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VGM Entry 48: Streets of Golden Hedgehogs

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 48: Streets of Golden Hedgehogs
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

With the new higher standards brought on by the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive composers would have to start trying a little harder if they wanted to compete. Some certainly did pick up the pace, and 1991 might be considered the first year with a decent selection to choose from.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m8mnn_Ni5s

There were a couple famous soundtracks in the mix. Streets of Rage (Sega) by Yuzo Koshiro is certainly one of them. I do not possess the patience to listen to each and every Genesis/Mega Drive soundtrack like I’ve been doing with the Game Boy, nor did I ever own the system as a kid. I can only really pick and choose these titles based on my perception of popular opinion. But the one series that popped up more consistently than any other on people’s lists was Streets of Rage.

It’s a chill, laid back score that I could listen to all day without ever really tiring of, and the gritty melodies make it a lot more down to earth and appropriate for a street fighting game than the more airy sounds I tend to associate with this sort of musical style. And perhaps more importantly, the music I associate with this style was mostly written long after Streets of Rage.

I mean, Koshiro deserves a lot of additional credit for being the first game musician to really try this–or else, the first to really pull it off. It’s a style I take for granted today, and perhaps that’s why Streets of Rage doesn’t strike me as immediately as it ought to, but in 1991 games just didn’t ever sound like this. A lot of them couldn’t, really. You couldn’t do this on the SNES. The bass and drum tones just weren’t good enough. You certainly couldn’t do it on anything earlier outside of the arcade. Koshiro did an outstanding job of acknowledging and exploiting the Genesis’s best sound qualities, and perhaps a lot of the best system scores to follow are a bit in debt to him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayrDtB6b7R4

We’ve all heard “Green Hill Zone”. As a game intended to compete with the Mario series, the music of Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega), composed by Masato Nakamura, definitely falls a little short, but that doesn’t make it bad. The songs were sufficiently catchy, and for a high-speed game they provided a pleasant counterweight.

One of the distinct features of Sonic the Hedgehog is the bass lines. Songs like “Spring Yard Zone” (1:58) are really made by them, and even such hopelessly generic tracks as “Labyrinth Zone” (2:49) maintain a distinct Sonic the Hedgehog flavor through the bass.

I could post a lot of other also-rans that are much better than previous Genesis music yet stil leave something to desire. Jewel Master by Motoaki Takenouchi and Zero Wing by Tatsuya Uemura, Toshiaki Tomisawa, and Masahiro Yuge certainly fall into this category. But I just don’t feel that they’re all that valuable in the larger picture. With so many unconditionally great scores out there by 1991, being the best for a particular system simply no longer mattered all that much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Vz2g8vHqU

The real Genesis winner for me this year is Golden Axe II (Sega), by Naofumi Hataya, and you’ll hear why in the very first sound in the game. What that crushing drum beat is doing here is beyond me, but I love it. It makes absolutely no sense in what is ultimately a bluesy jam title track, but I couldn’t care less. From start to finish, the soundtrack to Golden Axe II is underwritten by a restrained desire to be heavy metal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC-9NYjkcEw

This shines on some tracks more than others. “Ravaged Village”, for instance, lacks the heavy drumming, but the highly distorted bass tones do the job. Maybe not ‘metal’ in this instance, it still retains quite an edge. The bass feels like a pool of lava bubbling beneath you. There’s something very familiar sounding about this sort of bass with that snake-like melody on top, but I can’t quite put my finger on it–perhaps a coincidental similarity in a later game.

This was Naofumi Hataya’s first game score by the way, as far as I can tell. He joined Sega in 1990, and would go on to play a major role in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise up through the present day. If his future works were as good as this one, I have a lot to look forward to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77Gy0Y9vdqA

“Castle” is completely ridiculous, accenting a slow, foreboding song which meets all of the stereotype standards for a fantasy game with a crushing mechanical drum line that I’m pretty sure is trying to punch me in my face through my headphones.

Thank you for being awesome, Naofumi Hataya.

VGM Entry 47: Sim City

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 47: Sim City
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

I’d like to focus in depth for a moment on a soundtrack that you might not have expected to even make the cut. Sim City, composed by Soyo Oka, doesn’t get all that much praise. It’s fairly often forgotten, and almost always blown off as a mere solid effort. But I think it’s really quite a brilliant work of art–one of the Super Nintendo’s finest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QpFy8vVdPI

Soyo Oka got her start as a video game composer with Nintendo, working on five forgotten titles for the NES between 1988 and 1989 before graduating to the SNES and being tasked with three higher profile projects: Pilotwings in 1990, Sim City in 1991, and Super Mario Kart in 1992. For whatever reason her work load diminished a bit after that: she was charged with arranging Koji Kondo’s music for Super Mario All-Stars in 1993 and then stepped back to the NES to team up with Shinobu Amayake for the final licensed game to ever be released on the system, Wario’s Woods, in 1994. She departed from Nintendo in 1995.

It’s a shame that her career with them was so brief, because during this time her distinct, often jazzy style rose to be the second voice of Nintendo. You could always tell a Soyo Oka score from one of Koji Kondo’s despite their many similarities, and if Kondo was probably better, Oka nevertheless remains terribly under-appreciated today.

The concept of Sim City presents a bit of a musical challenge. Just how ought a city simulation in a modern setting sound? I think she completely nailed it, and I rather wish this compilation was better organized to show it. The menu music that starts at 0:45 here says it all. It’s a wonderfully visual work: the lazy trumpets and accompanying hum depict towering and stationary skyscrapers surrounded by that staccato higher pitch early morning hustle and bustle, with the rapid yet never rushing stop-and-go bass tying it all together.

Following the short Dr. Wright theme (which, I should point out, is substantially better than most of the “shopping” game tunes it resembles) we are treated (at 1:47) to the first of six population-themed songs which garudoh unfortunately fails to present chronologically. “Village” is your lowest population, and the tones she chooses are just perfect to distinguish it from a standard RPG small-town theme; it puts you in the same warm, safe place, but it still feels entirely modern, in an Earthbound sort of way.

