Megalovania

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"Megalovania"
Boss fight against Dr. Andonuts in Radiation's Halloween Hack, where "Megalovania" was first heard
Song by Toby Fox from
the ROM hack Radiation Halloween Hack
ReleasedNovember 2008 (2008-11)[1]
GenreVideo game music
Length1:59
Composer(s)Toby Fox
Alternate renditions
Audio sample
"Beginning of Megalovania in Undertale"

"Megalovania" (sometimes stylized in all caps) is an instrumental video game song composed by Toby Fox. It was first composed for the Radiation Halloween Hack, a ROM hack of EarthBound, developed for a Mother fansite's competition in November 2008. Inspired by "Megalomania" from Live A Live and the final boss music of Brandish 2: The Planet Buster, the track was intended for the ROM hack's final boss battle, and was developed by Fox screaming "whatever [he] felt like" into a microphone and copying it down. The name itself is a combination of "megalomania" and "Transylvania", the latter of which intended to tie into the project's Halloween theme. Years later the track would be remixed for the webcomic Homestuck's soundtrack as "MeGaLoVania" with help from Joren "Tensei" de Bruin, and Fox would use another rendition as the final boss theme for the "genocide" route in his 2015 video game, Undertale, when fighting the character Sans.

The track has been widely popular, and more so with the release of Undertale, which spawned various memes and remixes to the degree of being named its own subgenre on YouTube. The track has since appeared in other games and media such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and has been performed in a live rendition for Pope Francis by a circus. Other musicians such as Yoko Shimomura have also performed their own interpretations. Various media outlets have praised it for its intensity and composition, and "Megalovania" has been used to not only examine Undertale's underlying messages but internet reaction as a whole through its use on social media platforms such as TikTok.

Conception and history

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In 2008, starmen.net, a fansite dedicated to the Mother video game series, held its annual "Halloween Funfest" competition for fan works related to the franchise.[5] In November of that year, Toby Fox, going by the online alias "Radiation", submitted an EarthBound ROM hack simply titled Radiation Halloween Hack.[6][1] The ROM hack featured custom music from other games, and for the final boss Fox originally intended to use the song "Megalomania" from the Super Nintendo game Live A Live. A recurring theme playing at the end of each of the game's chapters, Fox was struck by the simplicity of "Megalomania", but also felt its repeated use had created a "Pavlovian" sense of "This is the end" in player's minds due to its repeated use. However, when he attempted to transcribe the music to recreate it he found it too difficult, and after some consideration decided instead to make a completely new song.[7]

To this end he screamed "whatever [he] felt like" into a microphone and then copied it down, making it a lengthy process.[8] Composing the song afterward by comparison was very quick, taking Fox about thirty minutes.[7] Despite using similar chords, the track took inspiration from "Megalomania" not in terms of composition but by "TOTALLY attempting to be the kind of a badass song that might be suitable for a similar purpose".[9] Meanwhile, the melody itself was inspired by the final boss theme of Brandish 2: The Planet Buster, a game series that heavily influenced several other aspects of the ROM hack.[8] After the ROM hack's release, he noticed people were ripping the music from it directly; however, the in-game rendition had a built in delay which carried over to the rips. He chose to release a copy generated directly from the music editor, but then realized he had never named the song. After consideration he dubbed it "Megalovania", a combination of its original inspiration and "Transylvania", the latter half meant to try to add some "Halloweeniness into it" due to its origin.[9]

Toby Fox later worked as a musician for the webcomic Homestuck, and in 2011 "Megalovania" was remixed for its sixth volume, Heir Transparent with Joren "Tensei" de Bruin providing guitar music to the track.[2] The track was made noticeably longer, and while Fox had used synthesized guitars on his other tracks, he found them sounding "muddy" when shifting them down an octave due to the original Super Nintendo audio, which itself could not be altered as in Fox's eyes that would have defeated the purpose of the song. Instead he wrote several extended guitar sections, trying to ensure they did not "sound screechy and stupid" while still sounding "badass", which was aided by the fact de Bruin's guitar could play a note higher than most can. Due to it being technically the third release of the song, he capitalized various letters to differentiate it, resulting in "MeGaLoVania". After its release, despite both he and de Bruin being happy with the final results he acknowledged some of the criticisms it had received, stating he felt the guitar solo he had added was "uncreative" and would do the track over without the Super Nintendo audio for later renditions.[9]

