MIDI Week Singles: "Walking the Earth" - Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light (NDS)

 

"Walking the Earth" from Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light on the Nintendo DS (2009)
Composer: Naoshi Mizuta
Album: Hikari no 4 Senshi -Final Fantasy Gaiden- Original Soundtrack
Label: Square Enix Co., Ltd.
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Matrix Software

It has been, a long time since I last played Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, released on the Nintendo DS back in 2009, although I do occasionally think about going back to restarting it and not grinding an additional (and useless) 30 levels above the recommended level before attempting the final boss.  "Walking the Earth," from what I remember is the default theme that plays regardless of what biome you are walking in, so you end up hearing this theme a lot, although maybe not in its entirety due to the semi-frequent-ness of random battles.  Interestingly in this game, there is a day/night cycle and with it a change in the overworld theme that plays (and I may just feature the nighttime music next week?).

"Walking the Earth" is just a good all-around overworld theme for a JRPG where you are going to be spending a lot of time walking around and listening to this particular track.  The instrumentation, which is very much an element of its time and the system it was released on, is well-suited for the storybook aesthetic.  It even reminds me a bit of music that would have been composed on the NES, although there is more depth here, again, the instrumentation hints that an 8-bit version of the song could exist.  And now we are dipping our entire bodies into nostalgia.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Should We Take The Day...

Emulator Hour: Kirby's Dream Land 3 (SNES/NS)

 

Oof.

I kinda do not want to talk too harshly about Kirby's Dream Land 3 as played on the SNES Online Switch App on the Nintendo Switch because it was a game that Conklederp wanted me to play as a way of us destressing before falling asleep at night (Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity was understandably too high energy), but she also witnessed enough of my frustration and annoyance while playing the game that I think it is safe here to do so.

I have some history with the Kirby franchise in the form of playing a little of Kirby's Dream Land on the Game Boy, 3D Classics: Kirby's Adventure, and I played the demos for Kirby's Epic Yarn (20 minutes at PAX2010) and Kirby's Star Allies last year on the Switch; after playing Kirby's Dream Land 3, I did play Kirby's Super Star so I have that in the back of my brain too while writing this article, but chronologically, I had not played this title yet before KDL3.  So please keep that all in mind as I attempt to be coherent in my wordings from here on out.

I did not really enjoy Kirby's Dream Land 3.  Outside of the intro cinematic showing the black-blob-force crash-landing in Dream Land (sorry, I just learned it is called Planet Popstar, so now I'm the idiot) and taking over the various characters that inhabit this land/realm, I found the game to be significantly lacking in any description of what you were supposed to be doing besides moving from the left side of the screen to the right.  Sure it follows the standard Kirby format of swallowing and absorbing the power of certain enemies (while others you just swallow with no effect), but the visual depiction and definition of what the effects are after swallowing an applicable enemy leave a lot to be desired.  BUT!, this does make a bit of sense because, in KDL3, you are able to have an optional companion that modifies the abilities, but I will get to that down below because I have more to go on about.

The game is broken up into (technically) six worlds, although the final world can only be accessed if you managed to collect all of the Heart Stars from each of the six levels and a boss fight in all five of the worlds.  What are Heart Stars you ask?  I have almost no idea aside from them being a collectible.  I know that if you do something in each stage, you will meet an NPC who you help (maybe?) and they reward Kirby with a Heart Star at the end of the stage.  How do you get a Heart Star?  Again, no clue, because how you acquire them changes with each level you are in, and I only know this because I am also currently looking at a walkthrough on GameFAQS.  

I genuinely feel that this mechanic of Heart Stars only exists to draw out the length of the game, because if you do not know how to earn a Heart Star, or if you do not accidentally come across something to do in a level that is not immediately moving to the right, then you will most likely have to replay a level again and again until you discover that to get the Heart Star in Level 1 of World 1: Grass Land, you have to not step on any of the flowers in the third room.  Or if you have never played any of the Metroid games, you may not know that you need the Ice Beam (or any ice-based weapon in KDL3) to defeat the Metroids who make a cameo appearance along with Samus; This one, in particular, upset me because it requires outside knowledge that you do not have from this game in order to collect the Heart Star; sure you might already be favoring an ice weapon since the stage is all fire-based.  For me, I decided that I was just going to play each level, make it through, and if I found a Heart Star, then good on me and move on.  If I did not find one, then oh well, and move on.

