Into the Score - August 21, 2007

Mega Man 3

1) Intro
2) Contact Info
a. Time in Gaming MM3 was released
3) Story of the Game
4) Reception
5) Composer
a. BunBun - Yasuaki Fujita
b. Use of Aliases
6) The Music
a. Differences in patches between MM2 and MM3
7) Analysis
i.  	Shadow Man
8) 
9) Arrangement
i. "Magnet Man Goes West"

INTRO

(101 - OPENING)

I'm Kenley Kristofferson... and this is Into the Score.

Good evening! Kenley here with Episode 11 of Into the Score, which is the only podcast solely devoted to the academic study of video game music.  It's been a fantastic month of August, haven't been on the air for a while and let me tell you, it is awesome to be back in the studio.  Tonight, we take a look at Yasuaki Fujita's score to Capcom's 1990 release, Mega Man 3.  Before we dive in, let's hear the contact info!

CONTACT INFO

Our website is www.intothescore.com and it's open 24-hours a day, 7 days a week.  You can reach me at Kenley@intothescore.com.  It just came to my attention today that the intothescore email wasn't set up... for some reason... I thought I set it up, but apparently not.  Anyways! That's up and going now and if you've been sending email to it and getting them sent back, I sincerely apologize.  Anyway, we still have the old website at songofthefates.com, but I'm trying to phase it out, just because the intothescore one is more pro and, well... is just better.  Let's listen to some music! Because we're going to decide what category to hit up next, I think that it'd be a good idea to play the stage select music, written by Yasuaki Fujita!

(STAGE SELECT MUSIC)

Okay, let's find out what was happening in 1990 in video games - engage.

(CONFIRM - 52)

TIME IN GAMING

Capcom releases Mega Man 3 in 1990, at a time when gaming was going through an incredible industrial boom in the world.  It was a huge year for Nintendo, not only releasing Super Mario 3 (which according to Wikipedia, sold 17.25 million copies, making it the highest-selling standalone game of all time), but releasing Super Mario World for their new Super Famicom system in Japan.  Now, we know how huge those games are - I mean, odds are that if you are listening to this podcast, you own those games.  Naturally, the Super Famicom or Super Nintendo was a blinding success, introducing characters like Yoshi into video game culture consciousness and becoming a trailblazer for the SNES platform.  Super Mario 3 was the natural end to the NES triforce of Mario games, it was rich with detail, great music, fun gameplay, Mario got suits like the Tanooki raccoon suit, or that big green boot that you could jump around in... man, cool game.  What else made it even cooler, is that it was profiled in the cult classic film, "The Wizard," with Fred Savage... I know you've seen it, you don't have to hide it here, we're all friends.

Anyways, what else happened in 1990? Bonk's Adventure was released, the first title featuring the icon of the Turbo-Grafix 16.  There are more firsts of this year - Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon is released, which is the first of the "tycoon" series; Origin also puts out the first Wing Commande, yeah, lots of big stuff.  One of the most important releases of 1990 was the North American release of Squaresoft's Final Fantasy, and we featured the seventh one last episode... yeah... seventh... there's 12 now, not including the gameboy and cell phone editions and VII compilation ones... FFXIII is in production right now... there are going to be three of them... yep, Final Fantasy I, released in 1990 to the west... pretty important.

But you know what, this game isn't about Final Fantasy I it's about Mega Man III, which was also released this year.  What's it about? Well, after we play this clip, I'll tell you all about it - this Gemini Man's Stage by Yasuaki Fujita.  

(GEMINI MAN'S STAGE)

STORY

Well, the year is 200X and after being defeated by Mega Man in the game's previous title, Dr. Wily reforms and finally starts creating robots for piece.  His big project is actually a collaboration with Megaman's creator, Dr. Light, on a huge peacekeeping robot called "Gamma."  Unfortunately, the eight robots created by Dr. Wily start running amuck and steal eight power crystals... then Megaman has to save them.  PS: Mega Man also learned how to slide between MM2 and 3, which is a good thing to do sometimes.

This game would be a first in introducing some new characters.  For example, Mega Man has a dog named Rush who can be a little catapult, jet or a submarine - which is pretty cool.  It also includes a new mysterious character named Proto Man.  One of the things that I think is really cool is that Proto Man's "theme" actually plays an important part in the game - it plays every time he shows up, here's what it sounds like.

(PROTO MAN WHISTLE)

He appears in four levels, supposedly to train Mega Man for the challenges ahead.  I'm a bit confused as to how Proto Man exactly fits into the story, but for a mysterious dude with a red and grey suit, yellow scarf and a visor... man, that is one cool guy.

