Themed Fantasia Contest #2 [Results]

aight so.
gaming for me started off when I was very young, with the coincidentally enough Tetris for the Gameboy, and it grew with age, as I soon picked up consoles as the Playstation 2, the Nintendo Wii, and later on, the DS. while I didn't own a Gameboy Advance, I was very keen on its games, and knew the ability to emulate games on computers to play classics as Castlevania, Pokémon, etc.
however, one GBA game that I did own was Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. I don't remember when I picked it up, but it was probably during an age where I more or less had the thought of "mario = fun", and somehow managed to pick myself a RPG game out of all things. despite knowing fuckall english, I... somehow really enjoyed the RPG elements of the game, and I remember picking up Partners in Time after that. years flew by, and I more than less fell in love with the Mario RPG series as a whole, managing to grab Bowser's Inside Story and Dream Team Bros. later, and later got the chance to play a couple of the Paper Mario games, and also played the very first Mario RPG that appeared on the Super Nintendo, which, needless to say, is one of my favourite SNES games.

me first playing Superstar Saga also happened to kind of be a stepping stone for me for other (J)RPG's, and I later found similar games which I still heavily enjoy.
but it wasn't just the RPG elements that I loved about the games, it was also the music. I am a huge music nerd when it comes to video games, and I sometimes just happen to follow franchises that I don't own at all on youtube, just because their music happen to be heaven to my ears (Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, and many others).
Coincidentally, I found out (way too late, mind you lol) that the same composer behind the Kingdom Hearts OST (Yoko Shimomura), was also behind the OST for all the Mario & Luigi RPG games.

I was blown away by that information, basically lol.

Shimomura manages to do a heavenly job at composing the OST to fit the standards of both a RPG, but also a Mario game, having fun and catchy tunes for different areas, silly, but catchy battle tunes, and on top of that, have the serious final boss moments have ALL of the components that makes the scenario scream "it's finally here. the finale.".

The song I selected for this themed edition is basically that. I have personally not played Paper Jam Bros. myself, mostly because I feel like some of the creativity from the old games were not that existing in this one, but if there's something in this game that still works, it's the godly composition that Yoko Shimomura does, and this tune still leaves goosebumps every time I listen to it, and I certainly hope you get that feeling too.

motivation over x