My last complaint about KDL3 is that I felt that the gameplay felt very sludge-like.  Kirby and his companion if I was using any, would move almost painfully slow.  There were some stages where there were no enemies on screen and I was just walking/running to the right, over hill and under hill with the speed of a fat and overfed Hobbit.  Yes, I could instead have them run (double-tapping forward), but even that felt like it should have been the default speed.  This never felt like a problem with the game itself running slowly on the Switch, only that the characters themselves would move slowly, that they were designed to move at this speed.  I present to you Exhibit A below, from World 1: Grass Land - Level 5:

Not so much a complaint as it is a critique of the way that I played KDL3, was that by the end of World 1: Grass Land, I was not even trying to act like I never used the Rewind feature that is part of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online app.  I fully admit that I spammed the hell out of it on most occasions, so purists can claim that I only pseudo-played KDL3 but I did not play it as intended by the developers.  Which is fine.  This is also probably why I had upwards of 29 lives by the end of the game and really did not care about collecting the star pieces (needing 30 for an extra life).  Most of the time though, I would just power through if I took damage, but the times when I was down to one HP left (or the equivalent against whatever enemy I was trying to get past), I would rewind the game so that I could figure out how to not die in the process.  Sometimes this was just from me playing the game too quickly and being careless, other times it genuinely felt that it was a GOTCHA moment designed to eat up Kirby's life.  But for those moments, this was how I would (frequently) play, I offer Exhibit B, from somewhere in World Five: Iceberg:

Now, KDL3 does look very good for an SNES game released in 1997, I have no qualm there.  The multiple layers of background scrolling in some stages is pretty impressive, especially when compared to Super Mario World being a launch title.  The music too, oftentimes, is spot-on as catchy as you would expect to find in a Kirby game.  But for me, there were just not enough saving graces for me to want to go back and collect all of the Star Hearts so that I could fight the final boss and achieve the best ending.  There were moments of fun, like figuring out how the abilities Kirby absorbed would be used by each of his companions, but other times I would be perfectly happy with Pitch and fly, avoiding as many enemies as possible; or just use Kirby's flying ability to, again, avoid as many enemies as possible and in turn, as much of the platforming as possible as well.  Sure Coo is a better flyer than both Kirby and Pitch, but I tended to not like Coo's special attacks as much as Pitch, but that is just me.

I think what a lot of Kirby's Dream Land 3 came down to was that it felt like this was the third game in a series that Nintendo and HAL Laboratory had felt that the player was coming into with a tank full of knowledge about the Kirby franchise and game mechanics.  There did not seem to be a lot in the way of handholding to get the player used to any mechanics and the lack of any description, from what I could tell, about the Star Hearts just seemed to me like an insult to the player and possibly even cheap on the part of the developers.  Sadly, a fun soundtrack and a great-looking game were not enough for me to have many more positive things to say about Kirby's third foray into Dream Land, sorry, Planet Popstar.  But, Kirby's Dream Land 3 will hardly keep me from trying other games in the Kirby franchise in the future.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

Game EXP: Little Nightmares: Complete Edition [Six's Story] (NS)

Just to warn you all before you start in on this article.  This will not be a traditional Game EXP article (whatever that means).  I will only somewhat be talking about my experience playing the first half of Little Nightmares by Tarsier Studio, but I will be talking about my thoughts about the game, the story, the lore, and then a bit of how I played.

Now, it has been a little while since I finished Six's story in Little Nightmares: Complete Edition on the Nintendo Switch.  I should preface first though that when you start Little Nightmares: Complete Edition, you have the option to play as either Six or The Kid, with The Kid's story being the DLC to Little Nightmares.  Because I did not look too much into what was included in the game when I bought it, I did not know this, but I did decide to play as Six, the little character in a hooded yellow rain slicker because that character seemed slightly more prominent in the trailers that I watched but was also the character depicted in the logo for the game, so that was who I went with.  I genuinely thought that the game was going to be the same, just the look of the playable character was going to be different, but The Kid's story is a complete DLC game that I will cover after I find a way to get away from the Janitor in his workshop.

