Game music of the day: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

Game: Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest

Song: Battle Theme

Composer: Ryuji Sasai, Yasuhiro Kawakami

Above: Battle Theme from Mystic Quest

Good news! Today Nintendo finally added series runt Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest to the Virtual Console. While its reputation as "baby's firstFinal Fantasy" is deserved, don't write off the entire game due to its toned-down difficulty and simplistic battle system. Instead, look at it as a laid-back RPG with a complementary smooth soundtrack.

The battle theme, above, is one of the most rockin' RPG songs of the 16-bit era. It's fitting combat music, and provides an up-tempo break from the rest of the game's moody, slower-minded tracks.Most of the game is easy listening type stuff, perfect for background music while you're doing homework or mind-numbing data entry.

Above: The final boss music is also pretty thrashin', though once again it's a suitable use of guitars - final battles should always feel this epic!

Above: The Wintry Cave, Ice Pyramid tune is more indicative of the game's general sound. Lots of echo-y notes and toe-tapping beats

Longtime (i.e. old) gamers might recall the series of print ads that ran during FFMQ's launch period, each of which advertised the game solely as an entry-level RPG for $39.99. Hell, for that price, it was definitely worth it, but text like this probably turned a lot of us "serious" gamers away:

But trust me, it's still pretty fun. And it's just 800 Wii Points. Though, that's almost $10 you could put towards Epic Yarn, Donkey Kong, GoldenEye or Epic Mickey. So strange for Wii owners to have so many excellent options!

Epic Battle, aka Johnathon Taylor Thomas by Tales of Game's Studios

Guest entry from OverClocked Remix!

Opening theme by Nobuo Uematsu