Where your favorite blogs come alive
Decon Theed - Blog Posts
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.
***
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.
---
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.
---
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.
The 12 Tracks of Christmas 2019 Track 3: Nightmares Won’t Chill (Course BGM #04) [from “Nightmare Busters”], by Denji Koshiro Original Track: Chilling Air
Don’t worry, folks; this album ain’t gonna turn into “R.I.P.1.0.3. x XMAS 2019”. Pinkie swear, this is a one off.
Nightmare Busters is an older project of mine that holds a special place in my heart; it was the first fully-fledged Gonkaka project I ever worked on and completed, as well as the first (and so far, the only full-length) chiptune project I’ve put together. If memory serves me correctly it’s initial release on 103 Records was the first release I ever charged for- this was before the “pay what you want or get for free” clause was mandatory. It definitely shows it’s age compositionally, as well as my inexperience in terms of sound design- not helped by the inconsistency of sound design between tracks (each piece basically uses entirely different sets of waveforms/“instruments”, which is not at all period-accurate for what was supposed to be an arcade game from the late 80s/early 90s)- but it’s only with the benefit of experience and hindsight that I can say all of that. And of course, none of that takes away from the fact that I sat down and put the time in to create an entire album using software I was pretty much completely knew with on a mobile device, working on rough “game design” documentation alongside it with help from Dio (who provided the excellent cover art). I did grow discontent with it after a period, and strongly enough to actually take the initial release of the album down, though cooler heads would eventually prevail and the idea to re-release it swam around in my head for a while before it eventually dropped in 2017, with the story surrounding it reworked to frame the version of Nightmare Busters that music was written for, in Gonkaka/Nincom lore, being an overly ambitious prototype from a freshly established company that collapsed under it’s own weight. The story does state however that Nightmare Busters was eventually revisited by Nincom, re-imagined for the console that in-universe stands in for the Playstation.
That’s where this song comes in, but first I should probably explain what Nightmare Busters is about. Like, the in-story game, I mean. Strap in folks; this is gonna be a long one. So much so in fact that I’m going to throw up a readmore to preserve the sanity of mobile users, but I encourage you to read further!
Keep reading
Yuna Itoh, a Californian parapsychology student with a lifelong fascination of the supernatural, has found herself dealing with a crisis of faith. The countless personal investigations she has undertaken into haunts and horrors have always turned up empty, revealed to be nothing more then mistakes or fakery. Coupled with a lifetime of scepticism and even insults from her peers, she finds her belief waning, unable to shake the thought that the course of her life thus far has been a mistake. It’s in this bout of existential ennui that Yuna learns of- and becomes fixated with- a supposedly haunted estate in England that once belonged to the wealthy and prestigious Barnbellow family. As the rest of the country suffered during the Second World War, the Barnbellows continued to live comfortably and indulgently, with nary a care in the world. This peaceful ignorance was shattered entirely with the kidnapping and subsequent murder of the youngest child, Edward Barnbellow, a tragedy that wounded the clan and the local community alike, but none more so then the family matriarch Jennifer Barnbellow. For weeks on end she wailed in agony, crippled by despair with no attempts at aid soothing her. Even so, none could have foreseen how the story would end: an empty house full of corpses, blood streaked across the walls, and Jennifer having spirited away, never to be seen again. Tales speak of her spirit wandering the estate, wailing and crying for her beloved son. With the deadline for an important case study and accompanying thesis looming, Yuna comes to a decision; she decides to travel to England and visit the Barnbellow’s former home in person, ostensibly for her studies. However, deep down, she sees this as something of a moment of truth; one final test to determine whether or not forces beyond our understanding do exist. Yuna is going to get her answer, and it will change her world forever. Gonkaka is proud to present this promotional single for Nincom’s upcoming survival horror title Barnbellow’s Estate, due to be released October 2nd XX99. It is one of several intense themes intended to score moments when Yuna engages with nightmarish creatures she cannot beat and must instead escape.
I Hear You Run, I See You Hide (Pursuer Theme #1) [from “Barnbellow’s Estate”]
released June 30, 2019
composed by Decon Theed
cover designed by Decon Theed
DOWNLOAD INCLUDES CORRECTLY SIZED COVER + UNEDITED COVER SCAN
Sweet Home (Walkaround Ambiance #1) [from “Barnbellow’s Estate”] (Gonkaka)
This is something long overdue; actual music for my Barnbellow’s Estate project.
