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VGM Analysis: Why do boss themes have crashing cymbals and..

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Mikurotoro92
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01 Nov 2025, 8:32 pm

Gongs?

Examples of boss themes that would fit this include the Shadow Queen (3rd phase) from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Levias from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, J-E-N-O-V-A Absolute from Final Fantasy 7 etc

My theory is that is done to build up to the song's climax like how in regular music the singers sing really high as a way to build up to the climax of the song

However, having gongs & cymbals crash wouldn't make sense for certain types of boss themes like techno BGM

It's better to discuss stuff like this than constantly ruminate about marriage!! !



Mikurotoro92
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02 Nov 2025, 3:55 am

Mikurotoro92 wrote:
Gongs?

Examples of boss themes that would fit this include the Shadow Queen (3rd phase) from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Levias from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, J-E-N-O-V-A Absolute from Final Fantasy 7 etc

My theory is that is done to build up to the song's climax like how in regular music the singers sing really high as a way to build up to the climax of the song

However, having gongs & cymbals crash wouldn't make sense for certain types of boss themes like techno BGM

It's better to discuss stuff like this than constantly ruminate about marriage!! !


Also with these 3 themes (and countless other boss BGMs) I believe composers Yuka Tsujiyoko and Yoshito Hirano (Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door), Hajime Wakai (Zelda Skyward Sword), and Nobuo Uematsu (FF7) added those effects as an easy way to increase the intensity of the songs to match the boss battles they were written for!! !



Mikurotoro92
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03 Nov 2025, 9:13 pm

However, I want to mention that Skyward Sword's BGM is 100% orchestrated which would explain the utilization of crashing gongs & cymbals effects in the boss themes

That makes me wonder about Paper Mario and FF7 if the composers even used actual cymbals or gongs to create the effect or if it was all synthetic...