Humor me and pause the video for a moment. The next track, “Growth”, starting at 2:33, is merely a brief interlude which really doesn’t belong here, but it’s a good opportunity to switch videos since what follows in garudoh’s is misplaced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hZG208APbA

“Town” is a beautiful and brilliant transition. The main melody of “Village” is retained, but instead of a lazy country town you now have a population on the move beginning to become acquainted with sophistication. The classical theme perfectly retains a feeling of a small world while giving you a sense of progress which “Village” lacks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVEDYdRrqJ4

“City” is perhaps the weakest link of the six, but you can definitely get a feeling for Oka’s intentions here. It’s a great deal faster and less stable than “Town”, but it still clings to a sense of something classical. The musical progression has reached a stage of uncertainty; a small community is on the brink of losing its identity and giving way to the future, but it has yet to make that final step. “City” is a track best appreciated in context, and I think what follows explains a lot about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JEnGbcm1TQ

“Capital” is definitely my favorite Soyo Oka song in any game. The opening segment is just stunning. Your population has finally taken the last step and acknowledged its collective existence. It brilliantly captures that adventurous and fleeting sensation of being an anonymous unit in a perfectly attuned machine, and it appropriately comes to an end far sooner than anyone would like, returning to the more private experience of “Village”, only now presented in a sort of dreamy, surreal state, conditioned by the memory of that brief sensation at the start of the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bspGsYtEZB4

“Metropolis” lays all dreams of harmony to rest. The lazy trumpets of the menu tune are back, but here the staccato overlay is harsh and synthy, the bass down to business. It’s a real city now, not some idealistic vision of one, and this machine’s only collective consciousness is apathy triumphant. Gameplay-wise you’re getting down to business too, and if that first residential block you ever built is getting in the way of the new sports stadium, it’s time to send out the eviction notices.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ba2Kf3NR7A

“Megalopolis” is an interesting track to end on. Fast paced and pleasant, you’ve got to love the machine to get this far. The fun is in striking the perfect balance now, not in micromanaging a paradise. But the song still slows down for a moment to reflect on your roots, and for all practical purposes it’s an end credits theme. There’s no winning. There’s just perpetual motion and memory. And so the track loops on and the game continues, but in some off sense you’ve reached the end.

Soyo Oka is one of the most underrated composers in the history of the business, and Sim City is her finest work.

VGM Entry 46: Konami in ’91

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 46: Konami in ’91
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

It was to be expected that Nobuo Uematsu and Koji Kondo would make magic on the Super Nintendo. Plenty of other composers did as well at an early stage. Konami in particular launched a number of impressive titles in 1991, and I think I’ll take a moment to showcase three of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjuSIUKdnjA

Super Castlevania IV was composed by Masanori Adachi and Taro Kudo, both of whom remain rather obscure figures in the game music industry. There was actually a false rumor going around that Masanori Adachi died during the 1994 Sega Mega-CD port of Snatcher. In a sort of ‘meet the staff’ easter egg (in which Adachi also participated), Kudo jokingly wrote “Rest in peace, Mr. Adachi!” Credits to his name are so few that this has been taken literally by many, but it would make his future compositions quite a miraculous feat.

Super Castlevania IV marks a major reconception of the series’ sound, which will not be completely apparent in these opening tracks. Skip ahead a bit, to “The Chandeliers” (4:29) and “Secret Room” (6:35) for instance, and you will get a much better feel for the degree of diversity introduced in Adachi and Kudo’s new vision. At times the game embraces its classical roots to the fullest. They take full advantage of the SNES’s capacity for authentic piano, organ, and string sounds to cut out all the rock filler, when the situation calls for it. The album still has plenty of contemporary drumming, but it doesn’t feel quite as rock driven as the NES games, much to its benefit in my opinion. Rock would still infuse plenty of new compositions, but the SNES allowed a lot more room for diversity. I think Adachi and Kudo accomplish the most when they go for the straight classical sound, as on “The Chandeliers”, but they make a commendable effort to explore a large variety of styles appropriate for different elements of gameplay.

The first three tracks in this mix are of course the classic series staples “Vampire Killer” (1:05), “Bloody Tears” (0:00), and “Beginning” (1:50), from Castlevanias I, II, and III respectively. It’s certainly nice to hear the old familiar songs in an improved medium, and they did a fairly good job with them (though I do think this version of “Bloody Tears” could use some work–they play it too safe with the main melody and drum track for the addition of the flute and heavier percussion at the end to accomplish its desired effect), but what I think is more significant is that these three songs don’t stand out as anything really above and beyond the rest of the score. On the Nintendo they were exceptional, and familiarity is definitely a plus, but I honestly like a lot of Adachi and Kudo’s original compositions just as much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HkyAiV4Kbc

If you’ve been keeping up with my posts, you should be thoroughly familiar with Ganbare Goemon by now. If you haven’t been, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. Six years and six sequels after the launch of the series, a Ganbare Goemon game finally made it to North America. The port, retitled The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, didn’t launch until 1992, but the Japanese Ganbare Goemon: Yukihime Kyuushutsu Emaki from which it derives came out in 1991. Though well in keeping with the traditions of the series, The Legend of the Mystical Ninja was something of a musical novelty for western gamers.

Its composers were somewhat obscure. I could find very little on either Kazuhiko Uehara or Harumi Ueko, and though Ueko continues to appear in soundtrack credits up to the present day (mostly under the peculiar alias Jimmy Weckl), Uehara seems to all but vanish after a brief career in the early 1990s. It’s a shame, if the two in collaboration were capable of producing this kind of quality. But Uehara may also be a Yoshihiro Sakaguchi type–a sound programmer confusingly credited with a few other artists’ original compositions. I’ve seen him specified as the programmer in certain liner notes, and it would also explain the occasional credit he receives for what was I believe Mutsuhiko Izumi’s Turtles in Time score. But again, I don’t know just how extensively sound programmers were involved in composition. So this might be the work of Harumi Ueko, or he and Uehara might both have played fairly equal roles.

