Devil Summoner: Lost Memories This Album Is An Original Set Of Compositions For The Megami Tensei Fan

Ahhhh! Finally finished this piece of fanart based on the wonderful manga Dungeon Meshi/ Delicious In Dungeon by Ryoko Kui. Big big thanks to SungWon Cho/ ProZD for putting the manga on my radar and the notion of turning it into a game from this tweet.

With this in mind and mouse in hand I hope I have done the source material justice and it’s as much a pleasure to view as it was making it.

Yet again, thank you SungWon Cho for the prompt, and thank you Ryoko Kui for a wonderful read!

Nightmare Busters Prototype Tracks, by Gonkaka

13 track album

Today, 103 Records presents a special treat: the long lost soundtrack to Nincom’s first ever game, Nightmare Busters!

More well known as an arcade-style 3D action game for Zony’s original FunCentre console, the game’s true origins date back to the mid-to-late 80s; Nincom, newly founded and hungry to prove themselves, set out to make a cutting edge, horror themed title centred around two brave toys named Copper and Little Red Hood, who had to save their owners from far more malevolent playthings still bitter about being abandoned many years ago. Unfortunately, the project’s scope far outweighed what technology was able to replicate at the time; the graphics and animations were too process intensive, for one thing, and the idea to have fully unique enemies in every level proved to be a strain on the memory. Even the music was somewhat hamstrung by ambition; this was the first time the various members of what would become Nincom’s in house band and sound team, Gonkaka, had worked with the Yomeha FY5212 sound chip- or any sound chip for that matter- and it showed in both the roughness of the sound programming, as well as the fact that almost every song used entirely different soundbanks and waveforms. The collapse of the project threatened to destroy the company before it even got off the ground, but thanks to a last minute developer partnership with Gesa North, the company was able to prove their worth (and learn some valuable technical insight) by aiding with the development of their surreal, existentially horrific space shooter “Schadenbergiana”. But you all know that story, surely?

Through our continued publishing partnership and working relationship with both Nincom and Gonkaka, we are able to secure the original sound files for the unproduced arcade version of Nightmare Busters, and are happy to present them for your listening pleasure; devout old timer or fresh face newbie alike, the origins of Gonkaka’s long career are an essential listen for any fan of the band!

Forever Nightmare (Nincom Logo)

We Loved, Once (Attract Mode)

The Busters (How to Play/Continue)

The Beatthings (Stage Introduction)

Nightmares Don’t Shuffle (Copper In-Game BGM)

Nightmares Can’t Disco (Little Red Hood In-Game BGM)

Bitter Beatthings (Regular Boss Battle)

Spiteful Beatthing (Final Boss Battle)

Nightmare Beatthing (True Final Boss Battle)

Tears for the Brave (Bad Ending/Name Entry)

Sweet Dreams, Old Friends (Good Ending)

Against the Dark (Stage Clear)

Perish Greatly (Game Over)

released August 21, 2017

project directed and concept art created by Decon Theed

music composed by Shinji Namiki, Fumie Saso, Takayuki Mitsuyoshi, and Denji Koshiro

cover designed and produced by Dio Maxwelle

DOWNLOAD INCLUDES: FULL RES SCANS OF THE SKETCH AND FINAL VERSIONS OF THE COVER, AN EARLY PIECE OF NIGHTMARE BUSTERS PROMO ART, AND 12 PIECES OF NIGHTMARE BUSTERS CONCEPT ART

