Bookwarm Games

Time to prep for Manchester Game Centre's Multiplatform 2025 Conference: Rituals of Play, where we'll be presenting on FFVII and FFVIII, respectively.

Shout-outs to Signum University and the Game Studies Study Buddies, among other scholars and sources.

For more FFVIII study resources: https://videogameacademia.org/courses/current-semester/final-fantasy-viii/

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Rinoa rage quits on most runs, but with just the right (wrong) choice of instruments, the romance on the solar panels plays out at more leisure.

Perhaps it's fitting that our audio is even rougher than usual? Sorry about that!

For more FFVIII study resources: https://videogameacademia.org/courses/current-semester/final-fantasy-viii/

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Balamb Garden as Midgar; as Ithaka overrun with suitors; as Inferno. Encounters with the luciferean capitalist empodded in one of the basements and magic machinery larded with fossil fuels in the layers of several others. Both power a Garden that moves, dodges missiles, comes unmoored and comes dangerously close to wrecking the town before it squalls out to sea.

For more FFVIII study resources: https://videogameacademia.org/courses/current-semester/final-fantasy-viii/

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Missile Base Mission, feat. Selphie, Rinoa, and Irvine. Is Squall Dead is one thing, but after this part the better question looks like "What about Selphie and whoever else went to the missile base?"

For more FFVIII study resources: https://videogameacademia.org/courses/current-semester/final-fantasy-viii/

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Desert transformations in the D-District Prison.

For more FFVIII study resources: https://videogameacademia.org/courses/current-semester/final-fantasy-viii/

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In conversation with Dr Tim Summers of Royal Holloway, University of London, and Ludomusicology, the video game music research group.

https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/en/persons/timothy-summers

https://www.ludomusicology.org/

His new book is Pixel Soundtracks: Exploring Video Game Music Through Twenty Games

You'll hear snippets of audio from Buck Rogers; Uematsu's FFVI Opera (and Toby Fox/Undertale's Mettaton riffing on it); Dvorak's Songs My Mother Taught Me; the Prelude of Stravinsky's Firebird; the Wagner Museum theme from The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery; the Title theme from the Follins' NES Silver Surfer; the opening of MOTHER/EarthBound Zero (and cf. Undertale's opening); the Michael Nyman/ St Paul's Cathedral Choir arrangement of Suzuki/Tanaka's Eight Melodies from MOTHER; Kondo's Kakariko Village from Zelda: Ocarina of Time; the Summers Resort theme and a fun sound effect moment that plays after you've OK'd naming all your characters and favorite things in EarthBound. I think that's all of them!

I'm working on a post to help me think through more of the lines of argument, examples, and allusions you'll also hear, especially all of the scholarly work mentioned by Dr Summers in the course of this conversation, so check out https://videogameacademia.org/ for more.

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We're at the start of Disc 2, beginning again in Winhill and then finding ourselves in the Galbadian Prison with nary a save point in sight. From music-box idylls to techno-crucifixions--what's that, Moomba? Laguna's been watching over Squall just as we've been dreaming of him...?

For more FFVIII study resources: https://videogameacademia.org/courses/current-semester/final-fantasy-viii/

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A botched sorceress assassination takes us up to the end of Disc 1, drawing dispel from her and casting reflect with the aid of a Guardian Force drawn from the statues she animates.

For more FFVIII study resources: https://videogameacademia.org/courses/current-semester/final-fantasy-viii/

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What happens when gacha mechanics meet mythic storytelling on the latest Project Moon mobile game, Limbus Company?

We discuss Professor Kozlowski's proposal for Manchester Games Centre's Multiplatform 2025 conference on the theme "Rituals of Play".

More on https://videogameacademia.org/

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