The Legend of the Mystical Ninja presents an oriental score, as you can tell, and I think it does a delightful job of it. If it is reasonable to expect more out of a SNES title than improvements on the same old NES sounds, then perhaps a little more situational diversity was in order. The light-hearted and adventurous style can only capture so many moods. But what it does well–create a sense of light-hearted adventure–it does exceptionally well. It’s the hoaky town and shop themes that prevent The Legend of the Mystical Ninja from being a consistently excellent soundtrack. The music written for the field of combat is all spectacular.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-RTENXlwfw

0:36. That is where you’ll want to skip to if you can’t handle some classic 90s cheese. A year before it became known to most of us as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV, Konami released this game to the arcade under its SNES port’s subtitle, Turtles in Time. I was pretty shocked to find this, actually. Konami’s original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (that is, confusingly, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game on the NES) and X-Men were by far my two favorite arcade games as a kid. I had no idea Turtles in Time even existed as such. Anyway, Mutsuhiko Izumi did the hard-rocking soundtrack. The music is largely the same in both games, and while nostalgia leads me to favor the SNES version, the arcade original is probably just a slight bit better–but only slightly, and this is debatable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCLt8NcDWaA

For instance, if you skip to 3:38 in the arcade mix and 2:43 in the SNES version–“Bury My Shell At Wounded Knee” if memory serves me–you’ll find a major disparity between the drum tracks. Turtles in Times‘s percussion is essentially indistinguishable from a real drum set. Turtles IV can’t compete there, but it does its best to compensate with some pretty wild sound effects and a really bizzare distorted bass. These features throughout the game grant the SNES port a unique and immediately identifiable sound all of its own. In some cases this paid off to such an extent that the port sounds slightly better than the original. Such is, I think, the case for the Super Shredder fight music.

I am lead to believe that Kazuhiko Uehara or Harumi Ueko, the same names associated with The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, were responsible for Turtles in Time‘s SNES port, and if so 1991-1992 was a pretty successful period for the both of them. Turtles IV is an outstanding and fairly faithful adaptation, recreating the original sound where technology allows and inventively maintaining the spirit of the original where it does not.

I can’t say I’ve heard too many instances, at a time when port soundtracks were necessarily different, of an original game soundtrack and a port both being equally exceptional. It worked out this time, compliments of Mutsuhiko Izumi, Kazuhiko Uehara, and Harumi Ueko.

….

Oh yeah, that brief nightmare at the start of the arcade version sampler? That was from the Turtles’ 1990 “Coming Out of Their Shells” tour. What

the fuck?

VGM Entry 45: A Link to the Past

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 45: A Link to the Past
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

I never did find out why Koji Kondo did not score Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, but then, very little about that game made much sense in any department. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past got the series back on track both stylistically and musically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2KYrEI5JZY

Yet the music to A Link to the Past never much agreed with me as a kid (though I enjoyed it more than Super Mario World). It’s got a really dark side to it which I think often goes unrecognized, and which made it incredibly appropriate for the game. I mean, there is nothing warm and fuzzy about A Link to the Past. Monsters all over the place, guards out to kill you… The whole world’s got only one town in it and everyone there’s a crook or a witch or just all around unfriendly. Your only real companion is some chick’s voice in your head, and you don’t really ever get to interact with her along the way. In spirit, this was more some horror/nightmare game than a standard adventure/RPG. It made me really uncomfortable as a kid, and it should have. You know, half your companions might die or betray you in Final Fantasy IV, but at least you had them. As Link, you’re quite alone in the world.

I think Koji Kondo perpetuated the angst. You can divide the majority of the soundtrack into string and trumpet tracks and harp tracks. The latter are soothing, sure, but they mostly occur in little safe haven faerie pools. I’m sure glad Tinker Bell is on my side, but I don’t think I’ll be sheathing my sword any time soon. And the former, the former are spooky. Seriously. When you get the same tones on the Hyrule Castle theme (2:25) that you hear in the Forest (3:55) there’s got to be something up. Hyrule Castle is supposed to be protecting your realm, and sure, you’re an unwelcome guest, but the effect is to make the castle itself feel like it’s under some dark spell. You’re not just battling corrupt politicians here; there’s something evil pervading this whole world. Indeed, the forest ends up being one of the most comforting songs on the album, because the flute it least renders it merely mysterious and not obviously dangerous.

Kakariko Village (not sampled here), the only town in the game, uses slightly different tones, but they still have that sort of ghostly texture to them, and in consequence it feels no more comforting than that enchanted mysterious forest.

I think I can best describe my childhood Link to the Past experience as simultaneously captivating and unnerving. I don’t care to speculate what Koji Kondo had in mind when he composed it, but suffice to say I think its consistency with the gameplay is phenomenal.

VGM Entry 44: Final Fantasy IV

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 44: Final Fantasy IV
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Supposedly the sound team at Square was so overburdened when it came to scoring Final Fantasy IV that they occasionally camped out in sleeping bags at the office. Or so claim Nobuo’s rather zanny liner notes for the game’s official soundtrack, dated “April 13, 1991, 1:30 a.m. (in the office, naturally)”. Whatever the veracity of this, the end result was probably the best game soundtrack composed up to that time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8gOOTAWKY8

Nobuo Uematsu must have been waiting a long time for this. “Prelude” received its main melody to finally become the song we think of today. “Prologue” (Main Theme) got an epic introduction to overtake the recently revamped Dragon Quest theme. Hell, something approaching real orchestration was possible!