super math quest

Gonkaka Project Breakdown: Efiáltis pt. 1

So, this is something I’ve meant to do for a while! If you’ve followed my music close enough over the years, you’ll be familiar with one of the aliases I use, Gonkaka, and how it’s used for Video Game-styled songs and Chiptunes. One of the things I intend to use that alias for is full-fledged faux-soundtrack concept albums- albums styled to appear like they’re soundtracks for “real” games produced by the “company” Gonkaka works for in the lore of my various music aliases, Nincom- that are supplemented by writing and art to both help sell the concept, and give an indication of what the game would be like if it actually were real (so it’s kinda pulling double duty as fiction writing and design document). I’ve flirted with the concept a couple of times over the years- Battlemania: An Evil Supreme OST and Nightmare Busters Prototype Tracks- but I have accumulated a wealth of ideas for Gonkaka projects over the years that I’d like to work on. Problem is, I’ve… not actually written a lot of those ideas out, even the base stuff I’ve thought up that can be expanded on later. This little writing exercise- wherein I describe one of the most fleshed out future Gonkaka projects I’ve got so far, Efiáltis (which is heavily inspired by Splatterhouse, natch) as someone writing a guide / breakdown of it from the outside- was an attempt to actually start documenting these ideas in some concrete form. It’s not fully complete yet- it only goes up to the end of Efiáltis‘ third stage, as that’s where most of the concrete ideas for the project lie- but it will definitely be expanded upon. I will also be doing similar writing type things for the other Nincom titles I’ve dreamed up, again in an attempt to actually get me to document said ideas rather’n just leavin’ ‘em floatin’ ‘round my brain. Enjoy!

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“Efiáltis” (Εφιάλτης; a rough Greek translation of the name “Nightmare House”) is easily Nincom’s most infamous title. Though the company is no stranger to either the horror genre or for games with somewhat depressing or bittersweet stories, Efiáltis is utterly uncompromising in both aspects to the point that it turned a lot of players off when it was first released in 1990, unto a market and an audience that wasn’t used to games as bleak or as graphic. Also controversial was the game’s choice of protagonist and the character that the plot dictated they were to save; they were clearly depicted to be a Lesbian couple, with no uncertainty. The fact that it has gained a tremendous cult following through emulation in recent years, however, suggests that rather then being an out-and-out failure, it was simply ahead of its time.

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You wake up in a room surrounded by your detached cyborg limbs. You wriggle helplessly as the nurses start to regrow your human limbs. No…

— luxury porpentine (@aliendovecote) December 7, 2012

From Trashbabes, by me and Porpentine

Fumie Saso - Gethsemane (Battle with The Agony) [from "Barnbellow's Estate"]

It's been a while since the last Barnbellow's Estate track; feels good to return to the project. It was actually a little off the cuff, though- I've got a few things on the backburner at the moment and whilst flitting through sample packs for inspo, I remembered I recently stumbled upon the second Methods of Madness sample pack (discovering that there even *was* a second one in the process- I had no idea), and things just kind of went from there- almost all the guitar loops and effects in this are from Methods of Mayhem 2 - Damage Control (and one set of loops in particular may sound familiar to people who've played Devil May Cry 3). There's still plenty of samples from the original Methods of Mayhem - Industrial Toolkit in here too, though- it wouldn't be a Pursuer related Barnbellow's Estate track if there wasn't. I'm mostly pleased with the song- I hit a major stumbling block with the original idea for the ending section, so the song's shorter then initially planned, and I definitely brushed up against the limitations of mixing in both Music 2000 and Wavepad, so the mix is a little bit muddy (though between that and taking tons of the reverb out + leaving the song sounding flat and sterile, I'll take the slightly muddy mix; if anything, that just makes it more era appropriate for a song styled to sound like it came from a 90s horror game). I did, however, reinterpret the melody used in "it cries. it cries. it cries. it cries." (henceforth considered The Agony's musical motif) + finagle the melody from Transformation (Ashes of Grief) (henceforth considered Yuna's musical motif) into that first proper section as sort of duelling melodies, cos It's Neat innit.

Speaking of Pursuers, the song's context; were Barnbellow's Estate a real game you could actually play, this tune would be used for the one and only direct fight in the main game, against the story's main antagonist; an eldritch being that serves as the avatar of suffering for life, known simply as The Agony. You only actually fight it like a traditional boss on a couple of the ending routes- on others, you escape from it like you would the other Pursuers- and neither of the endings where you fight it are good (one in particular is one of the game's planned two Bad Ends). This theme is specifically for the "fight" encounter and not the "escape" one. The title is taken from the Agony in the Garden oportion of The Life of Jesus Christ; Gethsemane is the most common name put forward for the garden Jesus retreated to following The Last Supper, just before his arrest and crucifiction, where he spent his time Having A Normal One, Praying, and generally being a complete mess. So there's your hackneyed hoity toity Biblical Reference of the project.

