Some time last year I started listening to maple music while working. The above playlist is what I usually use now, 5 hours+ in one shot.
I have to say, maple music is amazing. I pretty much only experienced the first one and one quarter hour of that playlist in my younger days. Yet I always listen to this full playlist because even though majority of the bgm in it is new to me, man it is good stuff.
I absolutely love the temple of time bgm. In the playlist it's from 3:36:52 to 3:46:30. It's actually split into four seperate tracks:
- [3:36:52] Temple of Time: Time Temple
- [3:39:09] Memory Lane: Remembrance
- [3:41:23] Road of Regrets: Repentance
- [3:44:04] Road to Oblivion: Forgetfulness
All of which are actually variations of the same track. My personal favourite is Road of Regrets: Repentance. That said, I think the track is also best appreciated after listening to the 'vanilla' temple of time soundtrack, to see how it morphed. In fact, it's fun to listen to all four tracks together just to see how they reflect the different themes with the same melody.
SO GOOD.
Another track which I really like is [3:58:39] Empress Cygnus: Cygnus Garden. How is this so good.
I went to watch a gameplay video and read up on the plot. So apparently Empress Cygnus is a force of good, but there was some time shenanigans (related to temple of time) and this is a dystopian future where Empress Cygnus has been corrupted and now you have fight your old ally turned evil. Hence the sorrowful yet epic boss music. My main criticism? It's criminal that this bgm takes place at the same time as all the other sounds in the boss fight - just listen to it! They should just mute all attack sounds and let this play when you fight her man. Imagine how epic that would be. Just silence, music, and you fighting your old comrade.
These are just some of the ones that have stood out to me more while listening to this playlist, but I like I said, I think the whole playlist is great, there are plenty of other gems in there. Definitely worth listening to even if you have never played maplestory. In fact, it might be even better, since you don't have to worry about being hit by nostalgia while listening and can just appreciate the music as it is heh.
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Which brings me to the first hour of the playlist. Now these are the bgms I grew up with. These are the ones that were already in the game when it first launched in 2005 and I started playing it.
The problem I have with this playlist for work is I always get hit by a wave of nostalgia the moment I start it. The first track is the login screen you hear everytime you play, and sure most of the time you only hear the first 30s or so as you click through the login process. Still, I remember leaving it on for longer just to listen to it.
My personal favourite of the old school hits has to be [8:24] Lith Harbor: Above the Treetops. It's a great track, and it's really nostalgic. After you finish maple island aka the tutorial island, you take a ship to the main Victoria island to start off your adventure in maple. Lith Harbour is your first step into a grand adventure. The monsters here are pretty weak, but I remember training here hitting snails for a little bit before heading off to specialise in one of the four classes available.
I think I had a few characters back then, notably a warrior and a mage. Regardless of which class you specialised in, one common place I would go to train was the treetop town of Ellinia, home of the mages. So the whole Ellinia bits from 28:43 to 36:56 is pretty nostalgic for me too. [34:29] Ellinia: Missing You in particular is pretty iconic as plenty of people spent their days inside Ellinia's tree dungeons gaining experience fighting slimes and mushrooms.
I never got high enough level to go to Ossyria. I remember being jealous of my friends who were level 30+, had new fancy skills, and went on ahead to explore new lands, but I didn't. So I never got to experience the bgm of Ossyria.
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Last year shortly after I started listening to maplestory music, I decided to play maplestory again, just to relive the nostalgia. Even though maplestory still exists today, it has morphed into something different altogether. I wasn't interested in that new version, hence I opted to play a private server that recreated the old school maplestory.
This was roughly around when covid started becoming a serious issue, and subsequently we went into CB. So yea, I had quite a fair bit of time to play maple. I revisited everything I once experienced, and it also didn't take me long for me to speed past my old levels and get the chance to see all the things I never got to see in the past. So I did get to Ossyria, and in fact, I have seen everything that was available in the game when I was in P6, and much more beyond that too.
That was good and all, and I enjoyed it. I have to say though, I don't think I got a complete nostalgia fix. Some say that's how it works with nostalgia, that our memories of the distant past always seem better, but when we actually revisit it, it's not the same.
That said, I don't think it's just about rose tinted glasses. Context matters.
This was 2005. Up till this point social games were mostly browser based ones like runescape. Downloading a game client, installing it and playing with friends, that was a new experience altogether. Sure gunbound was already around and it was a blast too, but maplestory was an adventure together with friends. I think that is what really made it special. We would log in to MSN, find out whos gonna play maplestory, and join in together.
Exploration was another key part of it. There were barely any guides to maplestory out there, at most some basic ones on skill builds. So maplestory represented an entire world to explore. Perhaps part of the reason why some friends reached higher levels much quicker was because they were efficient with their levelling while I was not. I spent time walking around, checking out places. There were hidden portals around the world, and someone would discover one and we would be excited and go check it out. Pig beach was one such place. A hidden portal in a cluster of flowers near Lith Harbour, a land full of pigs to hunt. The presence of a single LEVEL 42 IRON HOG that actually doesn't do a lot of damage but was impossible to damage in return. It made little kids like me so excited.
As I return to maplestory more than 15 years later, it's just not the same. Truth is, old school maplestory, aside from it's amazing soundtrack, just isn't that great compared to many of the games we have today. It's a grindy game, the mechanics are nothing particularly fancy. There is also a wealth of information available out there, so while I do still find exploration interesting, it no longer quite evokes that same sense of wonder discovering pig beach did for me when I was young.
So in that regard, unfortunately it is impossible to recreate the maplestory experience that once was. I can certainly create a new character go back to Lith Harbour and hit snails like I once did all those years ago, but the experience is not the same.
Maplestory was truly special for it's time. There were tons of other games I played too since primary school and even going into secondary school. I still remember many of them, but none of them evoked a desire for me to go back and try playing them again. I don't think I even played maplestory for all that long, probably just half a year or something in P6, and later subsequently revisiting it for a little bit in sec 4 to try out the new classes. Yet it remains the most memorable of all the games I used to play when I was young.
The good news is that the soundtrack is timeless. 10/10 will continue to listen for work. Just need to not be inspired to write an entire blogpost the next time the Lith Harbour theme hits again.
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