The process of adjusting to the Super Nintendo took a lot of time and energy, and it didn’t get any easier. Nobuo Uematsu has stated that Final Fantasy VI was his most challenging score, and one can imagine a perfectionist’s realization that Super Nintendo sound, though vastly superior to the Nintendo, was still sufficiently limited for the possibility of excruciatingly sampling every option. Perhaps that’s why Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI especially turned out so great; lacking the sense of unrestrained freedom of true orchestration, attention to detail was taken to painstaking extremes. Perhaps. I don’t know.

The track list for the sample above is:

“Prelude”(0:00)
“Prologue” (0:55)
“Red Wings” (1:35)
“Main Theme” (Overworld) (2:16)
“Into the Darkness” (3:00)
“Fight 1” (3:32)
“Mystic Mysidia” (4:31)
“The Airship” (5:20)
“The Big Whale” (5:50)
“Theme of Love” (6:27)
“Palom & Porom” (7:11)
“Chocobo-Chocobo” (7:38)
“Land of Dwarves” (8:12)
“Epilogue” (8:37)
“Fanfare” (9:24)

It’s something of a testament to how amazing Final Fantasy IV really is that garudoh’s ten minute sampler does not even include the vast majority of my personal favorites. And since I am at liberty to write these articles however the hell I want to, I present you with my top five Final Fantasy IV tracks, roughly in order:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6F1wYD5cSY
#5: Fabul

The music of Fabul could not possibly be better suited for its role in the game. Here you’ve got an isolated, well fortified castle guarded by monks, which are pretty much ninjas and way cooler than Edge anyway. And there’s nothing friendly about this town. It’s been a long, long time, but I recall never exactly feeling welcome there, and I certainly shouldn’t after all the trouble. “Fabul” isn’t just appropriately oriental, it’s also pretty grim. There’s a sense of foreboding about it which perfectly captures the events your arrival foretells.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cgSAU07n3U
#4: The Lunarians

“The Lunarians” was my favorite Final Fantasy IV track as a kid. I remember pounding away at it for hours on my mother’s piano, which must have been especially grating since I’ve never taken a piano lesson in my life. This isn’t some ‘light in the darkness’ track. The pretty melody is completely haunting, and that forcefully struck deep note is entirely complimentary to it. No, there’s no sort of contrast here. This song captures a beautiful and dangerous mystery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ-7Wk42aM0
#3: The boss battles

Yes I know I’m cheating. Final Fantasy IV is packed full of outstanding fight music. The final battle, featured above, is the most dramatic of the lot–as well it should be–but only barely. “The Fierce Battle” also does wonders for capturing a heightened sense of danger and urgency. Really, though the whole multiple tiers of combat music thing was probably done before, Final Fantasy IV has to be one of the first games to make effective use of it. “Fight 2“, the standard boss tune, emerges out of the same brief introduction as the basic combat theme (see garudoh’s mix) and steps the action up a notch with faster drumming, more pronounced bass, brass accents, and a more central role for the strings. “The Fierce Battle” goes farther still, allowing the brass to share center stage with the strings, except unlike in “Fight 1“, the brass melody lines here actually feel like the real deal. The track comes off as very orchestral to me, and intense in a way that just wasn’t possible prior to the SNES. “The Final Battle” mixes the best of each world and contributes a rock beat to top off the job.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hXovY9nFXo
#2: Troian Beauty

This appropriately titled song might just be a simple waltz helped along by harp arpeggios, but that’s precisely why it works. It’s just a beautiful song–a real stroke of genius from an artist of whom we expect such feats. It’s one of the most frequently covered Final Fantasy songs you’ll find (I even stumbled across a banjo rendition), as it translates well into nearly any arrangement. It’s one of my personal favorite songs to cover, using Kabukibear’s version. If you’re not familiar with his arrangements, this is a great place to start.

My favorite Final Fantasy IV song of all might be a little anticlimactic, as it’s featured in the garudoh compilation, but I hope you’ll give it some consideration before writing it off as a relatively generic song in relation to the tracks accompanying it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZkQPTuVBl0
#1: Red Wings

If I was ever to form a video game cover band, and I’ve been kicking around the idea since I was old enough to pick up a guitar, “Red Wings” would definitely be my top priority. Just imagine the possibilities for subtle intensification in this song. Sure, Uematsu’s version might only be a minute long, but I could see this building up into a ten minute marathon, starting out with that martial snare and climaxing with an Atsuo-intense drumset massacre, with room for all kinds of instrumental variation in between. Ok, maybe that’s my vision for the song and not the song itself, but I think Uematsu lays out a prototype for something truly epic here.

VGM Entry 43: ActRaiser

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 43: ActRaiser
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Three other SNES games I have yet to mention were relased in 1990. One was Gradius III, composed by the Konami Kukeiha Club (in this case Junichiro Kaneda, Seiichi Fukami, Miki Higashino, Keizo Nakamura, and Mutsuhiko Izumi) and originally released in the arcade in 1989. Another was Pilotwings, composed by Soyo Oka. The third was easily the most impressive soundtrack released in 1990.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHpBjmTXRnE

I have questioned Yuzo Koshiro’s judgement in the past, but I will do no such thing today. ActRaiser (Enix, 1990) decisively set the RPG and adventure gaming musical standard on the SNES. Funny that it wasn’t either. Through this weird and extraordinary amalgamation of side-scroll action and city simulation, Yuzo Koshiro crafted not only the first truly and unconditionally great Super Nintendo soundtrack, but the first gaming music I have encountered to feel like a real orchestration, and not merely the basis for one.

