[VGM] Far East of Eden Zero - "Mysterious Hill" (Extended 30m + SPC700 status)
2Did an extension of "Mysterious Hill" from Far East of Eden Zero (or Tengai Makyou Zero but I prefer the English name more).
For those unfamiliar with it: FEoEZ is a RPG only released in Japan for the Super Famicom (the iconic and well-recognized SNES in most places elsewhere). In this game, you take on the role of a descendant of a powerful clan that's safeguarded the continent of Jipang for generations from the forces of evil sealed behind the Gates of Hell, 600 years after the last battle, this hero - named Higan - is tasked with defeating Ninigi (who's basically the big cheese of Hell) and sealing him in the Gates, after he was liberated by a man who wanted to be ruler of Jipang but wasn't deemed worthy of the throne. For that end, Higan has to liberate each nation from the grasp of the commanders of Hell, as one of each has been causing a different kind of problem in each nation.
Having that cleared, I'm actually enjoying a lot this game, it's very unique as the sidequesting tends to involve real-time clock (RTC)... so to track down specific stuff, you most likely have to wait until that period in the year (yes, IRL) to get specific items, some of which are required for other secrets). The music is what got me in after looking around for more SPC dumps, I bumped into this one and it's took some time to finally decide to play, it's been super worth it ever since.
Back onto the topic of the extension... this track plays in the dungeon of the fourth area of the game you visit, the [Turtle Nation], the dungeon is the [Cryptic Arbor Castle] and is home to one of the commanders of Hell, Juri. She's responsible for an overgrowth of trees all around the [Turtle Nation], even going as far as to turn people themselves in trees.
By glancing at the title alone, you'd think this theme does indeed play on some sort of overworld area like a hill, but as you can infer from the miniature... that's actually wrong, it does play in a castle overgrown with plants, the name is most certainly a reference to the location of the castle, since it's mostly surrounded mountains.
Indeed, I loved this track, so I thought I'd give it a well-deserved extension, and yes, more will certainly come soon, so stay tuned. :)
As we can see in the SPC700 status, FEoEZ has the samples allocated in voices mostly like how it's been done on a bunch of Squaresoft's SNES titles such as Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, except that samples tend to be even more frequently allocated after the voice 32 (included), and as more samples are used for a certain track, the maximum voice goes up, so in this case the track uses 6 samples, the voices that are actually in use go from 32 to 37 (and samples are normally allocated by first time of use in the music).
There's also frequent use of Gain envelopes, most of the time you'll just see Exponential/Line Decrease; some tracks also use [Surround] effect but this one doesn't at all.
Note: as with all music videos shared on my channel, these are published for entertainment/research purposes only!
=== SONG DATA AND ID666 TAG INFO ===
Title: "Mysterious Hill"
Composer: "Toshiyuki Sasagawa"
Game: "Far East of Eden Zero"
Console: "Super Famicom"
Copyright: "1995 Hudson Soft"
SPC dumper: "CaitSith2"
SPC tagger: "CaitSith2, kefka95" (source of tags: http://vgmdb.net/album/1925)
Thanks to the mentioned users from snesmusic.org for providing SPC700 dumps.
=== KEYWORDS ===
FEoEZ, after Flower Garden, forest, vegetation, trees, dungeon, castle, hill, mystery, Juri, cryptic abode, extended music, vgm, video game music, snes, sfc, SPC700, S-SMP, APU