So the music is going to get a huge focus in this project. Me and Cowberry discussed a plethora of options of what a mech game would sound like and we started with rock music, and then to 1980s retro rock like Macross. Then we came to Gundam's Zeta funkadelic tracks and from there we were reminded of the proliferation of songs like Plastic Love which were popular during that time. From there we went on a deep rabbit hole beyond just Mariya Takeuchi. To elaborate a bit more on city pop, it's basically a music genre in Japan that hit its peak in the 80s. It's dreamy, upbeat and optimistic but also funky and tropical.
This charming optimism was likely inherited by the absolute magnitude of Japan's economy at the time, in the 80s the top 8 banks in the world were all Japanese, (nowadays it's a mix between china, america and some european countries). half the the world traded on the Tokyo Exchange Market, and 50% of prime real estate in downtown LA was owned by Japanese investors. When Cyberpunk was implying that Japan culture would take over the world, it wasn't just some random racist thing it was reflective of real fears of where the world was going (but still kinda racist). The 90s however proved that all wrong, and Japan never quite reached its former glory.
Thing is, although we generally worship 80s as radical and cool, for a long while the Japanese 80s style was seen as tacky and dated by Japanese people. It's since made a huge comeback on Youtube of all places, Mariya Takeuchi came back to shoot a music video for the original song, just recently The Weekend sampled Tomoko Aran's Midnight Pretenders and well, culture runs in cycles I suppose.
This rabbit hole has been really fun to dive into. I legitamately discovered new music I'll be listening to for awhile like. Tell me By The End of Century ain't a banger. Another new favourite of mine is Momoko Kikuchi's Last Runner, and the entire Sea is a Lady album by Toshiki Kadomatsu. Though the weirdest that transports me to another world is Maze by Yuji Toriyama. With all of this inspiration Cowberry has also decided to get some friends to help out with the recording of the music (including a bass player). The prospect of doing an anime opening got her creative juices flowing so we're going all out on this (she's a huge weeb fyi). How will this all culminate in the story and game? Who knows but we're on such a high momentum and my brain is filled with city pop and vibes that the productivity is going well. Though I think a love themed game with robots and mecha will work really well with this musical style. Generally I want the game to be upbeat and reflective of a very pristine atmosphere that you want to protect and live in.
Oh yeah I did another devlog showing off the visual novel-esque dialog box system we got going. There's also a start of a game loop and actual goal condition implemented which I'll get to in the next post.