This was inevitable. The likes of Nobuo Uematsu and Koichi Sugiyama were crafting music that was clearly intended for orchestration in the early days of the Nintendo. Moreover, while arcade systems may have been capable of creating similarly orchestrated sounds, the extended gameplay associated with this sort of music just wouldn’t have been practical. That Yuzo Koshiro was the first to pull it off though, and to pull it off so well, comes as somewhat of a surprise to me. He was by no means new to this genre of music, but it never seemed to be his desired focus. As a musician who would end up best known for clubhouse-mixable material, the level of success he achieved within the symphonic spectrum on the SNES is remarkable, far exceeding both his PC-8801 material and all of my expectations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEb8BiZ6C9w

But then, ActRaiser was part side-scroller. There was room for action music of a more ‘single level’ sort than say, an RPG battle tune. On “Filmore”, or “Filmoa”, Koshiro got to let loose his more rocking nature. It’s actually remarkable that he managed to retain such an authentically classical vibe in the midst of it. Whatever light bulb went off on in his head, he managed to produce one of the Super Nintendo’s most famous pieces. “Filmore” deserves just about any amount of praise you can heap on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7c99aRckUg

Already within a month of the Super Nintendo’s Japanese launch, here was a musician utilizing the new technology to create essentially a fully orchestrated album. ActRaiser was recorded by a real symphony the following year, and while action tracks like “Filmore” sounded distinctly different, Yuzo Koshiro’s softer stuff was barely distinguishable from the original material. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the difference in quality is obvious, but the parts were already written. Little needed be added to convert the music into a live performance. On songs like “Sacrifices” you can plainly tell that Koshiro was himself making no distinction. There is no attempt to conform to limitations here. Koshiro did not need to alter his orchestral vision to suit a distinctly electronic sound. That was a concern of the past. On the SNES you could sound orchestral if you wanted to with no misgivings, or you could maintain older styles of video game composition and sound worlds above your predecessors, as in the case of say, Bombuzal. Many musicians would go on to effectively fuse both.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a2ENyUfo_8

There had been unconditionally excellent game soundtracks before outside of the C64. Hisayoshi Ogura and Tim Follin were the names attached to many of these, while I will continue to hold that Kenneth W. Arnold reigned supreme. Manami Matsumae, and moreso Takashi Tateishi, managed two rare ‘perfect’ NES compositions. But these were all such grand exceptions. The SNES would begin to pump out rivals at an alarming rate, and would continue to do so for its entire history. The system’s proximity to real instrumentation allowed musicians to do nearly anything they wanted with it.

I think maybe Commodore 64 music sounds so great because it is so distanced from any natural sounds that it feels like an entirely new genre of music, more on the cutting edge than outdated. Of the rest, arcade music was simply too much of a small niche market to really thrive, while the Nintendo’s sound was some wishy-wash in between. Musicians like Manami Matsumae and Takashi Tateishi managed to really embrace the chippy sound and give their music a fresh vibe, but most artists were stuck in that middle ground of being far, far distanced from real instrumentation and yet a bit too close to constitute anything else. Even the best efforts, like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, were only great by NES standards. Super Nintendo music, like Commodore 64 music, could be great in its own right, and much like the C64, the SNES would inspire a generation of competitive and creative musicians determined to leave their mark on the world.

VGM Entry 42: SNES

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 42: SNES
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Are we really there? I had naively intended to start this whole project off with a simple one to two post summary of video game music prior to 1990, then jump right away into the Super Nintendo. I suppose it didn’t quite work out that way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk57KiTlMlc

I don’t know much about technological specifications. I have no idea what made the SNES tick the way it did. But there had to be something inspirational to musicians in its design. The Super Famicom was launched in Japan on November 21, 1990. By the end of the year it had nine titles, and as far as I’m concerned only two of them lacked noteworthy soundtracks. That’s better than the Genesis/Mega Drive managed in its first two years. And of the two that fail to impress me, Final Fight (Capcom) was a port arrangement of the arcade original and Super Ultra Baseball (Culture Brain, Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 in the U.S.) was precisely what it sounds like–the sort of game only a Tim Follin would put serious energy into.

F-Zero (Nintendo)’s soundtrack, composed by Yumiko Kanki (Naoto Ishida also wrote two tracks for it), is not one of the best on the SNES. Top 50? Eh, probably. But it sounds unbelievably better than nearly anything before it. The system brought nearly arcade-quality music to the mass consumer market, but also to musicians accustomed to having to compensate for lack of quality with highly creative song-writing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUs7bFWmy14

So you got both. And you would continue to get both for the better part of a decade. Bombuzal (Image Works) was originally released for the Commodore 64, Amiga, and Atari ST in 1988. Its original version, composed by Ross Goodley as best I can tell, was pretty catchy in its own right. But the clarity of each tone on the Super Nintendo version (later released in North America as Kablooey), arranged, I believe, by Hiroyuki Masuno, gives the song a degree of fullness it could have never possessed before, even on the Amiga. And much like the Commodore 64/Amiga musicians of old, Hiroyuki Masuno was not afraid to improvise, incorporating his own melodies into the song and altering the rhythm and general vibe to suit his own whims. Hiroyuki Masuno’s revised Bombuzal theme is downright addicting.

SD The Great Battle (Banpresto) is a fun soundtrack to point out, both because you’ve almost certainly never heard it and because I think it really shows off how much better fairly generic scores could sound now. I mean, there is absolutely nothing special about what Norihiko Togashi did here. When the melodies are not a bit too overly repetative for their catchiness to be a virtue, they’re not particularly memorable at all. The only thing really to distinguish it from a standard to slightly above average NES soundtrack is the sound quality. But Norihiko Togashi makes excellent use of this. The accompaniment often pans and fades. The slap bass effectively fills in the percussion while still sounding like a real bass, and these never tastelessly overpower the melody as they’re so inclined to do on the Genesis/Mega Drive. It’s a completely forgettable little work which nevertheless surpasses a lot of the competition of its day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LLOEvhsgOg

Super Mario World by Koji Kondo obviously deserves mention, though I am not as fond of it as I perhaps ought to be. As a kid, I honestly found it kind of annoying, and I can understand why. Koji Kondo’s weird mix of Caribbean, Latin American, and African rhythms and instrumentation sound more like the sort of “world music” sampler cd you find at Starbucks than authentic ethnic music. (I find it funny that the PHD-waving ethnomusicologists I met in college placed the highest value in that sort of crap.) But this is Mario, not bad scholarship, so what he was borrowing for his compositions is really quite irrelevant. The end result is what matters, and the end result of most of these songs is pretty cheesy, whether you like it or not. It’s not until the ending credits (8:14) that Koji Kondo returns to the classic sound that so delights me in Super Mario Bros. 2. (That being said, Super Mario World‘s credits is one of my favorite Kondo songs ever.) This might have been the first game I ever personally owned–no more pretending the neighbor kid was my friend!–but it doesn’t hold much nostalgic value for me, and I think the music is somewhat to blame.