Before we jump into some more into some more detail about Mega Man 3 and how it is a staple in the Mega Man franchise, let's listen to some music.  This is "Hard Man's Stage."  Someday I will learn this on the drums... for real... no, not so much.

(HARD MAN'S STAGE)


THE GAME'S INSIDES

Okay, so there are 8 robot bosses and, as you can guess by the two music clips, all of them end in "Man."  From the top left corner to the bottom right, they are Spark Man, Snake Man, Needle Man, Hard Man, Top Man, Gemini Man, Magnet Man and Shadow Man.  Similarly to Mega Man 2, each boss was designed by a different person and each level has a musical theme.  

One of my favorite parts about this game is that, after you beat all of the bosses, you're like "Alright, Dr. Wily, it's on, I'm goin' get you!" But then these four crazy looking bosses show up in the corner of the stage select screen, and it's like "eh?" So then you go to the stages, either Spark Man's, Needle Man's, Gemini Man's or Shadow Man's and it's the same level, but WAY harder.  These are called the "Doc Robots." Then, you get to the halfway mark and there's a boss there (so there's two bosses per stage) and it's this crazy suit and inside the robots, are all of the bosses from Mega Man 2 and you're just like "eh?" So it's like, you're thinking that... hmmm... Crash Man... I could use the Air Shooter... oh yeah, this is Mega Man 3... not 2... oh sh*t.  And you have to use MM3 weapons on MM2 bosses.  Did anyone else think that? Let's find out.

RECEPTION

From what I gather, the game is generally enjoyed by most gamers, but not as much as Mega Man 2.  Taken from "The Mega Man Homepage," the game got a 91%, scoring most highly in areas of "Replay Value" and "Play Control" and getting 4/5 on everything but "Difficulty" and "Plot." (http://www.mmhp.net) Stryker's review of the game at World-of-video-games.com (http://www.world-of-video-games.com/nes/reviews/mega_man_3_stryker.shtml) gave it a 94%, though forewarned the repetitiveness of the franchise, the basic mechanics of the game would become repetitive and the subsequent sequels would lose cutting-edge-ness.  Matt Tiblie's review (of the same website; http://www.world-of-video-games.com/nes/reviews/mega_man_3_matt_tiblie.shtml ) gave the game a 9/10, but in Matt scored the Music higher than any other review that I've been able to find; awarding it a 9/10 as well.  What a lot of listeners may not realize while comparing Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3 is that there were three composers for Mega Man 2: Ogeretsu Kun, Manama Ietel, Yuukichan's Papa - many of which are pseudonyms, which we'll talk about a bit later in the episode.  But they wouldn't be the only composers to use pseudonyms in the the Mega Man series -  or in the video game industry at all.  Before we find out more about our composer, here's "Spark Man's Stage" from the Mega Man 3 OST by Yasuaki Fujita.

(SPARK MAN)

BIOGRAPHY

While Yasuaki Fujita composed the music for Mega Man 3, you'll never find that name anywhere in the credits or anywhere in the game.  In the early-middle period of the NES's reign over the console, talent was all over Japan and every company in the video game industry wanted the best people for their company.  According to Chris Kohler in his book Power Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, to prevent companies from losing personnel to competing companies, the employees and developer's were encouraged to use pseudonyms so as to keep their names private to the public - another company can't snatch someone away if they don't know their name.  Capcom and Nintendo both did this a lot, even if we just look at composer's names, Ogeretsu Kun is a Japanese term of endearment for a rude person (according to Wikipedia) and Yuukichan's Papa... well, clearly it's the father of some person named Yuuki... chan...?

The name that you'll find as sound designer for Mega Man 3 is not Yasuaki Fujita, but rather, BunBun, again, a pseudonym.  The problem with this, however, is that there is NO biographies on most of these composers because, well... no one seemed to know who they are.  There isn't a lot of information on this mysterious BunBun, except for that the games that he composed for include Mega Man 3 and 4, work on Breath of Fire and parts of the Street Fighter series... which is interesting, because I thought that Yoko Shimamura did that... hmmmm... the plight of the internet knowledge strikes again.  Later works of his, at least within the last 8-10 years include the first two of SNK's Metal Slug series and Bust-a-Move, also by SNK.  But this episode isn't about Bust-a-Move, so let's get back to Mega Man 3.

Also, just a brief reference back to our source a little while back, Chris Kohler, his book: Power Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life is an utterly fantastic read and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in gaming OR the history of gaming.  It's published by Brady Games and it's available through both Amazon and Barnes and Noble... yeah, I'm pretty sure that it is.  Chris Kohler is now a writer for 1up.com and is part of a podcast called "Retronauts," where a group of dudes talk about different topics and different games from times past... really great podcast, the website for it is in the shownotes.