For those of you that haven’t been around long or don’t follow my exploits closely, Barnbellow’s Estate is a Clock Tower inspired project that has existed, in some form, since about 2007, though it has gone through quite a few tweaks and changes within that time frame. Like a lot of my projects, it started out as an idea for a game I was certain I’d somehow make, but once reality caught up with me a bit I rejigged it into a “fake soundtrack” Gonkaka project. Because I might not be able to make full games, but I CAN make soundtracks and write an obscene amount of flavour text!
There are two primary modes of ‘gameplay’ in Barnbellow’s Estate, were it to exists: one wherein you explore the impossibly large estate the game takes place in, solving puzzles, reading lore, and engaging with all manner of survival horror tropes; and one wherein you have to escape from the designated pursuer of whatever area of the estate your in, using the environment to your advantage (either to hide from or hinder said pursuer), or in a pinch, use Yuna’s digital camera to stun and temporarily disable them. This is a piece that would play during one of the former sections- specifically, it’s intended to be the primary walkaround music for the very first area of the game (the hysterical laughter and/or sobbing sample that I messed about with in the final section is a giveaway here, as it’s intended to tie into the game’s first pursuer; the Vengeful Mother, whom makes an appearance in and has some of her backstory expanded upon in this short story I wrote). It’s also a good demonstration of the general sound direction I wanted to take the walkaround tracks in: a sorta free-form, experimental semi ambient style with more melody driven breaks and a shot or two of some 80s-styled synth patches for cheesy horror flick fair.
This piece does have some more specific sources of inspiration, though; the use of rave stabs owes itself more to the music from G Darius than more dance-floor ready tracks, as G Darius’ score did tend to make use of orch hits and rave stabs in unsettling and sometimes dischordant ways (here’s an example track). The track’s general vibe also owes a lot to the Ancient Castle Stage music from the first Devil May Cry - the idea to use some effect-ladden and otherwise messed with samples of orchestra tune-ups and an opera singer belting out in a freeway in particular were inspired by the sudden appearance of a pleasant string melody overlaid atop the offputting ambiance (the big, bombastic organ/string section also owes itself to the Ancient Castle Stage track). The name is also a deliberate reference to the NES/Famicom horror title Sweet Home, because I don’t think I’ve made my love of that game quite clear enough yet.
Fun trivia fact: this is technically a stealth remake of an older attempt at the first-area-walkaround-track for Barnbellow’s Estate, called “Tragedy United Them”. About the only thing it borrows from the original is that organ section, though.
This song includes the following sounds from freesound.org:
orchestra warming up (BeeProductive)
underpass (Simon Gray)
Chamber Ensemble Tuning 2 (Cunningar0807)
G51-09-Woman Sobs and Laughs (Craig Smith)
Happy Slapper ‘93 (Mighty Obnoxious Yellow)
I’d originally planned to do something entirely different for the next cut in my ongoing “music I make on advice from my therapist” series, but as is damn near always the case with me, plans change. The idea to do a speedy oldskool Rotterdam Techno track with some mighty slap bass came to mind as if from a dream at the start of the week, and several hours over the next few days were lost to making it a terrifying reality.