But enough with the negative criticism. Let’s not overlook the shear quantity of unique tracks in this game (well over 30 if we include some of the variations and shorter jingles). The “world music” gig is only a dominant fraction of a much larger collection. Such noteworthy tracks as “Forest of Illusion” (6:12), “Sub Castle”, “Koopa Junior”, “The Evil King Koopa”, and “Athletic” possess none of these nusences (as long as you stay away from Yoshi, which I never did, hence perhaps my youthful distaste). And had there ever been a game even remotely approaching Super Mario World‘s extent of gameplay relativity? Kondo’s own work on Super Mario Bros. 3 might come the closest, and it’s a long ways off. Super Mario World offered a ridiculous degree of diversity, with each zone and situation possessing a distinct and entirely appropriate sound. This might come to be the future norm for RPGs and adventure games, but we’re dealing with a simple side-scroller here.

Super Mario World was a grand showcase of the endless new possibilities made available by the Super Nintendo. It may lack some of the timeless classics of Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros 2, but only in proportion to its length. Its place in the history books of video game music is well deserved.

VGM Entry 41: Game Boy

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 41: Game Boy
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

I nearly forgot to address the Game Boy. Released in April 1989, by the end of 1990 it was already pushing 100 titles. Perhaps production was easy and inexpensive, I don’t know, but this was a system that shot off at lightning speed. In consideration of all of the great music chiptune artists are making on the Game Boy today, I made a diligent effort to listen to a good 80 or so of these early titles. I figured there had to be a ton of hidden gems out there, but there really weren’t.

It’s actually really surprising how completely ho-hum the vast, vast majority of early Game Boy soundtracks were. Even those you might expect to be leading the pack, Castlevania: The Adventure (Konami, 1989, Dracula Densetsu in Japan) and Super Mario Land (Nintendo, 1989) for instance, offered next to nothing worth noting. Those which did peak my interest were often quite obscure. Fist of the North Star: 10 Big Brawls for the King of Universe (Electro Brain Corp., 1990) for instance has no identifiable composer. I searched long and hard to no avail.

This game supposedly stunk, and perhaps the music was not held in very high regard because of this. I thought it was a pretty solid effort. The Game Boy’s bass tones are very full and encompasing, capable of giving a song a great deal of depth. Very few musicians actually put this to use, but whoever composed Fist of the North Star had an ear for it. The way the extended bass notes compliment the melody reminds me a lot of Ryuji Sasai’s approach on my favorite Game Boy soundtrack, which we’ll be getting to here in another year.

The title track to Battle Bull (SETA, 1990), composed by Takayuki Suzuki, strikes me for its ability to pack in such a big sound. It is stylistically exactly the sort of thing I set out to find. It’s a shame there seems to be only one song here, because Suzuki turns out to be one of the few Game Boy composers who really understood how to make the most of the system. In retrospect after looking a few years ahead, this is easily one of the best Game Boy songs I have ever heard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg48s-cZYK0

Square’s SaGa series became a nearly annual event following the first instalment, Makai Toushi SaGa, released for the Game Boy in December 1989. The first three were known in North America as the Final Fantasy Legend series–a title chosen in the hopes that familiarity would boost sales. I know the strategy worked for me. But the series did share at least one thing in common with Final Fantasy, at least initially. Nobuo Uematsu was commissioned to compose it. Despite what you might read, I am fairly confident that he composed Final Fantasy Legend in its entirety. At least, the liner notes displayed by vgmdb.net claim this. Final Fantasy Legend II, released the following December, was a joint effort, with Kenji Ito tackling about half of the tracks.

I am only going to present the original Final Fantasy Legend here out of consideration of space, but the sequel is about equal in quality and worth checking out. Nobuo Uematsu did an excellent job of carrying over his style onto the Game Boy, and a few tracks, like the introduction and the victory fanfare, would become series staples. The only noteworthy RPG series for the Game Boy to the best of my knowledge, the Final Fantasy Legends boasted a much larger song selection than most other Game Boy games at the time, and the consistant high quality really put to shame most of the competition.

Nobuo Uematsu and Kenji Ito really definitively proved that the dearth of good Game Boy music was a consequence of negligent composers, not system restraints. Uematsu was as new to the Game Boy as anyone else when he composed his first work for it, and, as you can plainly hear, that was a simple enough challenge to overcome. Much like the first three Final Fantasy soundtracks, the music of the first two SaGas did not so much conform to the system as force the system to conform as much as possible to a multi-platform vision of what an RPG ought to sound like. The music of Final Fantasy Legend you are hearing here certainly bears a distinctly Game Boy sound in so far as it was impossible not to, but the music neither capitalizes on the systems strengths nor succumbs to its difficulties. It really just sounds like Uematsu doing his thing in the early years.

Gargoyle’s Quest (Capcom, 1990) was pretty amazing. It was created by Harumi Fujita, the original arcade composer of Bionic Commando, and Yoko Shimomura, a new name to the business who you’ll be hearing plenty more of in the future. It is also a part of the Ghosts’n Goblins series, which you’ve heard pleanty of already.

