Toomanywires wrote a great retrospective on the Final Fantasy IX and Voodoo as they brought back memories for him having been released within a year of each other. I have plenty of unusual song-game pairings (George Michael and play-by-mail is just one of them) but the one that hit me today was much stranger.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane to 2005. Much like TMW, I was in secondary school at the time and I was really into strategy RPGs (also known as tactical RPGs). This was thanks to a friend who recommended Advance Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and Fire Emblem. As far as suggestions go, they were some of the best media recommendations I’ve ever received and all for the GBA so easily accessible, physically or *ahem* otherwise…
My memory is hazy on the details of my playthroughs. I know I didn’t complete them as that would have stuck with me but I remember enjoying them a lot. The gameplay was relatively simple and concise and therefore addictive and the cherry on top were the graphics. I’m a sucker for pixel art and how far you can push it with vibrant colours and animation and all three did just that.
Around this time, Black Eyed Peas released My Humps, a song from their fourth album, Monkey Business. At the time, I was as much of a BEP fan as anyone else who had access to a radio and liked chart music. It was catchy, lyrically silly, and, I’m not sure if I mentioned this but really catchy too. Because of this, I listened to it a lot and managed to “obtain” the song for my mp3 player and would listen to it often.
And so the culmination of these awesome video games and a song that hit #3 in the charts made 2005 a pretty awesome year in my mind. One of the most vivid memories I have of it all was talking about the games and having the song playing while working on my art coursework after school with the friend who recommended them. It was the perfect blend of creativity and childhood wonder. I miss those kinds of moments. It’s not as easy to find like-minded people who share the same passion for one thing as an adult, let alone multiple. They might get it but they rarely get it.
21 years have passed since I built those unique associations and while it feels like a long time ago—as it should!—it still feels weird to imagine it as two decades ago. Fire Emblem is a very large franchise now with its latest entry, a strange mobile game called Fire Emblem Shadows, released a few months ago. And Fortune’s Weave is due out this year for the Nintendo Switch 2. Advance Wars had a trickle of games in the 00s and then a massive 15 year gap between 2008’s Advance Wars: Days of Ruin and 2023’s Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp. And Final Fantasy Tactics got a remaster in September 2025 (much to TMW’s delight).
Regardless of anything, Nintendo have been doing very well with them all and it stands to reason. RPGs are guaranteed cash cows only overshadowed by roguelike/lites from a genre perspective (even better if they’re a balatro-style metroidvania roguelikelite musou JRPG)
But what about good ol’ Black Eyed Peas? Well, they maintained their success throughout the 00s and 2010s and then Fergie and will.i.am did their solo things in between until she left and I just found out that went back to the original three-piece and back to their boom bap roots. I say “just found out” as I didn’t sustain my fairweather fandom after 2005 although I did enjoy Imma Be from the next album (it’s catchy!). I think it came down to my music tastes shifting and not keeping up with a lot of pop music. I didn’t go out buying lots of chart CDs and I wasn’t keeping up to date with all the biggest bands so unless it was right in my face, I wouldn’t have known.
There’s no doubt that they were all talented—I know I couldn’t sing and cartwheel live on TV—but sometimes you don’t gel with a discography. Sometimes it’s just that one thing.
I have a lot of catching up to do with the games but that all relies on digging into the past. There’s an element of excitement at reliving those times but it’d be nice to find some of that joy in the present and future. It’ll more likely come from FF and FE than BEP but who knows? Regardless, I’m content with what I experienced in 2005 and, no offence to the hip hop trio, but I won’t lose sleep if I never hear new music from them ever again. But maybe I’ll throw My Humps on one day for old time’s sake.