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Other Game Music

I came across a piece from Killer Instinct that impressed me enough to seek out the rest of the soundtrack. Without knowing anything about the game itself, I recognized the intention of capturing different cultural styles within the general genre. This is accomplished with strong melodies and surprisingly complex progression for full-length performance. It wasn't until I'd listened to most of the soundtrack that I noticed Mick Gordon as composer; I haven't had much experience with him in the past, but this alone helped reaffirm to me his reputation.

That being said, a lot of these pieces have lyrics, and as is my custom I sought out their translations when necessary. I can't say I'm comfortable with a lot of what I found, to the point that this feature was put off for quite awhile. Nonetheless, I believe the musical expertise is worth highlighting; just remember that, as with all such things, music carries with it a communicative aspect, implicit or otherwise, and it is wise to exercise prudence in what one engages with.


 
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I don't usually listen to SilvaGunner mashups, but this popped up on my recommended, and I was intrigued enough to check it out. I was pleasantly surprised to find a quality collab project with a well-executed gimmick; ultimately unique enough to have its own feature. The video speaks for itself, so I'll leave it at that.
 
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This week I decided to finally cover the iconic OST of DuchTales for the NES. Few have not heard something about this legendary soundtrack, which in many ways serves as a standard for what 8-bit music can be. While not pushing the technology like the work of Tim Follin, it nonetheless features complex melody interwoven with its accompaniment in such a way as to "fill" the channels, resulting in tracks that remain impressive to this day.

Some may disagree with me, but as far as I'm concerned the highlight is, and always will be, Moon Theme. The intro and build-up is perfectly suited to the medium, the melody is beautifully transmitted, and every channel is balanced between each other to craft the perfect 8-bit arrangement. It is one of the only classical chiptune pieces I've never heard a remix for that seemed to me an "improvement," simply because the original does so well at accomplishing its goal.



 
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Cutting it close, but in case it wasn't obvious from the missed Saturday post, time is of limited availability at the moment.

Perhaps this follow-up to last week was predictable, but that does not make it less relevant. DuckTales: Remastered was the perfect example of a passion project; everything came together so as to revitalize and improve upon the original elements, resulting in a product that does everything it needs to. For me, the most important aspect is obviously the music. The original soundtrack received a complete recovering, featuring full instrumentation and expanded arrangement which did justice to the best and helped justify the lesser. There's also an element of leitmotif added to the collection, though it seems mostly for nostalgia's sake than for anything relevant to the game's progression (I could be wrong on that, though).




However, the devs did not stop at remastering the old music. New original compositions were also added in, mainly for what I presume to be cutscenes by their cinematic progression. Potentially there were new levels as well, and music was composed for these. The quality of these pieces is well on par with the rest of the album, fitting seamlessly in and elevating the project as a whole.


 
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Early on in my developing hobby of VGM, I would seek out recommendations for soundtracks with noteworthy reputation independent of the associated game. A few titles stood out for repeated features, giving me the impression of a general consensus concerning their quality and reputation. Many of these titles formed the basis of my expectations thereafter, even when they didn't strongly appeal to me. One of these was FTL: Faster Than Light.

FTL is a difficult soundtrack to feature. It's an impressive production with exemplary style and tone, but features an interesting gimmick that splits the album in two. For each theme, there are two versions: "explore," which is meant to be the calmer base, and "battle," a more upbeat take on the same piece. In some cases, the difference is not extreme, merely including an extra percussion layer to the base piece. With many tracks, however, the battle tracks function as unique arrangements, sometimes feature entire motifs not present in the alternate version. A proper appreciation for this requires listening to both versions of each track, which I considered too much for the feature. So instead, I was left to decide between each version of each track set forth, with the failsafe of some brief explanation for each.
Though not one of my favorite pieces, Mantis (Explore) is a good example of the overall tone in the explore tracks; atmospheric, light but active melody, limited layering, etc..


Deepspace (Explore), interestingly, is possibly the most ambient piece in the soundtrack. For this reason, its battle counterpart is particularly fascinating, essentially expounding upon a pattern of background noise into a properly progressing track.


Cosmos is one of the more divergent pieces, with both version having their own unique characteristics that don't necessarily coordinate with each other. The battle version is especially unique in its progression, both compared to its counterpart and to the rest of the soundtrack.