In 2015, Toby Fox released Undertale, a game he developed and composed music for. "Megalovania" returns as the boss music for the character Sans, who will fight the player near the end of the game's "genocide" route after they have killed nearly every other non-player character in the game.[10] This rendition is closer to the original ROM hack's, though removes the slow startup that preceded it.[3] It has also served as the basis for subsequent uses of the song, such as an arrangement composed by Fox for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2019 as downloadable content.[4][11] Additionally, several other games have used the song as part of a cross-promotion with Undertale, including Pop'n Music, Dance Dance Revolution A3, and Gitadora High-Voltage, the last of which utilized a rock and roll arrangement of it by Yuya Yokoyama.[12][13] In 2019, MUSIC Engine in Tokyo, Japan performed an orchestral rendition of Undertale's music which included "Megalovania".[14]

Reception and legacy

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Since its release, "Megalovania" has become one of the most popular video game songs, appearing on television programs and being briefly sung by actor and musician Jack Black for his YouTube gaming channel,[15][16][17] and has been described as easily recognizable just from its beginning notes even for those unfamiliar with gaming.[18] Ryan Woodrow for Sports Illustrated described it as a song worth listening to every now and then to "remember what a fantastic track it is", with the song in Undertale contrasting "in the best way possible" to Sans' character for the "all-out" fight.[19]

Several renditions of "Megalovania" have also been produced by other creators and outlets. The original composer for Live A Live, Yoko Shimomura, noted that after Undertale's release many of her fans asked her about the song,[7] and according to Toby Fox at an official concert she performed a remixed rendition of "Megalomania" with "Megalovania" spliced in.[20] The Twitter account for Cult of the Lamb utilized the song in promotional material, with the social media handler using the game's merchandise to sound out "Megalovania"'s notes and encourage sales of it.[18] For Pesterquest, a game set in the Homestuck universe, musician James Roach utilized the melody from "Megalovania" for the track "Yeah It Is".[21] In 2022, the song was played at the Vatican as part of a papal audience circus act for Pope Francis.[10]

In a paper titled Undertale: A Case Study in Ludomusicology, Matthew Perez acknowledged that while much of its popularity stemmed from its use in Undertale, he felt it worked against Toby Fox's "confusing message about ethics and decision-making in video games", seemingly rewarding the players with the melody. He however praised the track itself, stating its bassline "gives the track a ferocity throughout its various sections, and its varying instrumentation continually refreshes the sonic atmosphere during the combat scenario".[22]

Polygon's Palmer Haasch described the song as having "consistent presence in internet game culture of the late 2010s", which he attributed in part due to Undertale's success and its frequent use in fanmade remixes and "shitposts" that persisted for years,[23] the former of which had formed its own subgenre on YouTube according to Jen Glennon of Inverse.[24] Haasch also noted the song's massive presence on the social media website TikTok, stating that "its repetitive riffs and melodramatic, chiptune-esque palette ... play out well on TikTok because they make sounds memorable and quirky", and worked well with the various meme cultures already forming on the platform, and adaptions of older memes such as rickrolling to incorporate the song. Haasch closed stating that few songs had left a footprint on 2010s internet culture, and that it made an argument for measuring a song's success "not by its chart history, but by its ability to be continuously reinvented".[23] As of 2023, "Megalovania" has the most listens on Spotify of any video game song.[25]