Below the readmore are excerpts from the Barnbellow's Estate Design Document, which covers The Agony + the "fight" encounter with it + the endings that can be achieved by taking that route.

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Final Encounter/Pursuer #5: The Agony

Fury. Terror. Despair. These are feelings and sensations that transcend sapience and higher brain function; they are something even the most basic forms of life can know and understand, intimately, even if they don't have the words for them that we do. And my, are they powerful emotions, so severe and savage that they can scar the very land itself with wounds that will never heal. And It... well. It knows pain. It knows suffering. It knows despair. Some say that that is all It knows. It was not so much “born” as it was “formed”; spawned at the very beginning of this vast universe, billions of years before the Earth on which we live would come into being, in response to life's very first shed tear. And ever since, with each successive cry, it took greater form, forced to wallow and steep in an increasingly widening and deep pool of anguish. For longer then you or I can comprehend, this is how It lived.

It's no wonder that It would lash out in response. That It, too, would seek to hurt.

Without due cause.

Without an end goal.

Without any mercy.

Very few have encountered It directly. Fewer still have survived to tell It's story. Those that have know it by a single name;

The Agony.

The Agony serves as the “final boss” of Barnbellow's Estate, an avatar of it's form resting in the deepest part of a nightmarish, fleshy cave at the centremost point of the titular estate. Every horrible thing that has happened here has, in some way, been it's fault- a direct consequence of it's unending desire to inflict as much pain on every living thing as possible. Depending on a variety of factors throughout the game- the most important being how much the player has discovered and learned of each successive tragedy- Yuna's response to The Agony will fall one of two ways:

Her horror and anger overwhelm her, forcing her into a defensive position as a direct fight- the only direct fight in the game- between her and The Agony unfolds. This is what The Agony knows, and what The Agony wants, as this is how it can maximize Yuna's pain for it's own satisfaction.

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In the Fight route, The Agony's room expands into a larger, circular arena, in which it- via a humanoid form- can traverse effortlessly, attacking either directly with abilities of its own or summoning fleshy proxies of prior Pursuers to use their abilities instead. Yuna's stress meter doesn't just max out here- the actual stress meter in the HUD completely breaks, disappearing as she goes into a manic, catatonic state. However, Yuna doesn't stumble or trip here; if anything, her movement speed (which has defaulted to sprint) has increased, and she doesn't tire. Though it might not be noticeable at first, when used on the proxies (which have the exact same stats as whatever Pursuer they've formed into), her cameras damage output has also shot way up in addition. All of this comes at the cost of Yuna's own durability taking a massive hit- anything that hits her does a considerable amount of damage, and the fight can end very quickly if the player isn't careful. They must make use of Yuna's massively boosted stats to play as carefully as possible to overcome the fight.

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Endings

As briefly mentioned above, many of your actions throughout the game will determine what ending you get once the game concludes. Here's how that would work, roughly;

Yuna's main goal is to survive the night, but your actions as a player can influence the degree to which that takes precedence. If you, too, value escaping with your life, and thus play the game as a series of tense cat and mouse changes without doing much investigating, you will wind up with the most straightforward ending; Yuna fights The Agony, barely ekes out a win, and is forever haunted by what transpired in the estate. It is left ambiguous as to what, exactly, her life looked like afterwards, but it is at the very least made clear that she dropped out of her parapsychology program entirely and moved out-of-state, entirely uprooting her life and disappearing somewhere in the American Midwest to start anew, making no attempt to contact her family or anyone she knew back home ever again. Not the most rewarding of endings, but playing this way generally involves a higher degree of interaction with the various Pursuers throughout the game, as you're not taking detours to engage with anything else; to this end, the game itself becomes the reward, as the player takes repeated gambles on hiding from and escaping the Pursuers from start to finish and ends the adventure on an extremely tough boss fight that they can only just barely overcome.