There isn't anything particularly important about MilkyWay, aside from having a strong motif which serves to characterize the soundtrack's personality, which can be unique to the tone. Both versions are fairly similar, but I slightly prefer the explore version's progression.
 
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@Ken Hisuag The links to the ost of "Ducktales: Remastered" that you want to share are no longer available. Could you replace the links for those who might be interested in the music (like me), please?

 
A couple years ago, I played a bunch of games, mainly fighting games through Fightcade and one of them was the King of Fighters series. I played KOF 98 the most because that's where there are more players to play online with. I sucked at KOF 98, so I went to Youtube to watch some guides to get better, but when I was watching it, I noticed the background music sounds pretty cool! So I went to the description and a little more research to find the music. It turns out to be the Ost from KOF 2000. The music in that game is a bop. Here are a couple of my favorites:


Spoiler




 
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@Jaz:3 The videos are still available for me, so I suspect its a regional limitation. Your best bet would be to look up the soundtrack on your own, since anything I find would have to be tested against your private location. That being said, here is a different playlist than the one I used: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvNp0Boas721k5FYiicCFoifRvtDpAEx_

The tracks featured were Boss Battle ("Boss Theme"), Scrooge's Office, Transylvania, I've Got a Bad Feeling About This ("Ominous"), Money Bin, and Mount Vesuvius. Sorry I can't be of more help.

 
this isnt necessarily *from* a game afaik but it is in one (vampire the masquerade bloodlines) (i've yet to play it myself but seems cool and i would like to) 




 
I was on vacation last week; normally that wouldn't prevent me from doing features, but reception was unusually poor, making access to these threads impossible.

Expectations can significantly impact one's experiences in strangely inverse ways; poor expectations can result in better impressions, and high expectations may lead to disappointment (I refer specifically to situations where expectations are subverted). I believe I started into the soundtrack of VA-11 HALL-A with slightly higher expectations then I should have; I knew the album sold well, although I hadn't heard much reference to it beyond that. What I got was a good selection of synthwave pieces, with a fair variety of moods in a fairly stable energy level. "Fair" is the best word I can think of; I found nothing extraordinary about the collection, but I also accepted that it didn't need to be extraordinary. It is pleasant to listen to, and despite the relatively large number of tracks, stays fresh and doesn't stagnate.



 
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It's time for another feature series. This month I'll be looking into the Pokemon franchise; even though I've covered a couple of the more recent titles before, I've not really heard any of the older soundtracks that set their reputation. As usual, I'm not even sure yet which titles are the best to go to for the best exposure, but hopefully I'll figure it out as I go.

The first one is easy, though. Pokemon Red & Blue (and Yellow (and apparently Green?)) was the game to launch the franchise. As a GameBoy title, its music is the 8-bit chiptune that defined the earliest days of VGM. The music was initially composed on different hardware, and converted over afterwards; I'm not sure whether this had any effect on the arrangements. The composer, Junichi Masuda, utilized a surprising degree of baroque style into the music, especially in the calmer tracks. I appreciated this; baroque seems to be especially well suited to 8-bit limitations.
Let's get these two tracks out of the way; anyone who knows anything about this soundtrack knew they'd have to be here.


That being done, here are my choices for the coverage of this soundtrack.



 
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Next up is Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire (and Emerald, kinda). While not a SNES title, I note a similarity in the soundfonts utilized, in that they appear to simulate real instruments without fully accomplishing the recreation. I'm not usually a fan of this style, and this didn't change that, but there does seem to be a balance of more self-aware arrangements that utilize the sounds more freely, and I appreciated these more. The tracks are extremely short, meaning even the longer ones tend to lack variety in progression, but they accomplish their jobs well enough, and are dynamic enough to remain appealing after multiple loops.



 
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I got sick last week, and was unable to accomplish the necessary prerequisites for a feature (mainly, listening to the soundtrack in question). Rather unfortunate for this to occur in the middle of a series, but there's not much I can do about it now.

We're finishing up the month with Pokemon Black & White, a title I've often heard about but never had direct acknowledged contact with. I was surprised at the number of tracks I recognized from other sources, such as memes and Youtube bgms; this made the music seem overall more familiar to me than it technically was.



