Megalovania

"Megalovania" (sometimes stylized in all caps) is an instrumental video game song composed by Toby Fox. It was first composed for the EarthBound Halloween Hack, a ROM hack of EarthBound, developed for a Mother fansite's competition in November 2008. Inspired by "Megalomania" from Live A Live and the final boss music of Brandish 2: The Planet Buster, the track was intended for the ROM hack's final boss battle, and was developed by Fox screaming "whatever [he] felt like" into a microphone and copying it down. The name itself is a combination of "megalomania" and "Transylvania", the latter of which intended to tie into the project's Halloween theme. Years later the track would be remixed for the webcomic Homestuck's soundtrack as "MeGaLoVania" with help from Joren "Tensei" de Bruin, and Fox would use another rendition as the final boss theme for the "genocide" route in his 2015 video game, Undertale, when fighting the character Sans. The track has been widely popular, and more so with the release of Undertale, which spawned various memes and remixes to the degree of being named its own subgenre on YouTube. The track has since appeared in other games and media such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and was performed in a live rendition for Pope Francis by a circus. Other musicians such as Yoko Shimomura have also performed their own interpretations. Various media outlets have praised it for its intensity and composition, and "Megalovania" has been used to not only examine Undertale's underlying messages but internet reaction as a whole through its use on social media platforms such as TikTok.