Shortly after I started Six's story, I realized that there was a lot of information in the trailer that is not conveyed in the game, mainly because there is zero spoken dialogue, no notes to find, and no signs to read in the game.  I was kind of expecting some type of narration with phrasing similar to a children's book that has gone off the rails.  Names like "The Maw," "The Lady," "The Residents," and "The Janitor" are spoken in the trailer as if you already know about these locations and characters, but at the very least that you will find out about them when you play the game.  The furthest you get to find out any of this information is that you do meet The Lady and the Janitor, you are in The Maw, and you do pass through the Residence.  But again, there is nothing in-game to give you any of these proper names either by being spoken to the player or from any in-game text because there is no reading involved.  The reason why I sound ever so slightly bitter about this is that again, based on the trailer, I was fully ready to find out all of the information about this location, who these obese characters were, who this yellow rain jacketed character was, and why they were there, and why this Janitor figure has such touchy-feely arms.  Now, there is a good chance I missed some of the more subtleties (as I have done with Dark Souls), but I like to think of myself as a semi-attentive person, but everything ended up feeling more interpretive by the player.

And I am somewhat okay with there being no recorded dialogue or reading notes, signs, or other communication beyond utterances, grunts and exclamations from an inclusive perspective because this means that there is no localization required and anyone who speaks any language could play Little Nightmares and have the same experience, although their own background and experiences they bring to the game are what could make it unique to themselves.  On the other side of things, I am a little disappointed because I want to know more about The Maw.  Why is it there?  Why are people so much larger than Six and is it only because Six is a child and that is how children perceive adults?  What is up with the Janitor?  Did Six have a vendetta against The Lady and why was she having nightmares about her at the start of the game?  I guess the fact that the game had given me a lot of questions to think about is not a bad thing that may or may not be covered in Little Nightmares 2.  

On the surface, Six progresses from a suitcase she wakes up on, wanders through areas of a place, is captured by a long-armed villain who wraps up other children and sends them to two chefs who grind them up into sausages and other meats for a ship full of obese people who are observed by a Geisha-looking villainess who Six ends up killing.  Oh, and during that time, our protagonist Six has their own evolution of accepting help from other caged children, to eating trapped rats, to eating live creatures (referred to as Nomes) who are trying to help her, to consuming the life-essence of The Lady and murdering nearly all everybody who comes in contact with her on her way out.  Why?  There are a number of sites/articles that have analysed the story in Little Nightmares so I am not about to try to start that now this far into the article, just know that I have talked a bit about it with Conklederp who has a better interpretation than my, "I ran around and did stuff while trying not to get killed."

One of the things that really kept me going through the game was how good everything looked, even on the Switch in hand held mode, there was just this aesthetic that reminded me of little puppets moving about in a diorama.  My biggest complaint though was that the load times were noticeably long.  From starting up the game to have to reload after every death (which happened semi-frequently with The Janitor and every now-and-then with the Chefs and the Residents), the load time averaged between 25 - 30 seconds.  I have not tangentially heard anything about load times associated with Little Nightmares on any system so maybe it is a handheld Switch issue?  But the load times have persisted with the DLC chapter which I have recently started.  The Runaway Kid's story in the DLC portion of Little Nightmares: Complete edition and two of presumably five chapters in, I have gathered very little additional information outside of a single picture from the Concept Art Extras portion of the main menu that I will not share here and probably will talk about in one of the two articles for Little Nightmares: Complete Edition [The Kid's Story]."

So until then, I look forward to continuing The Kid's story, and hopefully, my interest will continue through to eventually picking up Little Nightmares II, see how it connects if at all to the story and events in Little Nightmares: Complete Edition, and find out if the load times have been improved at all.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "Title Theme" - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64)

 

"Title Theme" from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask on the Nintendo 64 & Game Cube (2000 & 2003)
Composer: Koji Kondo
Album: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask Game Music Soundtrack CD Set
Label: Nintendo of America
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EAD

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a game that I have mentioned a number of times in the past but strangely enough, has not been a game that we have featured before on MIDI Week Singles.  I was originally deciding between which of the four Clock Town Themes to use as Days 1 - 3 are all variations on the "Title Theme" which itself is the theme for Clock Town (thanks Xzibit) while "Last Day," being the final six or so hours before the moon smashes into Clock Town (and the world?) was a little too esoteric to just pull out of the blue.  So "Title Theme" being the theme for Clock Town and in typical J.J. Abrams and Michael Giacchino style, all is happy and good in the main theme until the final seconds when you realize that something is very much wrong and then it fades to black (thanks LOST).

