Pure Nostalgia
2011-01-22
by Darknut
Ultima 3: Exodus Soundtrack
The original Famicom box.
I like how this is clearly a ripoff of the Famicom box, but without those giant "Japanimation" eyes.Remember this game? Ultima 3: Exodus? On the NES it was just called Ultima: Exodus because they started with 3 on the NES, which is fine because 3 was significantly better than 1 and 2. I played the PC version a lot because it was one of the first games we had. When friends got the NES version, I scoffed because it was so much easier than the PC version, yet I admired the more colorful graphics and appreciated the presence of music. In short, I enjoyed it partly to humor my friends, partly because it was fun to witness this alternate interpretation of a world I was so familiar with.
Anyway, today I was minding my own business, searching the web for something completely unrelated, as usual, when I accidentally downloaded the 1987 Japanese soundtrack for this game.
http://www.ultima.rabbitslair.de/ultima3_mix.htm
Some of the songs are more "orchestral" than others, but for the most part the songs are performed in a synth-rock style, and some of them have J-pop vocals! I almost want to know what they're saying, although I already know the lyrics won't have anything to do with the game. If you're familiar with the NES music, as you should be if you played the game and heard the tunes over and over, then you might find this arrangement outright bizarre. On the other hand, if you are already accustomed to the weirdness of Japanese video game soundtracks, then this will only serve as evidence that the trend was in effect as long ago as 1987. In any case, you might enjoy this discovery if you've played the NES version before.
I also simultaneously discovered the Famicom box art shown here, which helps explain a lot about how the NES box art seems to ignore everything about the original 1983 artwork (which I was very familiar with, having read the manual many times before even starting the game). You may need to remind yourself that the acceptance of anime (and other Japanese staples) in the West was still highly dubious back in 1990 or so, which is why Japanese translations were more likely to get mangled back then.
