Season 4 Episode 2
Featured on: Summer-Colored Smiles ~ The SiIvaSummer All-Star Festival Collection
Ripped by eebrozgi
God, man...where to START with The 0 Has Returned? The history behind this rip and its ripper are almost too good to be true, and is in my eyes one of the coolest things to ever happen on Siiva. If you've played ZeroRanger, you may have noticed part of what I'm talking about already. Did you see who made this rip?
That's right - eebrozgi, the lead developer and sole composer of ZeroRanger itself. And before ZeroRanger, there was FINALBOSS -Raw Label-, an early version of the same concept, with many similar music themes done with somewhat more primitive music arranging. On the soundtrack release of FINALBOSS -Raw Label- are several bonus tracks, most of which pay tribute to pieces of video game music that inspired the soundtrack to both games. Amidst these is the original release of The 0 Has Returned - arranging the theme The Sea Has Returned to the tune of two songs from the Mega Man Zero series: Awakening Will and Esperanto.
With me so far? Both the early version and final versions of the game - FINALBOSS -Raw Label- and ZeroRanger - feature The Sea Has Returned in their own distinct music styles, and the early version in particular featured an arranged version of the song in its soundtrack release paying tribute to Mega Man Zero. What we have for todays rip is, magically, the final piece of the puzzle - an OFFICIAL arrangement of the final ZeroRanger rendition of The Sea Has Returned, paying tribute to the same themes from Mega Man Zero. Put simply, its fucking beautiful.
I can't claim to know why eebrozgi chose to feature what is effectively an extra piece of the ZeroRanger soundtrack exclusively on the SiIvaGunner channel, but as a diehard fan of the Mega Man Zero series - the results are absolute magic. Few times have I become so surprisingly emotional whilst listening to a SiIva album - the track's existence caught me completely off-guard, and it just becomes even more jawdropping learning about the context of its production. The fact that there are developers out there willing to reach out and collaborate with SiIva to this extent is just incredible to me, bringing the gap between fanwork and official release all the closer.
