yeah shadows of the empire rules. existential crisis hodgepodge... the music, sounds... long barren corridors, maybe genuively meaningless deadends with no item pickups but just for crude illusion of "some person uses this for some important function in this ship", all this and more in n64 esthetics and turok fog... special esthetics that even kojima hasn't touched upon (ahahah at the post-level score screen, you need to see the utubes without people skipping them like this speedrunner does)... the fucking desert jetpack level, i always wondered, "how is this guy living in this place? how do they make it? i wanna live in this jetpack tower... oh cool, air transporters *from then on has similar air transporters irl in kid's figurine plays*..... little did i know how much the train-scrapyard level would influence me for years to come, perhaps it was a sign of what was to come... etc... idk, it's a massively influencing game as a kid, and maybe not in a completely good way? it's hard to tell... SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE. menu screen weird atmosphere orchestral music... in a sense, i never ever really shut down my life's abstract n64 console on the shadows of the empire, i am still living mentally in the jetpack desert level to this day... this and turok...
also i really like that they just loop these maybe 30s loops from the SW original john william ost, and sort of discover esthetics/worlds on their own
EDIT probably the closest one to sotempire esthetics/the score screen is fucking x files theme and intro of the falling stickman into handprints etc. i actually yesterday gushed how important it was for that special VHS i watched millions of times as a kid that it had that x files intro or advertisement of it with the goddamn theme music in it. immediate existential crisis... neverending delayed piano that gets nowhere, same for mellotron or whatever that circles forever...
also my friend described the premise of x files and uh i guess i missed a lot? its literally like the perfection of television ever, like who cares about twin peaks after THIS crystallized diamond ephemera shit? who needs a weird plot etc extragavanza and quirks when you have x files concept and theme music?
EDIT ok i admit it, twin peaks theme music IS pretty good. that existential crisis Quest 64 baritone guitar sound...
have i ever told...? i might have previously, long time ago. there was a time when i was overstressed and sleep deprived in a near-empty airport. i had a few hours ago arreanged new return flight tickets, as my previous return tickets (i was supposed to use now) were accidentally arreanged a one month later... i had to do all this in a panic within ½h as that was the limit of the free internet in the airport.
anyways, it's idk 1-4am in the morning or whatever, nobody is in the past-visa checkup area, every friggin shop is closed so they all have these iron bar curtains pulled over the doors and windows. i can't sleep as i'm afraid i miss my return flight. all i hear thru my fogged mind is this haze of a cheap 90's elevator music that echos in the huge hall, that special kind you only hear in phone services, i wonder where they get all this stuff?
then while staring inside the closed iron-barred shops and wonderin and rambling, all of sudden i stop in my tracks as i think the muzak that plays now sounds familiar... until i realize it's the fucking TWIN PEAKS THEME SONG ahahahahahahah. TOO PERFECT!! im experiencing the same dulling existential crisis of artificial n64 limits (trying to figure out what IS behind those iron curtains, how can i get inside, how would people live here, etc) and empty spaces and this fucking song of all things starts playing...
I would had only needed some turok fog descent everywhere, or just outside the windows... ya know what i'm saying?
I never really left that shadows of the empire n64 jetpack tower...
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