How many times have you played a video game based on an anime and thought, “wouldn’t it be cool if the actual opening music was in this?”
I certainly had my fair share of those moments growing up when I tried to get my hands on any Dragon Ball game I could possibly find, followed by disappointment at the realization that none of the music matched what I was expecting. Of course, at the time I didn’t know the US opening wasn’t used in Japan. However, I remember playing Gundam Wing: Endless Duel and being incredibly excited to hear its version of “Rhythm Emotion” because that was the music from the show. Nowadays, it’s easy to fit an anime opening into a game, but that wasn’t always the case.
Since my younger days, I’ve been able to seek out and find even more anime games that managed to incorporate the show’s opening in one way or another and it’s always been fascinating to me how they were able to pull this off during certain console generations, back when it wasn’t easy to just add in the music directly. So, let’s take a look at how games were able to attempt to recreate an anime opening on consoles without CD technology, and how these recreations would change from the games on the Famicom to what openings would look like on the Game Boy Advance.
If there’s any series that blew up around the same time as the rise of 8 and 16-bit consoles, it’s Dragon Ball. You could probably think of a handful of Dragon Ball/Z games that came out around this time, and it’d be easy to assume that quite a few of them would have their respective opening. Somehow, that’s not the case. Dragon Ball – Daimaou Fukkatsu, the first Dragon Ball game for the Famicom, features a fun rendition of “Makafushigi Adventure” as the menu music. It’s a banger coming out of that Famicom sound hardware. It was utilized again for Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure on the Game Boy Advance.
Once Dragon Ball transitioned into Dragon Ball Z on television, the number of game adaptations continued to increase. Despite the numerous fighting, strategy, and board games that featured Dragon Ball Z on the Famicom and Super Famicom, none of them utilized “Cha-La Head-Cha-La”, which is surprising. You’d have to wait until the GBA to see a rendition of it in Dragon Ball Z – Supersonic Warriors, but only in Japan. The US release switched it out for a guitar heavy theme, in line with how the show was marketed in America.
Since most games that came out on the Famicom or the Sega Master System didn’t utilize opening cinematics, you’d usually just boot into the main menu immediately. This is the case with Mobile Suit Z Gundam Hot Scramble, but that game has the distinction of utilizing both openings and even the ending theme in its soundtrack, making it a rare case entirely. Zillion and Zillion II on the Master System also featured the anime opening as its title screen music or attract music and was also released outside of Japan at the time, although I doubt many people who were playing it in the US had watched the anime.
With the release of the Super Famicom, developers had more room and freedom to create better sounding openings while also trying to create opening cutscenes to go along with them. One series that dominated this era with regards to utilizing the anime opening in their games was Sailor Moon. Here’s a wild statistic for you: from 1993 to 1996 there were 9 Sailor Moon games released on the Super Famicom. That’s a lot, and it’s not even factoring in other releases elsewhere. Most of the early games featured differing renditions of “Moonlight Densetsu” as seen in Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon R, and Sailor Moon Another Story. Bonus points go to the Game Gear version of Sailor Moon S and the Game Boy version of Sailor Moon for bringing that song to handheld consoles.
Perhaps one of my favorite versions of this trend during the time of the Super Famicom was Gundam Wing Endless Duel’s version of “Rhythm Emotion” that plays during its opening cinematic. It’s a great rendition of a great song, and it really gets you amped up to play a pretty competent fighting game for its time period. As Nintendo moved on toward their next console in the Nintendo 64, somehow the wealth of anime games they’d had on their previous consoles disappeared.
Although the N64 had nowhere near the amount of anime adaptations as the PlayStation, it did have one key game —Neon Genesis Evangelion. You’d probably think, oh this is going to be easy, just make a good opening cinematic and slap a chiptune version of “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis” on it, and you’re done. Well, Evangelion is gonna be Evangelion and not do what you’d think. Instead, you get Bach’s “Air on G String” as the opening music, but if you wait long enough to see the attract mode show up, that’s where you get your N64 version of “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis.”
If there was ever a console that developers wanted to experiment with recreating the entire opening of an anime on, it was the Game Boy Advance. The GBA probably has the most interesting attempts out of anything we’ve covered so far, which is wild considering it was a handheld console and wasn’t necessarily the best in terms of hardware. Both Fullmetal Alchemist games for the GBA take openings from the anime with “Undo” and “Melissa,” respectively. However, I can’t tell you if the story in those games goes in a wild direction like the anime or not.
One Piece Nanatsu Shima no Daihihou is able to do some good audio/visual sync on its brief opening cutscene to match the visuals with their version of “We Are!”. As an added bonus, compare it to the Game Boy Color’s From TV Animation – One Piece: Maboroshi no Grand Line Boukenki! and see which you prefer! If you’re looking for another rare oddity when it comes to anime openings in games, look no further than Hamtaro: Rainbow Rescue, which uses the Japanese opening for that release and the English version of the opening in the overseas release. Everyone gets to enjoy their opening song!
Of course, we’ve saved the best for last. Sure, you could just do a cover of the opening and add some character art to go along with it and call it a day, but what if you actually attempted to recreate the entire anime opening on a GBA cart? I referenced these two in my article on the Game Boy Advance Video Paks, but here are the best when it comes to anime openings in games: Chobits: Atashi Dake no Hito and Cardcaptor Sakura: Sakura Card-hen Sakura Card to Tomodachi. A round of applause to Marvelous and MTO for even attempting something like this. The first time I saw these, I was just left speechless that any developer would attempt to pull this off on the GBA. It doesn’t look like it was an easy thing to attempt, much less successfully. Suffice to say, these are my favorites out of all the fun and wild recreations we’ve seen.
With video game technology being where it is today, it’s easy to see how, if you want to include the opening or ending of an anime in your game, you could just throw it on the disc without any problem or make a fantastic looking version using in-game assets. Those are certainly cool, but there’s a charm to seeing how developers 20 to 30 years ago tried to include bonuses like this for fans of the anime. You’d be hard pressed to find any more lo-fi versions of anime openings like this in games today, but you never know. Maybe some developer will find a way to create something wild that isn’t at all what you’d expect.
What were some of your favorite video game versions of anime openings? Are there any interesting ones that we missed? Let us know down in the comments below!
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Jared Clemons is a writer and podcaster for Seasonal Anime Checkup where he can be found always wanting to talk about Love Live! Sunshine!! or whatever else he’s into at the moment. He can be found on Twitter @ragbag.
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