This track is another piece for one of my many, many, many Gonkaka projects; Relentless Riders. An arcade racing/driving game that, were it a real game, would be somewhat Ridge Racer inspired, but with several twists. For starters, there’s no actual opponent vehicles to race against, and the courses aren’t circular; the race is instead against the clock, and the courses are straight shots with a defined beginning and end (so it’s a bit like OutRun in that regard, too). Another major difference is that it has a defined narrative, which I’m going to try my hardest to sum up in brief:
Relentless Riders takes place thousands of years into the future, after a brutal war fought that raged for centuries has left the planet almost completely decimated and the human race in the hundreds. Said war was fought using machines that were able to alter the fabric of reality itself, with every creative and unspeakably cruel way that power could be used and abused explored by those that fought in the war- hence why the planet is in such bad shape. The survivors of the war congregated together and created a safe haven at the most remote point of the planet, vowing to create as utopian a society as possible within their means. As you can imagine, however, resources weren’t exactly in abundance to begin with, and in the years since the colony was established circumstances have only grown more dire. With little hope left, they turn to a legend stating that the original reality warping device- the most powerful of the machines and the one that served as the base for all the others- lays untouched, still operational, in it’s original location; a laboratory at the heart of the only part of the planet untouched by the war, known as “The Vanishing Point”. With this machine’s help, they could undo the damage wrought by millennia of fighting; they could renew the world entirely. Problem is, the Vanishing Point’s location is an incredible distance away- on the complete opposite end of the remaining landmass that the colony was built on. It’s a one way trip, and with no indication that legends are factual, it could all be for naught. Seeing no options left, four volunteers step forward to make the impossible journey- Ayako, Yoshie, Tomoko, and Mariko- working with the few mechanically and scientifically remaining individuals to construct supercars capable of withstanding the hostile world beyond their borders. Each of the drivers have their reasons for volunteering: Ayako, having only known cities made of steel and titanium and beginning to feel burdened by the scientific knowledge that has shaped her life, dreams of experiencing an unsoiled world full of flora and fauna; Yoshie, the sole remaining member of her family, seeks to escape to a happier world where the sorrow she’s known for entire life is a distant memory; Tomoko, a spiritual individual who no longer finds comfort in her belief system and unable to fully believe the legend is true, wants to experience one last burst of freedom and fun before the inevitable end; and Mariko, an eccentric individual who learned quick to use her bizarre nature to try and offer some brevity, knows the machine at the Vanishing Point contains information on the world of the past- including info on a chocolate bar she’s heard many tales of and is desperate to try. Their cars built and their affairs settled, the four drivers depart from the colony with nothing but a small selection of ‘classical music’ from many aeons ago blaring from their speakers, to boost their morale.
… That wasn’t very brief at all, was it?
As for the track itself; it couldn’t possibly be more inspired by Shinji Hosoe’s early work in the ridge racer games if I’d tried, though there’s a touch of the old masters of Rotterdam Techno- Holy Noise, Euromasters, King Dale etc.- in there as well. Whilst older Rotterdam Techno was fast pasted and had its fair share of heavy kicks and quirky samples, the early stages of the genre didn’t quite go to the same extremes as it would in the latter half of the 90s and beyond (this was an age before Speedcore and Extratone, after all). In terms of actual specific songs, this owes itself to Speedster, Speedster Overheat, and though it’s a newer track Rotten 7 [Remix] from the Ridge Racer series, all of which were composed by Hosoe. It’s mostly the former two, what with their Slap Bass Action™, but the bittersweet chords were drawn from the latter a little. The bittersweet angle was a detail I specifically wanted to include; to keep in tandem with the narrative of Relentless Riders, I want the music for the project to have a forlorn tone to it. Not to the point of being morose and miserable, mind, but just enough to tug at the heart strings a bit.
Oh, yeah; why’s it credited to “Mighty Obnoxious Yellow” and not “Gonkaka”? Another of the ideas for RR was to have the race BGMs be assigned to fake acts made up by Gonkaka (aliases for aliases; we’re through the looking glass), though M.O.Y. is actually the name of a project that Gonkaka’s bassist, Takayuki Mitsuyoshi, and their string player/head tech guy Denji Koshiro were in together before Gonkaka formed, wherein they blended electronica with their chosen instrument talents. Hence why the slap bass is off the chain here, and why the violin makes an appearance at a few points. The name and general idea are a reference to Oriental Magnetic Yellow, the name of a Yellow Magic Orchestra cover/parody band formed by Shinji Hosoe, Nobuyoshi Sano, Takayuki Aihara, and Hiroto Sasaki that they worked on between soundtrack gigs. The title of the song is a two-pronged pun; “Happy Slapping” was the name of a 'fad’ from my secondary school days wherein you would suddenly slap someone, usually from behind, yell “HAPPY SLAP” as you did it, and some other dickhead would film the whole affair on their phone. And, as well established, the song’s got mad slap bass in it ayyy.
Why yes, I DO think through this shit so thoroughly for pretty much my sole enjoyment, how did you know?
As a fun bonus, I’ve included some early character design concepts for the four riders: these were drawn about three years ago, and desperately need updating, but hey ho!
