In-game vocal themes before 1995

Originally I was making a frustrated venting list of "In-game vocal themes before Eyes on Me" which I planned to very slowly and lazily put things in as a general anti-entropic protest against some of the ways that Giant Bomb user lists don't work (or work badly). That doesn't make much sense but it how my brain generally works.

I used the Ordered List format so I could move things in and around easily, although I then learned that such lists freak out and become impossible(?) to update when you push them over 100 items. Well, that's fine, I wasn't sure there were a hundred such examples before D(ollet)-Day on February 11th, 1999. But then I thought, I should be sure, so I decided to go past casually including what Giant Bomb already had and stuff off the top of my head, instead searching my memory and resources and compiling a list of games I knew for certain and those I strongly suspected. Once I started factoring in all the god damn horny mahjong games and monkey-see-monkey-do romantic visual novels, it became clear there was definitely more than one hundred likely cases before Final Fantasy VIII.

So I decided to trim things down quite a bit, start a new list that capped off at an earlier landmark game with vocal theme, Tales of Phantasia on Super Famicom. Which, by the way, isn't even the first SNES JRPG with a voiced opening - that honor goes (I believe) to the considerably more obscure, generally more bizarre Down the World: Mervil's Ambition. Anywaugh, Phantasia gave a nice cut-off date of December 15th, 1995. Cutting out over three years of games, at least forty of which had sung songs singed in them, that had to bring the list down under 100, right? Well. Hmm.

I took a closer look at the list I had so far, the resources I was checking, where the big mystery spaces were, and started plowing through a bunch of CD-DA... and as you've guessed by now, I ended up going over the limit by just enough that even when I cut out all the inherited songs (repeats and those associated with the license), I couldn't be sure I had enough free space for all the games I didn't know about - there might be one or two, there might be dozens. Argh.

So now what? Cutting 1995 gives me ~20 free slots, but I'm no longer certain of what game I'm aiming for "before". To me, the next most iconic game is probably Sonic CD (1993.09.23), which has it's whole soundtrack replacement thing going on. For some people, it's probably Cannon Fodder (sometime in 1993), while I suppose Japanese gamers might pick Tokimeki Memorial (1994.05.27). There's a half-dozen games that December, and while the obvious pick is Ultraverse Prime (1994.12.06), that would something something something weak joke implying Lunar 2: Eternal Blue (1994.12.22) is less notable something something what the hell am I doing why am I even awake

Where was I? Oh, right. Until my brain starts working again (never), I'm capping this list as "before 1995", the year that gave us this incredible, iconic banger.

Also, I forgot all the things.

Good night.