I guess I just like and lean towards songs that have this overall tone and what better song to use from one of my favorite games in this franchise than the one that plays over the opening titles?

Happy Wednesday.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I Can Make You Cry

Amazon Games vs. Amazon Luna

Towards the end of last week (actually being a few weeks ago), while adding to my ever-growing Amazon Save for Later Watchlist (it is currently sitting pretty at 384 items), I saw a banner ad showing that Blasphemous from The Game Kitchen was being offered for free as part of Amazon's Prime Gaming offerings for March.  I was a little confused because I knew that a few years back Amazon stopped offering their semi-regular 20% off of video game pre-orders and moved to putting up some free games each month and mainly, cosmetic and loot rewards for a number of online games which you could access (or at least the only way I knew how to find out about them) through Twitch (since Amazon owns Twitch, I guess it makes sense that they would push free items for online multiplayer games).

So when I saw that Blasphemous was being offered, since it is a game that I have wanted to play for a while, and played the demo on Amazon's Luna service (you can read about my experience here) as well as a demo on the Nintendo Switch a few months back I decided to look into this offering from Amazon Games.  If you are not going to click that link above to read an entire article so you can have some context, I will catch you up by saying that Blasphemous did not run well for me, partly because of whatever streaming issues were present, and none of the controllers I have (Switch, Wired 360, Steam) were supported on Luna.  Now, I am currently writing this before I have actively used the Amazon Game client and I will come back and catch you all up (don't worry, this will just be one article, at least for now) once I do that.  I am obviously hoping that Amazon's client will be happy with the 360 controller because that is the one that I feel would be the best for a platforming action game since I have not tried connecting the Switch Pro Controller to my computer (yet).

And I "claimed" a number of other games too besides Blasphemous, although that was the catalyst for me downloading their client and there are some games that I will probably give a couple of attempts to, and others I claimed because I have a problem and am a packrat for free video games.  Here's looking at you 156 games from Epic!  Not to get carried away, but some of the games are Samurai Showdown, King of Fighters 2002, Fatal Fury Special, SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, Sine Mora EX, and Hyper Light Drifter.  So let us get a game or two installed, connect the 360 controller, see if there is a dedicated screenshot button (that is not the PrtSc button) and I will be back sometime later.

And we are back!

To test out the Amazon Games client, I decided to download Fatal Fury Special, Pulstar, Art of Fighting 2, and Blasphemous.  So nothing as graphically intensive as Control or Crysis.  And just in case you cannot see the bottom of the article from here, the rest of this is going to be pretty short.

I can report back that thankfully both the Steam controller and the wired Xbox 360 controller worked with the Amazon Games client.  It was interesting though that since most of the games initially being released on Amazon Games are SNK and/or NeoGeo arcade ports, that when I clicked on controller settings, that the default screen you are given is for keyboard controls.  This initially worried me because using a keyboard to play what you might normally play with a joystick like a fighting game did not sound at all fun, but as I have already said, both controllers I tried out worked fine, so it was a little bit of guesswork to determine which button did what.  In all of the games though, I did have to use the Esc key to exit out of the games since the Start button, at least on the 360 controller did not bring up a menu screen.

And most importantly, the Amazon Games client seemed to operate like most of the other game clients like GOG and Epic.  There was no stuttering, no latency with any of the inputs.  Since most of the games are arcade ports, there is no scaling to widescreen (for those that do not have that functionality, but this does not apply to newer games like Blasphemous and The Escapists) Sadly though there was no option to take screenshots so once again I was relegated to using the PrtSc button (but on my computer, it is a combination of the Fn + PrtSc because my top row of keys are dual-purpose with the default function not being what the key is but what additional function is attached to it; like the F12 key by default is also the Scroll Lock button and to take pictures through Steam, I have to press Fn + F12, but that's another tangent.  But I did notice that the PrtSc button did not seem to work with Blasphemous, so that is either an issue with the game being fullscreen (I may have to try in windowed mode), or the game itself just being coy, and I will have to see with other non-arcade games.

So that is it really.  The negative experience I had with Amazon Luna did not carry over to Amazon Games, so I will now too be hoarding free games on another client.  Checking today, I claimed six more games, four of which I have never heard of and may end up never playing, but I like to look at it as an inheritance that Goblino might eventually roll their eyes at after they read my will.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I'm Happy at Home

Monthly Update: April, 2021

 

Happy April everyone out there!