Point of Origin: A Retrospective on Schadenbergiana
I’ve mentioned a few times over the years that I’ve not just cooked up entirely fictional games to go along with the music I write under my Gonkaka alias, but indeed an entire fictional company with it’s own history to go along with them, Nincom. After having a lot of fun putting together a retrospective for one of my ongoing Gonkaka projects, Efiáltis, I decided to dig deep into the back catalogue of work I’d done and do something similar for a Nincom game I had already finished writing the music for a long time ago; Schadenbergiana. Along the way, a point about the preservation of old games made it’s way in there too. This piece of metafiction was written for the 2018 Halloween Countdown over on Random Lunacy, and can be viewed there with embedded music players.
—
Ever since day one, Nincom has been defined by it’s dedication to uniqueness and the fervent ambition- traits which have found the company in hot water more then once, and most famously before they even got their first game out the door. Theirs is an attitude described by many as “weird”, fewer as “punk”, and by their dedicated fans as something that “sets them apart from everyone else in the game’s industry”. The company has recently celebrated their 32nd birthday with a release that has been rather aggressively marketed through various online channels; The Nincom N-Sides Collection, a compilation of some of the companies rarest and most obscure releases, each of them painstakingly emulated as accurately as possible using emulators programmed in-house. In honour of this momentous occasion, we’d like to cover what was perhaps the hardest Nincom game to find in any capacity and even harder to get emulated correctly; Schadenbergiana.
Keep reading
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!
***
“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.
Keep reading
The year is XX92. Technology has advanced so that at any given point, people are connected to the Network via cyber augmentation, allowing them to access news, online stores, video sites, and most prominently net-based games on the get go, wherever they are. It is estimated that at any given point in time, at least 90% of the worlds population is logged into the Net in some form, and 40% of that total is playing a net-based game, the most popular of which is Battlemania. Developed by the 103rd Game Company, Battlemania is a massive multiplayer virtual reality crossover beat ‘em up, featuring characters, enemies, and locations from the most popular games, movies, comics, novels and animated shows; it randomly generates campaigns of varying length and difficulty for groups of players, building from a database of over 1000 characters and 500 locations. Despite initial concerns from the media and inside the company itself, the game became a huge hit, and the company has made enough money back to cover all the licencing fees at least 10 times over.
But then, at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve, the entire Net becomes compromised; every single machine connected to it starts behaving strangely, everyone accessing it from an augmentation device is locked in with no way to disengage; to make matters worse, all nations with nuclear armament have lost control of their systems, all of which are armed and ready to fire at any given moment. Tracing the trail of corruption, experts discover the origin of the code; SAINT j92000, the central computer at the heart of the system running Battlemania. Amidst the chaos, every screen begins to transmit the same feed; a man in a red coat, wearing black and white makeup, a cruel smile on his face.
“Good evening, people of the world. My name is Pied. I was created for the sole purpose of providing players with the greatest challenge possible, and tonight, I think I've achieved just that; I have trapped almost all of you in the Net with me, and I have armed every single weapons system on the planet; exactly twenty four hours and fifty three minutes from now, I will fire every single one... If you survive my challenges and make it to my lair, then you may wake to a new day, but be warned; if your character dies, YOU die with them! Hahahahaha!!!”
Though brave and hungry for a challenge, one by one the players fall before Pied’s insidious challenges, the life support systems in their augmentations shorting out their brains as their lives count down to zero, until ultimately, only 8 players remain; a team known as the Brave Herts, spoken of in hushed tones by other players as the absolute best of the best, are the only hope humanity has to avoid a nuclear winter.
And they've just eight hours left.
---
The Brave Herts are a group of 8 players well known within the Battlemania community for being the cream of the crop; players that have completely mastered their chosen character and can clear entire campaigns in only a few hours, with zero handicaps and only the default life count. Despite all the prestige and elite status, though, the players are noted to be very friendly and welcoming of newcomers in the community, and have helped get many a player started on their run to starting their own teams. On the night of the disaster, they not only watch their entire community fall to pieces, they not only have to fight to survive, but they fight knowing that when their comrades fall, they perish outside of the game too. For the Brave Herts, this isn’t just about saving the world; this is personal.