Since the second "generation," it has been fairly standard for the music to be composed by a team, with each individual often given responsibility for specific types of tracks. This seemed especially noteworthy to me for this collection. Most tracks were composed by either Shota Kageyama or Go Ichinose. The former has a more standard progression style, but with a tendency to experiment with jazz in the melodies. His tracks consistently impressed me, standing out from the rest of the album.




Ichinose, on the other hand, has a unique harmonization style that lends itself to tension in his music. Most of the game's combat music was composed by him, making his style that of the game's more tense moments. However, he is also able to apply this style in less high-energy pieces, contrasting against Kageyama's to give the game a more varied musical character.




While there were other composers involved, I didn't notice significant divergences of style from them compared to these first two. This is not to say their compositions were not noteworthy contributions, but I only managed to fit one into this feature.
 
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Deceive Inc., which I did a feature for earlier in the year, finally received an official soundtrack release. Quite a few tracks I was previously unfamiliar with became available, and the various "phases" of the level themes were compiled into single tracks. Given the circumstances, I've decided to feature the soundtrack again, as a contrast to the unofficial recreations initially available.
This first track is ten minutes long, and I'm not entirely sure why. The nature of the piece makes it difficult for me to determine where the loop point is, but while the track fades out properly, ten minutes exactly seems a bit suspicious. Regardless, this is the equivalent of the earlier feature's Extraction Phase 1, and I would recommend comparing the two for a proper comprehension.


My personal favorite: the perfect unusual elevator music.


A more happy piece; I'm not sure what it's used for, but it stands out from the Operation tracks. Abrupt ending, though.


Finally, one of the main level themes. I would again recommend comparing an official track to its separated segments as featured previously, as doing so gives an appreciation for the intricacies of the arrangement.
 
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Since the completion of the Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove collection, there have been a couple spin-off titles for the series focusing on expanding the franchise into other styles and genres. Thus far, the one that's interested me most has been Shovel Knight Dig, which features a similar musical style to the original game with a different kind of chiptune.





My one significant complaint with Shovel Knight's soundtrack has always been its methodology concerning boss battle themes; Kaufman would usually arrange the motifs of the stage theme into a more chaotic progression lacking resolution. While this successfully simulates the necessary tension the situation calls for, it often doesn't make for the most engaging casual listen. Ultimately it's a personal preference, but I'd appreciate some more climactic or character-themed tracks from this series; either way, the rest of the music makes up for it more often then not.
 
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I have a lot to say about Sea of Stars. I've been anticipating its release for a few years now; between Eric W. Brown of The Messenger and Yasunori Mitsuda of Chrono Trigger, I had ever reason to expect an amazing soundtrack. A few tracks were released around the initial announcement, and their quality reaffirmed my hopes. Thus commenced the long wait, culminating in the release two months ago.

Unfortunately for me, the soundtrack released as a Steam exclusive. While I've bought soundtracks through Steam before, they're usually lacking proper metadata, making them a pain to organize; I also appreciate being able to listen to my purchases through streaming, which Steam does not offer. I decided to put off buying the OST in hopes of it being published through other services, and instead listen through it on Youtube. This turned out to be rather difficult; the soundtrack is large, there has not been an official posting yet, and Youtube isn't really designed for the kind of listening I like to do.

I initially intended to feature this last week, but had not managed to "finish" it by that time. At this point, I believe it's going to take me a while to feel satisfied with my own comprehension of the collection, and I want to be able to do so at my own leisure, without having to think about what I'm including in a feature. I do, however, believe I've grasped enough to recommend and provide example tracks for the soundtrack.

As The Messenger was meant to be reminiscent of Ninja Gaiden, Sea of Stars is very strongly inspired (if that is the right word) by Chrono Trigger, both in gameplay and music. Melodies are less punchy, though no less strong, and a greater range of tones and moods are covered across the collective. Main area themes (I assume) have "day" and "night" variations, though of yet I haven't recognized a specific gimmick that consistently distinguishes them from each other. Motifs from the first game also make an appearance in altered form, though I personally think some aren't altered enough, clashing in style from the rest of the soundtrack (Frozen Peak especially). Finally, there are also bardcore versions of several songs, identified as "pirate versions." Altogether, this is a much fuller and more balanced soundtrack then I had expected (especially with Mitsuda's contributions), for which I'm ultimately glad. There is still, however, just enough of The Messenger's style left to reinforce what I loved about it; as of now, I'm more than satisfied.





 
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