March was an interesting month on a couple of levels, as I mentioned at the start of last month's article.  I had been tracking the daily death toll from COVID-19 from about May 2020 through February 2021, but because I no longer have access to that computer and I did not have a cloud-saved copy, I have stopped tracking the daily counts.  But I just checked again and it looks like the United States is still averaging just around 1,000 people dying every day, with the frequent dips down to 400-600 on Sunday and Monday.  But I see that we are about 47,000 away from a death count of 600,000.  I know that this is a touch morbid and not really our standard fare as far as video games and board games go, but it is what has been on my mind for the last month so this is where those thoughts or at least some of them are going.  I am still not eligible for any of the COVID-19 vaccines in my county, but the current word is that hopefully they will be opened up to my age/health/occupation group starting May 1st.  So let us hope for that at least.

And the murder trial for Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd finished up its fourth day and going into Day 5 today, although I admittedly have not been following it as closely as I am not in my car as much listening to daily reports on NPR on a regular basis.  I am finding that I am only able to get snippets of news scattered throughout the day whenever I am running errands or if it is covered in what else I need toknowtoday.

On the video game side of things, there is some of the usual and some not.  I guess?  Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 6 with the subtitle of Primal came out in March.  I decided to "buy" the Battle Pass, mainly because Epic Games decided to have their big end-of-season event at the start of Season 6 and be a solo experience instead of on a specific day at a specific time and if you missed it then you could only watch it on YouTube or an archived Twitch stream.  *Breath*  I just love that Epic decided upon a single-player option, which is pretty big in my opinion for a game multiplayer/co-op game and I wanted to support that decision.  And secondly, because I had ~1,400 V-Bucks just sitting there earned from past seasons, I decided to continue playing my usual 30-45 minutes every morning.  I also jumped back into Rocket League for their Llama-Rama crossover event and discovered that while I am still not good per se, I am definitely still not bad.

I am firmly 29 hours into Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age on the Switch, and if my calculations are correct, based off of the last time I played back in 2007, I still have around 96 hours to go.  Maybe?  That first time, I did focus a lot of time taking down marks, going on hunts, and trying to complete every side quest I came into contact with.  This time around, armed with the 2x and 4x game-speed-increase, I could see some time shaved off of that 96 hours, but I do still like to experience the massiveness that a lot of the cities have in this game.  That being said when I am in the Tomb of Raithwall and have convinced myself that I need to have the right combination of gear/spells/abilities so that I can defeat the Demon Wall and I travel back to Rabanstre through the Nam-Yensa Sandsea and Ogir-Yensa Sandsea and Westersand, then take an airship to the Sky City of Bhujerba, then back to Rabanastre, then another ship to Nalbina and then back to Rabanastre, then back across the Westersand and both Sandseas to the Tomb, you bet your boot skins that I used a combination of 2x and 4x just to discover that I had already purchased the spell but that I did not have anyone who could actually cast the spell.  

About midway through the month, I came back to Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity because I realized that once I put FF XII in the Switch, I had tunnel vision with that game and had not come back at all.  Kind of like what I had been referring to in my article towards the beginning of the month about buying digital versus physical games, and the frequency that physical games are played and switched out.  I am now finding myself in the opposite position though that I am playing a lot of Hyrule Warriors instead of Final Fantasy XII.  I impressed myself a bit in jumping right back into Hyrule Warriors and not forgetting (too much) the move sets for each of the characters, but now I am a little afraid that I might have forgotten some of the finer story-points in FF XII once I dive back in.  But I did just finish the Raithwall Tomb section, and I know why that quest was happening in the first place, so I think I might be on good mental footing.

In the second half of March, I pre-ordered Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace on the Switch.  Being an avid fan of Mansions of Madness, a board game in the Arkham Horror universe, I feel that I bring a different perspective to the game compared to someone unfamiliar with the setting and how the board game plays might experience the game.  Granted I have only played Mansions of Madness (both first and second editions) and Elder Sign, but have not played Arkham Horror or Eldritch Horror, so I am not sure how this video game adaptation of that universe compares to those games.  I have been tempted to Tweet out various moments in the game since I started, but I had been playing and Tweeting about an #IndieSelect game during that time (Chess Knights: Viking Lands) and I felt that my online presence for that needed to take precedent.  But now, four chapters into the game, I feel that I could Tweet some of the pictures and videos I took, but that would take too long and I would just end up not playing just so that I could catch up.  So maybe?

