Music Monday - Woo-Sah

I'm a big fan of the Kingdom Hearts series, so featuring this song is inevitable. The soundtracks to the various games are superb, and all crafted by a woman by the name of Yoko Shimomura, lending a certain constant quality to each game. Of all the songs, though, my favourite has to be "Dearly Beloved," the home screen background music of each game.

Why do I love it so much? With the very first chord I am instantly relaxed. My shoulders drop, my lungs heave a soft sigh, I close my eyes and let all the tension leave me.

It's something I need every now and again, as I'm a rather emotionally closed person (comes with being a Green!). I bottle emotions up, and music is my most favoured form of relaxation. That's the reason I have a 'down tempo' playlist on my iPod, with five different versions of this particular song. I admit, I'm a little obsessed, but you will be to after giving it a listen!

Below are the two versions from Kingdom Hearts II, probably my favourites, but I love all the versions for different reasons. Enjoy!

the Gaming Post

My main game right now is Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Now, I'm one of the many addicts of this franchise, and I know this. Heck, I bought a PSP for the sole purpose of playing this game. Dissidia Final Fantasy was just a nice coincidence. What I'm loving about KH:BBS is the fact that I don't have to play as Sora or Roxas! There are adult characters! RAD.

That said, my addiction to the franchise is forcing me to take forever to actually finish the game. I'm doing all the side quest things, getting all the weapons and abilities. Y'know the drill. I'm unsure why I bother, though, especially when I'm rewarded with a weapon that looks like the most epic sundae ever. Not that effective, either, as you probably guessed.

Besides that, I've also been playing Soul Calibur 2 casually. One of my roommates brought his Game Cube down, so we fight it out every now and again. Fortunately we're evenly matched, between my frantic button mashing and his attempts to correctly input combo sequences. As a note: long combos tend to not work when your opponent is flailing beside you.

I've also become a big time mobile gamer, now that I've got an iPod Touch and an Android at hand (no pun intended, sorry). While Angry Birds is a paid app on the iPod, it's free on Android. I've got both, but I've been playing the holiday editions on my HTC quite a lot, especially the Halloween one.

On the iPod I'm mostly playing Cut the Rope, and adorably rad and addictive game that's super easy to pick up. I had beaten it once already, but updating the firmware on my iPod erased all that data, so I've been working through it again. No complaints, though. I live to see Omnom make his candy quota.

Back to my Droid. Remember my Kingdom Hearts addiction? Guess what. I installed a Gameboy Advance emulator on my Desire Z, so now I'm playing through KH:Chain of Memories for real. Previously I just wussed out and bought the two volume manga to get me up to speed before playing KH:358/2 Days. Gotta love the power of Androids!

Finally, but not on the mobile gaming front, I'm waiting on Battle Engine Aquila to arrive in my mailbox. It's an obscure Playstation 2/XBox/PC game that I adore above all others. I had it for XBox previously, but my console and games were stolen a year or so back. Figured it was time to fork out for a PS2 copy, a whole $8 including shipping. Yah, really breaking into my savings, eh?
photos by: Square Enix & Disney, Namco, Rovio, Chillingo, and Atari.