Megalovania

In 2008, starmen.net, a fansite dedicated to the Mother video game series, held its annual "Halloween Funfest" competition for fan works related to the franchise.[4] In November of that year, Toby Fox, going by the online alias "Radiation", submitted an EarthBound romhack simply titled Radiation Halloween Hack.[5][1] The romhack featured custom music from other games, and for the final boss Fox originally intended to use the song "Megalomania" from the Super Nintendo game Live A Live. A recurring theme playing at the end of each of the game's chapters, Fox was struck by the simplicity of "Megalomania", but also felt its repeated use had created a "Pavlovian" sense of "This is the end" in player's minds due to its repeated use. 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.[6]

To this end he screamed "whatever [he] felt like" into a microphone and then copied it down, making it a lengthy process.[7] Composing the song afterward by comparison was very quick, taking Fox about thirty minutes.[6] 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."[8] Meanwhile, the melody itself was inspired by the final boss theme of Brandish 2: The Planet Buster, a game series that heavily influenced several other aspects of the romhack.[9] After the romhack's release, he noticed people were ripping the music from it directly; however, the in-game rendition had a built in delay which carried over to the rips. He chose to release a copy generated directly from the music editor, but then realized he'd never named the song. After consideration 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.[8]

Toby Fox later worked as a musician for the internet fiction series Homestuck, and in 2011 "Megalovania" was remixed for its sixth volume, Heir Transparent with Joren "Tensei" de Bruin providing guitar music to the track.[2] 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 had received, stating he felt the guitar solo he had added was "uncreative" and would do the track over without the Super Nintendo audio for later renditions.[8]

In 2015, Toby Fox released Undertale, a game he developed and composed music for. "Megalovania" 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.[10] This rendition is closer to the original romhack's, though removes the slow startup that preceded it.[3] 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.[11] Additionally, several other games have used the song as part of a cross-promotion with Undertale, including Pop'n Music, Dance Dance Revolution A3, and Gitadora High-Voltage, the last of which utilized a rock and roll arrangement of it by Yuya Yokoyama.[12][13] In 2019, MUSIC Engine in Tokyo, Japan performed an orchestral renditions of Undertale's music, which included "Megalovania".[14]

The song matching the intensity of the fight against Sans in Undertale has been cited as a factor for its popularity

Since its release, "Megalovania" has become one of the most popular video game songs, appearing on television programs and being briefly sung by actor and musician Jack Black for his YouTube gaming channel,[15][16][17] and has been described as easily recognizable just from its beginning notes even for those unfamiliar with gaming.[18] Ryan Stevens in an article for Cultured Vultures described the song as one of the best boss battle themes of all time, praising its "understated riff" and "foreboding bass", further describing it as symbolizing when an "unstoppable force meeting an immovable object."[19] Ryan Woodrow for Sports Illustrated described it as a song worth listening to every now and then to "remember what a fantastic track it is", with the song in Undertale contrasting "in the best way possible" to Sans' character for the "all-out" fight.[20]

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 the song,[6] and according to Toby Fox at an official concert she performed a remixed rendition of "Megalomania" with "Megalovania" spliced in.[21] 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.[18] For Pesterquest, a game set in the Homestuck universe, musician James Roach utilized the melody from "Megalovania" for the track "Yeah It Is".[22] In 2022, the song was played at the Vatican as part of a papal audience circus act for Pope Francis.[10]

In a paper titled Undertale: A Case Study in Ludomusicology, Matthew Perez acknowledged that while much of its popularity stemmed from its use in Undertale, he felt it worked against Toby Fox's "confusing message about ethics and decision-making in video games", seemingly rewarding the players with the melody. He however praised the track itself, stating its baseline "gives the track a ferocity throughout its various sections, and its varying instrumentation continually refreshes the sonic atmosphere during the combat scenario."[23]

Polygon's Palmer Haasch described the song as having "consistent presence in internet game culture of the late 2010s", which he attributed in part due to Undertale's success and its frequent use in fanmade remixes and "shitposts" that persisted for years,[24] the former of which had formed its own subgenre on YouTube according to Jen Glennon of Inverse.[25] Haasch also noted the song's massive presence on the social media website TikTok, stating that "its repetitive riffs and melodramatic, chiptune-esque palette [...] play out well on TikTok because they make sounds memorable and quirky", and worked well with the various meme cultures already forming on the platform, and adaptions of older memes such as rickrolling to incorporate the song. Haasch closed stating that few songs had left a footprint on 2010s internet culture, and that it made an argument for measuring a song's success "not by its chart history, but by its ability to be continuously reinvented."[24] As of 2023, "Megalovania" has the most listens on Spotify of any video game song.[26]

• "Megalovania" from Radiation Halloween Hack on Internet Archive
• "MeGaLoVania" from Homestuck Vol. 5-6 on Bandcamp
• "Megalovania" from Undertale Soundtrack on YouTube