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3156908

Alrighty, music time - catapulting us into the "Music" section of the podcast is the first stage of Dr. Wily's Castle, taken from the Mega Man 3 OST and written by Yasuake Fujita OR BunBun.

(DR. WILY'S CASTLE 1)

THE MUSIC

And that was the first level of Dr. Wily's Castle and for those who listened to Episode 2 of the podcast, which was on Mega Man 2 then we talked a bit about the soundchip in the NES.  The NES functioned on a chip called 2A03, which had the ability to play four channels of simultaneous audio.  The way that it was usually set up was 2 channels of square wave patterns for the melody and harmony or counter melody, one triangle wave pattern for the bass and then a channel of noise, which acted as the percussion track.  The best reason that I can think of for that configuration is that the square wave is a bit edgier and cuts through a bit more, while the triangle wave pattern is a bit bouncier and rounder, thus giving it a warmer bass sound.  Again, this wasn't done all of the time, but usually.

With that said, not all waves are created equal.  Within those constraints, there is still room for the composer or sound engineer to edit, alter and personalize those sounds to what they want.  In comparison to Mega Man 2, this is the first thing that I noticed when studying the score - the patches are different.

Just to compare, let's look at the two opening themes of the games, the first from Mega Man 2 and the second from Mega Man 3.  What we're listening for is the difference in the sounds of each particular track - the two melody lines, the bass and the drums.  Before I tell you what I hear, let's let you guys figure your own opinion.

(MEGA MAN 2 INTRO)

Now from 3.

(MEGA MAN 3 INTRO)

Okay, do we hear a difference between the two? To me, the patch set from Mega Man 2 is a bit more transparent, almost having a more open or hollow sound, whereas Mega Man 3 is a bit edgier.  There are a few reasons for this - the waves could have been EQ'd a bit differently, the mixdown and balance of each track to one another could be different, there could be differences in the overtones... to be honest, I'm not too sure, it could be a lot of things.  Some things for certain, the drums are far more "staticky" and harsher in Mega Man 3 than in 2, giving them a bit more of an edgy sound, but for the type of writing in Mega Man 3, I think that that works really well because it really highlights the importance of the percussion writing in the score.  Groove is especially prevalent in this score, so let's look at some examples where the percussion writing has really come to the forefront.  We heard Gemini Man's music before, but let's listen to it one more time...

(GEMINI MAN)

Same with Hard Man, just some really wild percussion writing here...

(HARD MAN)

Or the Boss Music...

(BOSS MUSIC)

But with that said, there's something to be said about a basic rock pattern that just lights it up, this is "Snake Man's Stage"

(SNAKE MAN)

Now, even though the drums are wild, what about the other parts? In a more macroscopic look at the game, there are so many styles of music that play into this game, probably more than most other of the classic Mega Man titles (being Mega Man I-VI).  There are the staple styles of Mega Man, like rock, hard rock, pop rock and kind of a funk rock.  But you know, there's a lot of kind of jazzy influence to this game - and I hate using the word "jazzy" because it's a bit clichˇ and some people think of elevators when it's said in that way, but even if we listen to the first part of the intro music, it's got some pretty blue notes in there...

(INTRO)

I mean, Gemini Man's level almost has a samba feel to it...

(GEMINI MAN)

One other prevalent feature in the score is that almost every piece has an introductory section before the main melody begins.  Just to show that, I'm going to go through all 8 of the robot master's themes and we can hear the introductory sequences and the first bit of the melody.  It's special because it's a bit odd that it should happen for every level, usually it's for some, but not others.  This will catapult us into our analysis portion, here we go!

(CYCLE THROUGH)

ANALYSIS

For our analysis Shadow Man's level has this... I don't know what it is, it might just be sound of a bluesy sound, though it could just be the minor blues scale, which sounds like this...


(MINOR BLUES SCALE)

So that fourth note is used to give the music a bit of a bluesy feel, but then just as you get used to it, it does this radical shift to a kind of poppy harmonized section in the relative 
major.  Here's how it sounds.


(SHADOW MAN)

So the blues scale is used a lot here, but that's not our big idea for the week! Our big idea for the week... (MARIO SOUND)... "the Form."

While the expression "form" isn't exactly a technical expression, it's the term that most people use when describing how a song is organized - organized meaning "which section of the song happens first, then the section after that, and after that, etc."  So, because there are some distinct (and not so distinct) sections of Shadow Man's music, we're going to take a look at how the composer organized this piece so that it makes sense both musically and in the game.