Gargoyle’s Quest does everything right. The decision to abandon percussion altogether did wonders for enhancing the semi-classical melodies. The songs are consistantly well-written, and the melodies are often permitted to run wild, with no stagnation and no breaks in the actual presence of sound. The Game Boy had by far the most beautiful tones of the chippier-sounding systems–that is, pre-SNES/Genesis/Amiga–and they always seem to ring out to their fullest in states of perpetual transition. I don’t know, maybe I’m superimposing what worked best for Gargoyle’s Quest onto what worked best for the Game Boy in general, but it seems like this is the sort of system where you can never have too many notes.

But if that’s stretching matters, I would at least say that the Game Boy is a system on which boldness almost always profits. It’s a shame that Tim Follin didn’t, to the best of my knowledge, write any Game Boy music. But anyway, Gargoyle’s Quest, one of the best soundtracks the system would ever know, was certainly not lacking in it. I might never be able to really put my finger on the features that so strongly attract me to this system, but you’re hearing a lot of them right now. You can hear the soundtrack in its entirety here, once again compliments of explod2A03.

Funny that, for all I just said, my favorite Game Boy soundtrack of this 1989-1990 period is soft and simple Yakuman (Nintendo, 1989), a mahjong game composed by Hirokazu Tanaka and only released in Japan. A frequently occurring figure in my articles, Tanaka’s game audio history goes all the way back to monotone bleeps in the 1970s. His role as a major composer would rapidly fade after 1990, but he was partly responsible for such esteemed works as Metroid, Mother, Earthbound, Dr. Mario, and the Nintendo ports of Tetris. He also composed Super Mario Land for the Game Boy, which I find quite dull. Go figure.

Well, that wraps up my thoughts on the first two years of the Game Boy. Honorable mention goes to Maru’s Mission (Jaleco, 1990, composer again unknown) and Burai Fighter Deluxe (Taxan, 1990/1991), composed by Nobuyuki Shioda. And really I was a bit harsh on Castlevania: The Adventure. I don’t care for it, but it’s not bad.

VGM Entry 40: End of the NES era (part 2)

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 40: End of the NES era (part 2)
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Once again, by 1990 the Nintendo had fallen way behind the times. The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, the Commodore Amiga 500, and the NEC PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 had all left it in the dust. The fourth generation of home and computer gaming was in full swing, and Nintendo were not prepared to launch their version until November. NES composers struggled to keep up with higher standards in the meantime, pushing the Nintendo to its limits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCL2lMUP_U4

Mega Man 3 (Capcom, 1990) had a lot to offer. Yasuaki ‘Bun Bun’ Fujita (not to be confused with my favorite talking rabbit) picked up the job this time, and it’s pretty amazing that three different musicians could all so effectively maintain the series’ quintessential sound. Mega Man 3‘s opening theme is as excellent as any of them, and the rest of the music really is a good bit more compositionally consistent than may meet the ear.

“Hard Man” (1:52) for instance is written in unmistakable Mega Man fashion. The only reason it doesn’t sound entirely up to par is a product of bad mixing at the final stage. Every take I’ve heard of it just sounds a bit washed out. The volumes of each track don’t feel properly balanced, and they could perhaps have chosen fuller percussion. But the fundamental song-writing is ideal, and I think if you put it in the hands of say, Bit Brigade, it would shine as brightly as any track from the first two games. Whatever flaws it may have are only visible if you seek them out.

While I think this minor mixing problem persists throughout the game, the next track in this collection, “Snake Man” (2:45), is just so well written that any potential flaw in the final production is masked entirely. Mega Man 3 does have some less memorable tracks; it’s not quite as consistent as the first two games in that regard. You won’t hear them in this mix. garudoh did yet another excellent job of choosing only the best, and “Spark Man” (3:42), “Get Your Weapons Ready” (4:40), and “Proto Man” (5:18) finish off a very well-conceived compilation. But the likes of “Gemini Man” and “Magnet Man”, not featured here, leave something to be desired. Mega Man 3 is not quite as good as the first two, but Yasuaki Fujita definitely finds and maintains the Mega Man sound throughout, and by any other standard this is an excellent NES soundtrack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hGWMeazlhg

The best NES music of 1990 though, as you may have guessed from my previous hints, belongs to Tim Follin. Follin carried his capacity to pack a huge punch into limited sound systems over to the NES, and the introduction to Solstice (CSG Imagesoft, 1990, produced by Software Creations) is not afraid to employ a little shock value. I’m not sure why the music in this sample is out of order, but you can hear how the game kicks off if you skip to 3:37. The cute little 10 second jingle at the start is almost tongue-in-cheek, mocking typical NES songs before exploding into musical fireworks in bombastic Follin fashion. The majority of the album feels to have benefited heavily from his recent work on Ghouls’n Ghosts. No individual tracks really stand out with the memorable qualities of that previous work, but you can definitely appreciate the level of imagination that went into the whole soundtrack. Follin had more up his sleeves for the NES anyway. He reserved his best efforts for a game which we would all expect to have an outstanding soundtrack….. Pictionary?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bWV2kC8ZG4

I don’t know. Tim Follin’s music was seldom relevant to the game. I suppose it’s quite possible that he submitted this soundtrack to Software Creations without even knowing what game it would be used for. But I picture a giddy Follin setting out to intentionally make Pictionary (LJN, 1990) one of the most exciting and absurdly uncharacteristic soundtracks on the NES, laughing all the way.

