It's been a bumpy launch for Balan Wonderworld - a boss section in the game was identified as being able to potentially trigger epileptic seizures and there's a suspicious amount of positive user reviews on Metacritic, raising plenty of eyebrows.
If all of this wasn't already enough, Yuji Naka's latest release is now being accused of featuring a " beat for beat knock-off" of an original Ghostbusters track. Ghostbuster fans claim "The Firefighter with Heroic Aspirations: Main Theme" in Balan, composed by Ryo Yamazaki, sounds similar to the original Ghostbuster's motion picture score by Elmer Bernstein.
@GigaBoots: "A song in Balan Wonderworld is a beat for beat knockoff of a Ghostbusters song and it's absolutely hilarious. Give it a listen."
One response to the original tweet suggested there's "no honor among thieves" - referencing a past Ghostbusters lawsuit:
What do you think? Does the above Balan track sound like the Ghostbusters one? Leave a comment down below.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 57
This game's rabbit hole of disappointment is not only more entertaining than the game itself, but also likely more entertaining than the game would've been had it been good.
I really, really, really wanted the returning combo of Naka and Ohshima to produce something magical... I did not want it to go down in gaming history as a dumpster fire of memeable proportions. 😩
Man this game never stop to surprise.
And the Ghostbusters theme ripped off Huey Lewis, so I guess you can say it's a full circle.
Who ya gonna call? A lawyer!
@Tasuki Came to say this. It's not even subtle in it's theft: https://youtu.be/JKWW5-jr5Y0
How does this game keep getting worse and worse?
What's next, one of the developers of this game is an arsonist?
I'm think it's safe to say that balan wonderworld is the biggest dumpster fire in gaming yet that just keeps getting worse
It's kinda similar but not 100% the same.
@HotGoomba In this day and age more likely an abuser.
Man, just when you think the controversies for this game are over, they just keep coming.
cmon dudes, no way this was copied ...the Balan melody has descending 4th intervals, the Busters melody has ascending 4th intervals (kind of), Balan is in the C major scale, Busters are in the G major, if I hear it correctly.....thats just nonsense... Moreover, I hope you do not think Elmer Bernstein came up with this super simple idea the first composer in history
GUILTY AF! I hate Balan Wonderland and Square Enix even more now!
I dont hear it
A lot of problems with this game huh? Probably should have never been made.
Balan wonderworld be like: I Ain't afraid of no Ghost!
They probably did copy it, but to be fair I think this happens more than people realise.
Lots of the Animal Crossing New Horizons hourly themes appear to rip off famous R&B/pop music. Most noticeably 1am which is insanely similar to D Angelo - How Does It Feel, right down to the chorus melody!
1am:
D Angelo:
@Doofenshmirtz not exactly. I mean, Cyber Punk 2077 is still smouldering.
@Tasuki It’ll only truly have come full circle once Huey Lewis rips off Balan Wonderworld by dressing as its ridiculous characters for a gig.
He should’ve just worked on a remaster of NIGHTS instead
Most of the tune is different, but there is definitely one part that sounds almost identical, right down to the change up for the second part. Both tunes using a honky tonk piano really makes the similarity stand out too.
I have been playing through this game.
It's basically a Sega Saturn game which has come out now.
Definitely more like a 6 out of 10.
If you have no Sega Saturn nostalgia, then I can understand the hatred.
The biggest issue of this game has been the price point.
If it had released for under £24.99 it would of made sense.
Doesn't feel like a £49.99 game.
i always saw it as a Thomas the Tank Engine homage
also the biggest problem most people have with the game is that they don't understand it
but when you do, it is a wonderful experience
@dragothekomodo
Yeah it's pretty relaxing in short bursts.
I really get Saturn vibes off it, so in that respect I'm biased.
With more time, it could of been a much better.
Probably time restrictions, a small budget, and an average development team.
I think it's fair to give the benefit of the doubt in these cases. When you have a fairly simple chord progression and melody there are a limited number of directions you can go with it, so things will sound very similar every now and then.
I'd be perfectly happy to allow for coincidence, but there's also the possibility that the composer had the previous song deep in their subconscious as they were writing. It can then just fall in to place without the composer being aware that they have copied it. That's happened to me and it's infuriating when someone points it out because you felt proud of the composition and then it's entirely taken away. I think it's extremely unlikely that Yamasaki sat down and thought "I'm just going to copy a Ghostbusters song and change it a bit because I'm too lazy to come up with something original". It wouldn't even be that much easier than just writing something new but basic. You might not come up with a great song, but it would be better to have a forgettable tune or two than get accused of ripping off someone else's work. I don't imagine any composer out there would prefer the latter.
Maybe it's just a 'spiritual successor' to the Ghostbusters tune?
(hehe)
Well yeah, same melody, they’ve just thrown it in a different key, and made a few other changes.
Does this count as flat out copying in the music world? If I took a knitting pattern and changed a few elements, the new version is my pattern…. It’s a bit low to do it, but it would still be classed as my original idea.