---
“A pocket where Pied allowed them in, but never would allow them out. That last trick up his sleeve to take the most likely of threats and place it square in his pocket, away from the world they were trying to save, and force them to watch their world be destroyed. Its that complete severance from the game that allowed the programmers to do the impossible. It didn't seem to both Pied, but who can tell the true mind and heart of an artificial evil? It was not an easy battle, even for the most experienced, and quite possibly the fastest players in the game. Mobbing a boss in a simultaneous fashion was always the whole point of a game like that. But there's a method to it. Always has been. The way tanks would pursue it in a fashion of waves of destruction, timing your blows correctly, while a healer was always on keeping everyone in the best of health. Not this time. There could be no systematic pattern to destroy something to powerful, and that's what they all counted on. A crescendo of almost incasing blows and slices and hacks, cutting that program down, whittling its HP by minute increments. That hopeless feeling of no progress when you watch the countdown timer descend faster than the red pixels of that health bar. It was paralyzing. Only they couldn't let it be. There was a tremendous cracking sound, and the health bar itself can't fall fast enough; instead of sliding down into the end, it disappeared in great chunks, pixellating and crumbling in digital artifacts until its all gone. Silence descended to the area, as the fighters finally drop to the ground in exhaustion. That's when Dio checks her log and sighed. She opened a transparent code box, and with Jacob's help, they opened a text field and typed in a single, short code. rm-rf* "It means that its going to delete everything from a root. Namely here…." Jacob opens a save box, and slopes his hand against it, to "save". "And everything inside here. There's no guaranteeing that if we simply leave here and do nothing that he wouldn't come back. I wouldn't put it past the program to have wormed its way into the deepest parts of the system. But that won't matter if we mass delete the whole thing. Pied. The world." "And you?" comes Simon's small voice. He's looking at his avatar, where parts of the model start to come apart. "And you too if you don't get going," Dio said, as she started to open a couple more code boxes with Jacob. "Its going to take awhile, to erase everything. But if you stay here, then you'll be deleted too." A shimmering surround them, and JP shook his head. "You can't." "We have to. Its for the best. This'll warp you to the first starting area, and you'll have time to log out by a long shot. Don't worry." "No, I mean…you can't just do it all yourselves!" Dio laughed softly. "Oh, you mean make a grand sacrifice?" She swiped the command line and sent them all away, just before the ground portions of the area begin to dissolve. "Looks like the kids have grown all up." "They weren't all kids," Jacob countered as he eyes the bits of Pied beginning to reform. "You know…this has the tone of an Incredible Hulk episode." "I'm going to go ahead and take that as a compliment, sweetchucks."
***
The 8 players stood by the starting area, but things from there have changed. Many of the choices for other areas show error codes. Its only their area, that quiet hill that overlooked the first beginnings of familiar levels, where the snow no longer fell in broken artifacts, but as clear as it usually does. "The clock…is working," Aina said softly, as she opened her menu. Indeed, all their world clocks had begun running, where Pied's countdown clock had replaced it. According to the in-game clock, it was now dawn, and accordingly, an artificial golden orange light began to rise. They stand to watch it, silent, knowing that this new day dawned on the end of an old world. "Think…I'll take some time off for awhile," came Kiripa's voice. "You know. Maybe go out and do something different for a new pastime for awhile. Collect books or something." There was a quiet sound, and they turned to look as JP smiled and began to log out. "Its been…I guess real, guys…. Maybe next time it won't be so dangerous…." "Thank you," Mei said, and she smiled with a genuine smile that was more than pixels and polygons in a digital world. Aina turned to look at them all, and though they were fake, the tears in her eyes seemed so real. "I'll never forget you guys. Never." JP smiled. When he was gone Mei gave the rest of them a hug. "Better start paying attention to the actual kids…. They'll never let me touch another video game as long as they live." Treble and Bass decided to make their exit next. "You guys stay in touch, yeah?" Tony looked miserable, but Simon only gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Its ok…if they're good programmers, maybe they got out ok." The others leave, but when Tony gets ready to log out, Aina is still watching the sunrise. "You know…where I live…its probably going to be happening for real. A real sunset. What about you?" "I'm about 8 hours from it." He smiled sadly. "But if I leave now, and stay up, maybe I'll watch it." Aina was the last one left, watching the rest of the real but fake world begin to go out. When she logged back out, her computer showed a log in error when she tried to load it again. There was no going back to the old world now. Both outside, and inside.”