Some of the first things that we have to think about are the basics of music.  For example, how many beats are in one measure of music? What is the time signature? In this case, there are clearly four beats in a bar - we feel it like "1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4."  The next important thing to note is that we are going to organize this music into sections depending on the melody, the harmony or the style and we're going to quantify our results in bars or measures of music.  

Now, we could do this for every piece of music in the game, but because that would take a ridiculously long time, we'll just do one and if you listeners feel inclined, then you could do this for whatever piece of music you would like!

Let's listen to it once so our ears can get a handle on it, this is "Shadow Man" by Yasuaki Fujita

(SHADOW MAN)

Alright, so we know that there's an intro that is 8 beats long.  Because there is four beats in a bar and 8 divided by 4 is two measures, there is a two measure intro and it sounds like this.

(SHADOW MAN  - INTRO)

Then after that, we have four bars of a repeating drum and bass line - in music, this is called a "vamp."
(SHADOW MAN - VAMP)

Then we get a melody in the upper square channel and that lasts eight bars.  Because this is melodic content and it's the first one we hear in the piece, we're going to call it the "A" section, as using letters for sections is just the Western musical convention.  

(SHADOW MAN - A SECTION)

Together, the first three parts sound like this:

(SHADOW MAN - INTRO, VAMP, A SECTION)

Then after that, we get something different - particularly in the melody.  Because our melodic content change, we're going to call this a new section.  Seeing as we called the first section the "A section", it would only make sense to keep the pattern going and we'll call the next one the "B section," and that B section sounds like this.

(SHADOW MAN - B SECTION)

Alright, now things start getting crazy.  The next eight bars have the same melody in the B-section, but has another part underneath it.  Because the melody is the same, do we still call it the B-section? Well, yes... and no.  It is the B-section, but it's not exactly the same as before, so we call it "B`" meaning that the melody is the same, but everything is not the same musically, note-for-note.  Here's that section:

(SHADOW MAN - B`)

Very cool, I love that kind harmony part that's kind of chromatic, but kind of squeaky too... very cool.  Okay, so now this next part could be explained in a few different ways.  It's job is to connect the B section with the different section following, which we will naturally call, the C-section, no babies involved.  Let's listen to the end of the B` section, then this transition/connecting part, then into the C-section.

(SHADOW MAN - B`-MOD-C)

Okay, so the C-section is now in major and is pretty bouncy and happy sounding.  Seeing as the C-section sounds way different both in melody and in style from the section before it, that's the exact reason why it becomes its own section of the piece... but that still doesn't answer our question as to what exactly this section is.  Well, technically we would call it a "transition" section because it is used deliberately to connect two varying sections.  Now, as intelligent listeners and musicians or music appreciators, the next logical question is "but don't all sections transition into another section?" The answer is yes, but that isn't their fundamental purpose - if we isolate this one section, it sounds like this.

(SHADOW MAN - MOD)
By itself, it really makes no sense contextually.  But when we play it with the other two sections...

(SHADOW MAN - B` - MOD - C)

... Then it makes perfect sense because it reinforces the ideal that being happy and major is where the music wants to go.  So we know that the C-section is happy and fun and changes groove, it's different from the other two melodic sections.  It's eight bars long and is actually the end of the work, completing the loop and taking us right back.

So let's review:

2 bars of Intro
4 bars of the Vamp
8 bars of A
8 bars of B
8 bars of B`
2 bars of transition
8 bars of C

As that is a lot of verbal information, I've put a link on the post to a graphic representation of what we were just talking about, which will approximately 37 times more sense that just spewing sections at you.  With that in front of your eyes, here's the whole piece:

(SHADOW MAN)

Okay, so in the last episode, I said that our big idea would be the video game music cover band... well, I had some ideas for an interview, but they kind of fell through, so we can't do that this week - but that's cool, because we can do that in other weeks and that's okay too! There's so much to cover that I'm pretty sure that there will be an endless supply of both games and ideas to talk about! 

ARRANGEMENT

For the arrangement portion of the show, I've delved deep into the hallows of the OverClocked ReMix library and found a fantastic arrangement of Magnet Man's stage called "Magnet Man Goes West" by Dan Cabrera, aka "Disco Dan."  He's given me the green light to play the whole thing and I plan to do it! If you want a copy for yourself, stroll down to OverClocked ReMix at www.ocremix.org and enjoy some awesome VGM arrangements and remixes!

So, this has been Episode 11 of Into the Score, which again, is the only podcast solely devoted to the academic study of video game music, I am Kenley Kristofferson and I will see you in two weeks when we study the score to Sierra's 1995 release of "Shivers," composed by Guy Whitmore and we delve into the mystical musical alchemy that is orchestration! Have a fantastic two weeks and this is "! Until next time.

(CLIP)

(END)












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