References

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  1. ^ a b "HALLOWEEN HACK - updated (11/2/08) cycle shop bug squashed hopefully that's it". starmen.net. September 4, 2008. Archived from the original on January 31, 2009. Retrieved August 19, 2023.
  2. ^ a b "MeGaLoVania". Bandcamp. Archived from the original on January 8, 2011. Retrieved August 18, 2023.
  3. ^ a b "Undertale". Edge. No. 314. January 2018. p. 95.
  4. ^ a b Higham, Michael. "Sans From Undertale Joins Smash Ultimate As Mii Fighter; Megalovania Makes The Tracklist". GameSpot. Archived from the original on December 8, 2023. Retrieved February 10, 2024.
  5. ^ "Halloween Funfest 2008". starmen.net. Archived from the original on August 17, 2023. Retrieved August 17, 2023.
  6. ^ Fox, Toby. "Radiation Halloween Hack (Censored)". starmen.net. Archived from the original on August 17, 2023. Retrieved August 17, 2023.
  7. ^ a b c "LIVE A LIVE: A Conversation Between Yoko Shimomura and Toby Fox - Part 1". Square Enix. May 12, 2023. Archived from the original on June 21, 2023. Retrieved August 17, 2023.
  8. ^ a b Fox, Toby (October 31, 2008). The Making Of.html (Text document included amongst the files of the ROM hack of EarthBound entitled Earthbound Halloween Hack.). Archived from the original (ZIP) on November 26, 2009. Retrieved August 17, 2023. This is it, the final boss theme. I wanted to put Live A Live's Megalomania in here but I didn't get to so I made my own last boss song. I pretty much just yelled whatever I felt like into a mike and copied it down. Yep. Took forever, but it was superkickass-worth-it. Total embodiment of final bossitude. [...] also, the last boss music was a little inspired by brandish 2's, see if you can catch the similarities
  9. ^ a b c Toby, Fox (January 7, 2011). "Homestuck Vol. 6: Heir Transparent". MSPA Forums. p. 28. Archived from the original on March 15, 2016. Retrieved August 17, 2023.
  10. ^ a b Diaz, Ana (January 6, 2022). "The Pope listening to Undertale's 'Megalovania' is already 2022's weirdest video". Polygon. Archived from the original on February 19, 2022. Retrieved August 18, 2023.
  11. ^ Fox, Toby [@Tobyfox] (September 4, 2019). "Yes. It's true. You'll be able to buy a Mii Gunner costume of Sans in Smash Brothers Ultimate later today! It'll come with a special arrangement of Megalovania composed by me. It's a huge honor to have something I created in Smash. Thank you so much Mr. Sakurai!!!" (Tweet). Archived from the original on September 5, 2019 – via Twitter.
  12. ^ Calub, Eileen (December 22, 2022). "Undertale's Sans Appears In Japanese Rhythm Game As Playable Character". Dualshockers. Archived from the original on August 18, 2023. Retrieved August 18, 2023.
  13. ^ Stenbuck, Kite (August 10, 2022). "Megalovania Appears in Gitadora With a New Rock Arrangement". Siliconera. Archived from the original on August 18, 2023. Retrieved August 17, 2023.
  14. ^ Alvarez, Daniel (September 17, 2020). "Undertale's 5th Anniversary Concert Is Now Available To Stream Online". TheGamer. Archived from the original on August 20, 2023. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  15. ^ Bailey, Dustin (October 31, 2019). "AEW had Sans cosplay and ran theUndertale soundtrack on TV, the madmen". PCGamesN. Archived from the original on August 20, 2023. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  16. ^ Baird, Scott (May 14, 2019). "Spanish Version Of First Dates Show Uses "Megalovania" From Undertale On Its Soundtrack". TheGamer. Archived from the original on December 7, 2019. Retrieved August 19, 2023.
  17. ^ Grayson, Nathan (February 20, 2019). "Jack Black Is Sorry, Not Sorry About His YouTube Gaming Videos". Kotaku. Archived from the original on August 19, 2023. Retrieved August 19, 2023.
  18. ^ a b Connelly, Devin (September 17, 2022). "Cult Of The Lamb Uses Merch To Recreate Megalovania". Screen Rant. Archived from the original on August 18, 2023. Retrieved August 18, 2023.
  19. ^ Woodrow, Ryan (January 14, 2023). "Video game music: the 40 best tracks in gaming history". Sports Illustrated. Archived from the original on June 23, 2023. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  20. ^ Fox, Toby [@Tobyfox] (February 9, 2022). "I don't know if I ever mentioned this, but I went to the official LIVE A LIVE A LIVE concert in Japan once long ago, and during MEGALOMANIA, they mixed in MEGALOVANIA halfway through as a remix of both. I was freaking out. Most surreal moment of my life lol" (Tweet). Archived from the original on February 10, 2022 – via Twitter.
  21. ^ Roach, James (December 4, 2019). "'yeah, it is'". tumblr. Archived from the original on August 20, 2023. Retrieved August 20, 2023. the title is meant to answer the question you ask while listening 'is this... megalovania?' then you go and check the track in the credits and it gives you your answer.
  22. ^ Perez, Matthew (2017). "Undertale: A Case Study in Ludomusicology". City University of New York.
  23. ^ a b Haasch, Palmer (February 25, 2020). "TikTok users keep reinventing Undertale's 'Megalovania'". Polygon. Archived from the original on May 20, 2020. Retrieved August 18, 2023.
  24. ^ Glennon, Jen (September 16, 2020). "5 years later, Undertale is still groundbreaking and wonderfully weird". Inverse. Archived from the original on August 19, 2023. Retrieved August 19, 2023.
  25. ^ Thomson, Cody Nery (March 31, 2023). "Titan Ice Does Science: Most Influential Gaming Soundtracks". NAG. Archived from the original on March 31, 2023. Retrieved August 29, 2023.
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