And when I started playing Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace, I did put The Runaway Kid's run from the DLC portion of Little Nightmares on hold, although I have returned three times to the section involving the Janitor and have failed to figure out how to get past him.  Or at least, how to operate the puzzle so that I can escape, or if there is another piece entirely that I am just not seeing.  I have also progressed a bit in Metro 2033 Redux and am thinking that I might actually be getting close to the end of the game.  And while at the DMV today (as well as earlier in the week) I pulled out The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, but had to put it down because I was wearing a mask and I came across a puzzle that might have needed the Whirlwind ability as well as being able to play the Spirit Flute, both of which require you to blow into the microphone on the 3DS, an activity that would be frowned upon in a room with a number of other socially distanced people.

I also received a board game, Sagrada from The Kid for my birthday.  I have looked over the rules and while it is a drafting game and plays best with more than one person, I think I could play a few rounds by myself to work out the general kinks before Conklederp and I start in.  I have seen the game around, mentioned on some of the board game accounts I follow on Instagram so I am looking forward to seeing how the game actually plays and how any of the pictures I take of a game that is based around constructing beautiful stained glass windows will end up turning out blurry and washed out.

I see April progressing with all of these games, and I would not be surprised if I managed to finish Spirit Tracks, Metro 2033 Redux, and even Hyrule Warriors.  Maybe even Arkham Horror, but I only am able to put in about 30 minutes each night while Conklederp and I are in bed because I have the brightness down low, and there is a fair amount of reading on the small Switch screen which tends to tire my eyes out and make me sleepy.  If I do finish any of those games, I know that I will probably start up Dragon Quest IX on the 3DS (although it being a DS game), and will continue with Final Fantasy XII on the Switch, and maybe starting Blair Witch also on the Switch as our evening game.  I do not know what I will do PC game-wise, but bloody lord knows there is a massive queue between Steam, GOG, Epic, and now Amazon Games (being different than Amazon's Luna client and there is already an article in the works comparing those two services).

So hopefully April weather does not get you too down, or anything for that matter, and we will see you next week where there will be at the very least, your usual MIDI Week Single article.  Probably.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Put Your Helmets On Back There!

MIDI Week Singles: "Wario Puzzle - BGM 3" - Super Mario's Picross (SFC)

 

"Wario Puzzle - BGM 3*" from Super Mario's Picross on the Super Famicom and Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online (1995)

Composer: Toshiyuki Ueno

Album: No Official Release

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Ape Jupiter

I love picross puzzles.  Ever since, I think, Pokemon Picross on the 3DS, then My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (also on the 3DS) I have been a sucker for this genre, although I have not purchased any picross games because my brain is still telling me that "They're simple puzzle games and I don't know about spending money on them when I could just play them for free so I will just wait for another free game or demo to be released, and hey Super Mario's Picross was added to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online app!!"

Anyway, the context to all of that is that I have impressed myself with the Wario puzzles.  The context on that is that there are two sets of puzzles, Mario and Wario.  On the Mario puzzles, you have the option to fill in some of the puzzle from the start, as well as giving you penalties when you fill in the wrong square, and you have a 30-minute time limit.  On the Wario sets of puzzles, you do not have a time limit and nothing is corrected or penalized if you fill in the wrong square, so the only way of knowing if you mark the wrong square is if the squares do not line up with the clues along the side of the puzzle.  All of this context is to point out that I end up spending a lot more time on the Wario puzzles, often agonizing over a single filled-in square, so I am more familiar with the Wario music.  This particular track I love because it reminds me of a lullaby and is more calming than some of the other tracks, although none of them are really high energy.  I just enjoy this piece when it is playing and is a perfect track to fill out a 20x20 puzzle that ends up taking just over 30 minutes.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumetal

P.S.  *Because there is no official soundtrack, I decided to create the title myself.  The "Wario Puzzle" because it is from the Wario set of puzzles, the "BGM" because that is the menu option for selecting which music you want to play if you do not want the track that the game automatically selects, and "3" because this is the third of currently three available tracks.