10-26-2021, 02:01 PM
Warning: this contains spoilers for Undertale, The Halloween Hack, and EarthBound.
On the "True Pacifist" route of Undertale, the player encounters several minibosses in the True Lab known as Amalgamates, fused from the bodies of multiple resurrected monsters that started to disintegrate from being injected with excess levels of Determination. With the exception of Endogeny and Snowdrake's Mother (which respectively use distorted versions of "Dogsong" and "Snowy"), their fights are underscored by the track "Amalgam". A video of these fights can be seen below:
These enemies appear to draw inspiration from one of Toby Fox's earlier projects, a ROM hack of EarthBound that he created in high school called The Halloween Hack. Late into the fangame, the player encounters an identically-named series of enemies also fused together from multiple earlier foes. Because the hack contains homophobic slurs (something Fox openly regretted years later, disowning the project as a result), video footage will not be used. Instead, a screencap of an Amalgamate is shown here (unlike in Undertale, the Amalgamates in The Halloween Hack look identical to one another):
![[Image: tumblr_inline_nyntt7Dxki1sfhgxx_400.png]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/91f81aac58383ff34e2fba5ff6687391/tumblr_inline_nyntt7Dxki1sfhgxx_400.png)
Furthering this connection, "Amaglam" is composed mostly of samples from EarthBound's soundtrack, specifically taking from the themes for the Cave of the Past and the final boss fight. This includes the sample of the Beach Boys' 1970 song "Deirdre".
On the "True Pacifist" route of Undertale, the player encounters several minibosses in the True Lab known as Amalgamates, fused from the bodies of multiple resurrected monsters that started to disintegrate from being injected with excess levels of Determination. With the exception of Endogeny and Snowdrake's Mother (which respectively use distorted versions of "Dogsong" and "Snowy"), their fights are underscored by the track "Amalgam". A video of these fights can be seen below:
These enemies appear to draw inspiration from one of Toby Fox's earlier projects, a ROM hack of EarthBound that he created in high school called The Halloween Hack. Late into the fangame, the player encounters an identically-named series of enemies also fused together from multiple earlier foes. Because the hack contains homophobic slurs (something Fox openly regretted years later, disowning the project as a result), video footage will not be used. Instead, a screencap of an Amalgamate is shown here (unlike in Undertale, the Amalgamates in The Halloween Hack look identical to one another):
Furthering this connection, "Amaglam" is composed mostly of samples from EarthBound's soundtrack, specifically taking from the themes for the Cave of the Past and the final boss fight. This includes the sample of the Beach Boys' 1970 song "Deirdre".