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Megalovania is a video game song composed by Toby Fox.

Conception and development

In 2008, starmen.net, a fansite dedicated to the Mother video game series, held it's annual "Halloween Funfest" competition for fan works related to the franchise. Toby Fox, going by the online alias "Radiation", submitted an Earthbound romhack simply titled "Radiation Halloween Hack", which included a custom final boss music track. Originally intending to use the a boss theme from the Super Nintendo game Live A Live titled "Megalomania", which played at the end of each of the game's chapters. Fox was struck by the simplicity of the track, but also felt its repeated use had created a sense of "This is the end" in player's minds and wanted to apply that to his romhack. However, when he attempted to transcribe the music to recreate it he found it too difficult, and after some consideration decided instead to make a completely new song.

To this end he screamed "whatever felt like" into a microphone and then copied it down, which resulted in a lengthy process. Composing the song afterward by comparison was very quick, taking Fox about thirty minutes. According to Fox, despite using similar chords the track took inspiration from Megalomania not in terms of composition but by "TOTALLY attempting to be the kind of a badass song that might be suitable for a similar purpose." After noticing people were ripping the music from the hacked rom directly he chose to release a copy generated from the music editor, due to the romhack's rendition having a built-in delay, but then realized he'd never named the song. He dubbed it "Megalovania", a combination of its original inspiration and "Transylvania", the latter half meant to try and add some "Halloweeniness into it" due to its origin.

Toby Fox later worked as a musician for the internet fiction series Homestuck, and Megalovania was remixed for its sixth volume, Heir Transparent with Joren "Tensei" de Bruin providing guitar music to the track. The track was made noticeably longer, and while Fox had used synthesized guitars on his other tracks, he found them sounding "muddy" when shifting them down an octave due to the original Super Nintendo audio, which itself couldn't be altered as in Fox's eyes that would have defeated the purpose of the song. Instead he wrote several extended guitar sections, trying to ensure they didn't "sound screechy and stupid" while still sounding "badass", which was aided by the fact de Bruin's guitar could play a note higher than most can. Due to it being technically the third release of the song, he capitalized various letters to differentiate it, resulting in "MeGaLoVania". After its release, despite both he and de Bruin being happy with the final results he acknowledged some of the criticisms it has received, feeling the guitar solo he had added was "uncreative" and stated he would do the track over without the Super Nintendo audio for any later renditions.

In 2015, Toby Fox released Undertale, a game he had developed and composed music for. Megalovania also returns as the boss music for the character Sans, who will fight the player near the end of the game's "genocide" route after they have killed nearly every other non-player character in the game. This rendition is closer to the original romhack's, though removes the slow startup that preceded it. It has also served as the basis for subsequent uses of the song, such as an arrangement composed by Fox for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2019 as downloadable content. Additionally, game publisher Konami used the song in Dance Dance Revolution A3 and Gitadora High-Voltage as part of a cross-promotion with Undertale, the latter of which utilized a rock and roll arrangement of Megalovania by Yuya Yokoyama.

Critical reception

Since its release, Megalovania has become increasingly popular online, namely the Undertale rendition, with Devin Connelly of ScreenRant noting that even many who have never played the game would easily recognize it's beginning notes. The song has been utilized in various memes relating to both Undertale and the character Sans.

Several renditions of Megalovania have also been produced by other creators and outlets. The original composer for Live A Live, Yoko Shimomura, noted that after Undertale's release many of her fans asked her about Megalovania, and according to Toby Fox at an official concert she performed a remixed rendition of Megalomania with Megalovania spliced in. The Twitter account for Cult of the Lamb utilized the song in promotional material, with the social media handler using the game's merchandise to sound out Megalovania's notes and encourage sales of it. In 2022, the song was played at the Vatican as part of a presentation for Pope Francis, as part of a papal audience circus act.

References

1. ^ "MeGaLoVania". Bandcamp. Archived from the original on 2011-01-08.
2. ^ "Undertale". Edge. No. 314. January 2018. p. 95.
3. ^ Stenbuck, Kite (2022-08-10). "Megalovania Appears in Gitadora With a New Rock Arrangement". Siliconera. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
4. "Halloween Funfest 2008". starment.net. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
5. Fox, Toby. "Radiation Halloween Hack (Censored)". starmen.net. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
6. ^ "LIVE A LIVE: a conversation between Yoko Shimomura and Toby Fox - part 1". Square Enix. 2023-05-12. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
7. Fox, Toby (2008-10-31). The Making Of.html (Text document included amongst the files of the romhack of Earthbound entitled Earthbound Halloween Hack.). Archived from the original (ZIP) on 2009-11-26. Retrieved 2023-08-17. This is it, the final boss theme. I wanted to put Live A Live's Megalomania in here but I didn't get to so I made my own last boss song. I pretty much just yelled whatever I felt like into a mike and copied it down. Yep. Took forever, but it was superkickass-worth-it. Total embodiment of final bossitude.
8. ^ Toby, Fox (2011-01-07). "Homestuck Vol. 6: Heir Transparent". MSPA Forums. p. 28. Archived from the original on 2016-03-15. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
9. ^ Diaz, Ana (2022-01-06). "The Pope listening to Undertale's 'Megalovania' is already 2022's weirdest video". Polygon. Retrieved 2023-08-18.
10. Fox, Toby (September 4, 2019). "Yes. It's true. You'll be able to buy a Mii Gunner costume of Sans in Smash Brothers Ultimate later today! It'll come with a special arrangement of Megalovania composed by me. It's a huge honor to have something I created in Smash. Thank you so much Mr. Sakurai!!!" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 2019-09-05 – via Twitter.
11. ^ Connelly, Devin (2022-09-17). "Cult Of The Lamb Uses Merch To Recreate Megalovania". ScreenRant. Retrieved 2023-08-18.
12. Fox, Toby (February 9, 2022). "I don't know if I ever mentioned this, but I went to the official LIVE A LIVE A LIVE concert in Japan once long ago, and during MEGALOMANIA, they mixed in MEGALOVANIA halfway through as a remix of both. I was freaking out. Most surreal moment of my life lol" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 2022-02-10 – via Twitter.