That’s about all I have to offer from the Nintendo for the time being, but it’s worth taking a brief look at some other systems before we move on. I don’t want to say the pickings were slim outside of the Nintendo–that would certainly contradict my entire point in these past two posts–but I did struggle to find much of interest in 1990 specifically. The PC Engine is quite obscure to me as a western gamer, and many of the Amiga titles that best caught my eye date to 1988 and 1989. The Genesis/Mega Drive was still a musical disappointment in so far as it rarely lived up to its full potential. Elemental Master (TechnoSoft) by Toshiharu Yamanishi deserves an honorable mention, but its music is nothing special really. I think the system just lacked much competition to spur it on. With the Amiga appealing to European computer gamers and the PC Engine pushing the Japanese market, the Genesis/Master System for a time stood alone in a number of markets as the only available fourth generation home gaming console. Phantasy Star III (Sega) saw Izuho Takeuchi take over Tokuhiko Uwabo’s role as composer, and the transition brought a whole new style of sound to the game. I would describe it as unremarkable but more consistent–where Tokuhiko Uwabo presented a rather unique RPG soundtrack that was fairly hit or miss, Izuho Takeuchi is a little more traditional and at no point that I’ve noticed really falls flat. But his music is nothing to brag about either.

Before I move on to the Super Nintendo, one final 1990 release that really caught my attention was Iron Lord (Ubi Soft). Now, this version that you’re hearing above is the original 1989 Atari ST version. I want you to hear it first, because I want you to know what Jeroen Tel had to work with when he made the Commodore 64 and Amiga ports.

I don’t know who the original Atari ST composer was. I don’t know who was responsible for the MS-DOS version either. But I bet it wasn’t Jeroen Tel. C64 composers had a certain attitude about them. They knew they were the best, and they were going to keep on proving it every chance they could get. And let’s not forget here; the Commodore 64 was a year older than the Nintendo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ovo9BsBSFM

Hence why Jeroen Tel’s Iron Lord could introduce a power metal song. The effects of layering a medieval tune with big chippy bass and that same higher spacey tone he used on Cybernoid 2 are almost comical, but they’re entirely effective. Like a typical C64 musician, Tel expanded way beyond the scope of the original composition and made it entirely his own.

VGM Entry 39: End of the NES era (part 1)

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 39: End of the NES era (part 1)
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Games would continue to be made for the NES long after the release of the Super Nintendo, but its glory days had come and gone. Already by 1990, the system was starting to sound a little stale, and even the most impressive compositions faced an enormous burden in keeping pace with video game music at large on a hopelessly outdated system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhZwE1IPqkw

Koichi Sugiyama certainly didn’t produce much of interest. The improved rendition of the main theme aside, Dragon Quest IV (Enix, 1990) was not a particularly memorable soundtrack. It has no faults per se. It certainly had nothing approaching the annoyance of the original Dragon Quest‘s combat theme. But no amount of listening to the tracks beyond the main theme here has revealed the slightest hint of anything special. It’s a soundtrack secure in its simplicity. The music is wholly appropriate for an RPG, never clashing with the style of gameplay, but it also adds nothing to the experience save pleasant background music. I’ve heard plenty worse by RPG composers with much more diverse sound systems to work with, but it definitely feels to me as though this one stands out more for the fact that “Dragon Quest” and “Koichi Sugiyama” are attached to it than for its own worth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksme4TBFmMg

Final Fantasy III (Square, 1990) was a somewhat different situation. It’s got a lot more emotion to it, and frankly it might constitute Nobuo Uematsu’s finest compositions on the NES, but in the context of its place in time it can be pretty hard to appreciate. Here’s a track list for the video:

(0:00) Prelude
(0:56) Crystal Cave
(1:54) Jinn the Fire
(2:43) Chocobo Theme
(3:20) The Invincible
(4:11) Battle
(5:06) Last Battle
(5:59) The Boundless Ocean
(6:59) Fanfare

Nobuo Uematsu definitely climaxed as a specifically NES composer on Final Fantasy III. “Battle” and “Last Battle” express a full appreciation for the NES as an instrument, and the rapid-fire accompaniments in both, but especially the latter, are some of the most powerful on the system. The SID-like sound on “Crystal Cave” and “Last Battle” adds a new dimension to the songs which would have been unthinkable for Uematsu a mere three years prior, while “The Invincible” is a practically perfect arrangement. If Final Fantasy might best be defined as lovely compositions poorly arranged, Final Fantasy III was definitely the full package.

The problem, and the reason it took me setting the game aside and coming back to it weeks later to be able to really appreciate it, is that this was 1990. Amidst the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, the Commodore Amiga 500, and the NEC PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16, the NES just sounded terrible; it was no longer novel and it was way behind the times. Nintendo’s lengthy development paid off, as things turned out, but a lot of early 1990 releases better suited for the SNES suffered from the delay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1l4ourOqtY

Resting somewhere between these two in quality was Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (Konami, 1989). I have seen no less than five musicians credited with the composition. Hashing out who all among Hidenori Maezawa, Kenichi Matsubara (Castlevania II), Yoshinori Sasaki, Jun Funahashi, and Yukie Morimoto were really responsible for the music might be a fun task, but I only have the time for so many such projects. For whatever it’s worth, Hidenori Maezawa, Jun Funahashi and Yukie Morimoto are the three most frequently credited names. Consisting of a long list of virtual unknowns, this is one of those scores for which “Konami Kukeiha Club” might be the most appropriate accreditation.

One thing that strikes me as interesting here is how the drums and bass feel like they’ve borrowed from Batman (Sunsoft, 1989) by Nobuyuki Hara and Naoki Kodaka, especially considering I felt Hara an Kodaka themselves might have been inspired in part by the Castlevania series before I ever heard Castlevania III specifically. This connection, or at least the possibility of Batman‘s drum and bass influencing Castlevania III, is virtually impossible. As it turns out both games were actually released on the exact same day: December 22, 1989. (I had originally thought Castlevania III was released in 1990, hence my placing it in this post, but it’s close enough.)

The game has some pretty impressive original tracks, especially “Beginning” (0:00) and “Mad Forest” (1:10), not to mention a new rendition of “Vampire Killer” (5:49). The overall sound is a lot less classical and a lot more peppy than previous Castlevania titles, though I think that can be forgiven in light of the good, consistent job they did with it. Again, the soundtrack only took a while to grow on me due to its historical context. It was most certainly technologically behind the times, but there wasn’t much the Konami sound team could do about that.