Chopin Will Pwn You At The Xbox360: "Trusty Bell: Chopin no Yume"

Opera Chic is a girl who's seriously pwnd by her Xbox360 Elite, her GTA IV and her Bioshock and often fondles the polymeral secksiness of the Elite's black matte surface -- and she is so thirsty for Halo 3 that she's even considered buying a bottle of the horrible Mountain Dew.

But what really surprised her -- and mad props to our Japanese friends -- is that the best-selling 360 videogame in all of Japan has Frederic Chopin as its lead character.

It's Trusty Bell: Chopin No Yume (in the rest of the world it'll be called Eternal Sonata) 

On October 17, 1849, Frederic Chopin, one of the most influential composers for the piano, succumbed to sickness and died at the young age of 39. Three hours prior to that, in the world according to this RPG, Chopin saw a dream of a fairy-tale land populated by people with incurable diseases but also magical powers. Eternal Sonata takes place in this dream world. Chopin comes into contact with Polka, a young girl who resides with her mother in the village of Tenuto. Polka is near her death, and Chopin, Polka, and her young friend Allegretto as they look for some way to make use of Polka's great powers to help save her.

Now, isn't that corny, but how simultaneously cool that the Japanese are madly chugging Chopin instead of the usual, 14,008th episode of the insane Tom Clancy videogame series?

And the composer as videogame hero is a concept that Opera Chic would love to develop for any interested videogame company --  we're already thinking of a driving game where great composers of the 19th Century chase each other thru the streets of old London, Milan, and Berlin driving crazy steam-powered muscle cars, like a GTA for the classical music lover with Verdi in a leather helmet and a big roasted ham in his lap; Bellini grabbing the steering wheel with silken gloves, a hawt woman at his side; Wagner dressed as the Nazi guy in The Producers, driving while singing creepy Norse hymns.

We'd also like to script a WWII game where Bruno Walter and Erich Kleiber and Paul Kletzki  and all the other great exiled musicians team up with young Lenny Bernstein and Arturo Toscanini to fight to the death, Shaolin-style, Karajan, Furtwaengler, Knappertbusch and Mengelberg. Now wouldn't that be cool?

Comments

[eusebius]

Wow. I have to say that if this videogame, or one featuring any other major 19th-C composer, had come out when I was in high school (alas, long before the beautiful and youthful Opera Chic herself) ... I would have done nothing but play it and my school marks would have been unimaginably horrid. Sigh.

[deadtenors]

no comment. just saying hi from autralia. still reading oc. chopin game sounds good. maybe a game for wii which involves using the controller as a baton? keep up the good work. out

[Ben.H]

My dear lord. I don't know which is cooler, a Chopin video game, or a video game which has the phrase "Polka's great powers" in its description.

"Let his death by accordion be a lesson to all those who doubt polka's great powers."

[Akimon]

Seems everybody loves the concept... After seeing the trailer, full of dreamy Chopin music snippets, I have downloaded the actual game demo and am sad to report, it was a routine chop socky action. Maybe more detailed exploration of the full version would help. Given that a lot of us will soon be spending our waking hours playing Halo 3... not much of an option.

[vrn]

Second Akimon's comment above and add that many of the newer video games (Halo is an excellent example) have amazing original music in Wagnerian style.

PS, akimon - If you liked Halo, you may like Mass Effect coming shortly after Halo 3.