at 1.00
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