However, Yuna may be terrified, but she is also curious; she has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge that persists even in life-or-death moments, and the players can lean into that. The Investigation Phase massively opens up to the player the more they choose to poke around in every nook and cranny, overturn as many stones as possible to find out what, exactly, happened in each layer of the estate- and indeed, there is much more to each Pursuer and their circumstances than is divulged above. The issue, of course, is parsing what information is useful, and what isn't, though there is at least one general rule the player can follow;

Maintain a healthy balance between Notes and Hauntings for the most “complete” outcome. Notes, by and large, contain most of the factual information; many of them were written by people who knew or encountered the Pursuers before and after their demise, and a good deal were written by the Pursuers when they were still human. If you want to learn the details, that's where you turn. But details are static, un-emotive things. To actually experience even a vague idea of what the Pursuers were going through, and gain a greater perspective on each of them, you will want to seek out Hauntings, as many of them relate directly to those experiences in some manner. Of course, not all of them do, and at least a few are unreliable in terms of their factual accuracy, distorted by time and by pain.

If you rely too heavily on the notes, Yuna gains understanding, but can't fully put herself in the shoes of the beings trying to hurt her. This leads to Yuna's fear, anger, and sadness to override her capacity for empathy. This plays out, in game, with the note count increasing and the haunting count decreasing; you learn more, but feel less, in practice. This also sets Yuna on the path to fighting The Agony at the end, though this time, she does not overcome it; no matter how hard you fight, you will fall to it. Her emotions at their absolute peak, entirely out of control, is the exact key The Agony needs to sink it's influence into her, tearing her apart and reshaping her as it sees fit, just like it did to all the Pursuers before her. Yuna never returns from her trip; she, too, becomes a denizen wandering the layers of the estate. Another scary story woven into the fabric of history; the tale of an overzealous ghost hunter who in way over her head, and joined the ranks of the very things she sought out. An ending that's a touch on the nose, given it's the conclusion to a route likely chosen by the most lore-hungry player, but similarly to the above, that wealth of information is it's own reward. And, for those looking to try out every possible permutation, the knowledge learned here can be used to fill in the gaps in other routes.

Art by @rinth444. An interpretation of 20 characters from the first four books in The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolf. Done in the style of a 90s CRPG.

A few of these I can elaborate on: 

Astro Robin Hood is an obscure JRPG with a "Robin Hood IN SPACE" theme. Like many RPGs of the era, it's mostly a Dragon Quest clone, but you can a build a party of out several available Merry Men. 

Star Trek - The Atlantis Bone is a Japan-exclusive Star Trek game, framed as if it were an episode of the Original Series. Some claim the story comes from an unfilmed TV script for the show, but this has never been confirmed. Japanese fans say it represents the show better than many of the other Star Trek games of the era. 

Insection - The Arcade Game is based on a bug-themed space shooter made by an obscure European dev. Oddly, the actual arcade game was never finished or released, as the games were developed concurrently and the arcade version was canceled due to financial issues. 

Metal Fighter Blaseball - An oddly misspelled baseball game with a sci-fi theme, similar to Base Wars. Some cute sprites based on tokusatsu characters and aliens, but otherwise a pretty standard baseball game for the era. 

Nigel Mansell’s Font Fighting - Japan-exclusive "action education game" meant to teach kids English and to improve handwriting. Borderline unplayable. No is sure who Nigel Mansell is. EDIT: While some assume the title refers to the race car driver Nigel Mansell, the game doesn’t feature driving a tall, nor does it have Mansell’s likeness, so your guess is as a good as anyone’s.

Fourteen obscure NES/Famicom ROMs that were never released in North America, according to a neural network:

Power Punker (Europe)

Business Gaiden (Japan)

Astro Robin Hood (Japan)

Entity Rad (Europe)

World Championship Shting (Japan)

Star Trek - The Atlantis Bone (Japan)

Insection - The Arcade Game (Europe)

Captain Player Earth (Japan)

Magic Dark Star Hen (Japan)

Murde - The Fingler’s Quest (Europe)

Metal Fighter Blaseball (Japan) (Rev A)

Smurf the Edify (Japan)

Skate or Space Dive Bashboles (Europe)

Chack'van, Ultimate Game of Power Blam (Japan)

Nigel Mansell’s Font Fighting (Japan)

Not Too Late - Full OST

I changed DAW/Tracker. I made this in Renoise for the "OST Composing Jam" competition.😊✨