~~~
The clocks ticked over. People trapped within the Net began to regain consciousness, able to free themselves from their digital confines. The frozen supercomputers opened back up all at once, allowing the programmers access once more. All the active weapons systems disarmed themselves in unison, returning to a neutral state. The wind was still blowing. The snow still fell. It was Christmas Day.
The period of global mourning for the many lost lives seemed to pass quickly, the world itself keeping on carrying on. Not many people were very privy to the investigation into the incident, but truth be told, there wasn’t much to uncover; Dio and Jacob’s code wiped the entirety of the coding housed within SAINT j92000, and what remained couldn’t function in any form without it. The game was, effectively, gone completely, and it was almost like Pied's influence had never broken free of the game’s confines at all. Fewer still ever found out what happened to the Brave Herts; for the most part, their presence on the Net gradually petered out as time went on, until eventually all contact with any of them ceased completely. The 103rd Game Company ceased activity as a business, and it’s global funds went to multiple sources, from grieving families to Net safety companies, and most of it’s employees faded into obscurity in much the same way.
Years pass. The disaster becomes a distant memory kept alive only through written stories, art and comics, concept albums, hearsay and urban myth; the story of a popular game that turned deadly, threatening the safety of the world on one of the holiest nights of the year, and of 8 brave hearts who stood up against the darkness and saved the world from certain destruction.
---
One of the most highly touted features of Battlemania is its Bonus Memories feature; in every level, there is a secret task that opens up an alternate pathway towards the end of the level. Heading down it takes the player to a 16bit, simplified rendition of the stage they’re currently on, where the goal is to engage in a number of “modes”- for example, “kill 30 enemies”, or “destroy all boxes”- with each stage having a different set of tasks to acomplish. A feature the 103rd Company Calls “Pinball Style” allows these modes to be stacked atop each other in any combition, allowing players to score huge points. There is no “end” to the stages in terms of goal, and the player returns to the main game once the timer runs out.
Happy New Year, listeners! We here at 103:R. hope you had a fantastic Christmas, and wish you all the very best in the new year~!
Heaven Shatters (Attract Mode)
Never Say Die! (Character Select)
Under Armageddon’s Sky (STAGE 1: Sunset Serenade)
Perfect Bhlewos (STAGE 2: The Temple Of The Cradle Of Creation)
One Pence Empire (STAGE 3: Meterville Bay)
Shotgun Republic (STAGE 4: Miskatonik University)
Many Voices, All Silent (STAGE 5: Minimoog Forest)
Zero Below (And Death From Above) (STAGE 6: Niflheim)
A Thousand Fists A Second (STAGE 7: The Museum Of A Thousand Nightmares)
What Once Was, Has Since Ceased To Be (STAGE 8: Heaven’s Grave)
The Devil’s Nearest Neighbors [Heaven’s Finest Fallen Mix] (Boss Battle)
920 Seconds To Doomsday (Final Boss)
A Legend Born Of Bravest Hearts (Ending Credits)
NEW RAVE ORDER (Bonus Stage)
j92000.NUXX (Main Menu [FC1 Version])
Higher Board (Stage Clear)
Ticking Away (Continue Countdown)
Stone-like Resolve (Name Entry)
Quiet (Game Over)
released December 31, 2014
project planned and directed by Decon Theed project co directed by Dio Maxwelle cover art, character art, and design concepts produced by Dio Maxwelle scenario, mini bios, and flavour text written by Decon Theed and Dio Maxwelle the characters belong to Decon Theed and Dio Maxwelle music composed by Shinji Namiki, Fumie Saso, Takayuki Mitsuyoshi, and Denji Koshiro DOWNLOAD INCLUDES: FULL RES SCANS OF FRONT AND BACK COVERS, FLAVOUR TEXT/STORY DOCUMENT, MINI CHARACTER & SERIES BIOS DOCUMENT, FULL RES CHARACTER ART IMAGES, CONCEPT ART, THREE BONUS TRACKS, A SAMPLE LIST DOCUMENT, AND A SPECIAL THANKS DOCUMENT
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