I started listening and said "nah its not really close enough" then the piano started... yeah. Yeah that's a rip off. I am so disappoint.
I thought to myself: its not that bad, might just sound similar.
Listened to it.
Damn. This game, I love it. How can it be this bad? Sonic showed extremely good improvements and I loved the new shows, now its straight back to Sonic 06 levels. Once it gets on sale ill buy it.
You know even if they sound a like maybe the Balan version could just be a cover. Some artists tend to use other artists original song in their work too but not as a direct copy but as a cover of the original.
We came, we saw, we nicked its music!
This is honestly nowhere near surprising. Video game composers accidentally do this all the time. Nintendo is guilty of the same thing, particularly around the Breath of the Wild theme and "Fly Octo Fly ~ Ebb & Flow" from Splatoon 2.
That's just a standard cord progression ...
All music is generally made from around 48 notes, and because of dissidence, a lot can't be played together or in sequence. Because of Harmony, you end up playing the 1 3 5 and 7 interval offten.
TL:DR
Complete and utter nonsense. The ONLY way they are musically similar is by use of a cord progression that's in every song ever.
As the gaming press likes to call ripoffs: it is actually a "love letter" to Ghostbusters. Or, a "homage". Or, "inspired by".
bruh who even cares there are a lot of songs made every single day and a lot of them will sound like older songs....
It's sad to see an "established" gaming news site using Twitter posts as a source.
You can't keep doing these articles and slapping "Random" on them to cover your tracks, NL. Don't you have any integrity?
@DragotheKomodo People can think of a game what they want and if it does not match your opinion of the game it is not because "they don't understand it". The game has some very apparent problems (for example performance wise) which should imo be criticised
I don’t hear a strong case in the comparison
Y’all should give a quick read to Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson. It’s a great sci-fi short story about this topic. I won’t give anymore away but if you’ve got 30 or so minutes to spare go check it out on his website.
Not a great game, but this sounds (pun intended) like needless nit picking just to find the 101th thing to complain about, since hating this game is trending right now.
By this logic, a lot of songs of games that share vagely similar music should be investigated.
I can't hear the similarities, but if they are there, but it's changed up..then it's not a copy.
If it was, then every genre of music has hundreds of songs that require the artist to pay the first person that tapped, stemmed, etc. the few chords/tune.
Square needs to sell Balan to CDPR.
Honestly, while I agree that Balan is a bad game, I feel like people are just finding things that aren’t wrong to crap on it. I listened to these songs a while ago, and while similar, they’re not even remotely the exact same song. It’s like when Nintendo made Ilia’s theme in twilight princess, and it sounded like Runaway Fugitives.
@VoidofLight exactly most people who do so haven't even played the game.
Same with some reviewers.
Literally whole game is so strange
This just gets better and better.
Okay... real talk. I am aware that many if you dislike this game, but now you're seeing and chasing ghosts... no pun intended. Just get over it and move on.
Wow. I’m @PerpetuallyKyle on Twitter. There’s something a bit surreal about stumbling upon my face on the site I go on regularly, but it’s neat to be in an article I guess.
@Doofenshmirtz unless it gets delisted from psn like cy punk2077 did, then it cant be worse
God there are so many reasons this is going nowhere. Slow news I guess
Here, this a link to Stairway to Heaven vs. a song by the band "Spirt". Now keep in mind Spirit opened for Zeppelin a few weeks before recording Stairway, and asked to see Spirits song book.
Even with that fact, these songs have been determined to be legally distinct.
Then to show you why that's the RIGHT decision, this has a 3rd song to show that this is just a nature musical progression. You're using like 10 cords most of the time, it's a mathematic certainty that every song written has another song with the exact same 8-12 note progression. Assuming a generous 15 cords, you'll have a repeated 10 notes every 2 million notes. That's once every 5600 songs.
Sure, this is back of napkin math, but even if I'm off by a full order of magnitude, a repeat every 56000 song still makes it extremely common.
https://youtu.be/ghCNE0EgWQU
@HeadPirate I could give you several examples of the opposite happening and artists being given credit on songs which only sound vaguely similar (David Bowie / Brian Eno were given a writing credit on Blur's MOR because it was deemed to be similar enough in construction).
It's derivative, not plagiarism. Whoever is suing is just wasting money and time.
Paper Mario: Origami King had a song that was a blatant ripoff of Michael Jackson's "Thriller," and no one bats an eyelash, but then this song that is only sorta kinda vaguely similar to the Ghostbusters theme, and it gets a bleedin' article for it. There's certainly something strange in the neighborhood, but in this case, it isn't plagiarism so much as it's just people being dumb.
@Kienda The development, delay situation, and ps4/xbox one versions of cyberpunk? Sure I'll give that to you, but at least the game is still fun to play, even with the glitches it can have some really funny moments. Oh but balan? It's not even a so bad it's good kind of game, it's so painfully bad it's not even good, and the fact that this game is getting this kind of drama is just the cherry on top in my eyes
Has this game reached Mighty No. 9 levels of disappointment yet?
A double rip-off.
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