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These are the soundtracks that helped shape and define what we hear in the video games that we play. I am Nitro, and this is the M Disk Playlist's Video Game Music Primer: 1997.
Final Fantasy VII (Sony PlayStation), composed by Nobuo Uematsu
Final Fantasy VII was nothing short of a revolution for the role playing game genre. After its release, the target audience for RPG’s grew significantly, the number of units sold in the Final Fantasy series shot up, and the Playstation saw an increase in sales outside of Japan due to this game alone.
Unlike previous Final Fantasy games, Nobuo Uematsu composed the entire soundtrack for this game in less than a year. And although the PlayStation presented Uematsu with the opportunity to produce music that could never be done on any Nintendo system at the time, he chose to use MIDI sounds vis the PlayStation’s internal chip. The development team supported this decision, as the sacrificed sound quality enabled the rest of the game to be read a lot quicker when played.
Uematsu started experimenting with multiple styles of music with the soundtrack to Final Fantasy VI. With 7’s much grittier, and more science fiction setting, he gained the opportunity to create a soundtrack that was more distinguishable than anything Uematsu had composed up until that point. The music was composed and revised as he read the script of the entire game. He composed the game using only the piano, and the guitar at his disposal.
It would take an entire primer episode to highlight all of the more significant pieces of the entire score, because that’s exactly how much effort went into enhancing the experience of playing this game through the music. But when highlighting a soundtrack like this, two pieces need to be highlighted.
Aerith’s theme: Aerith is the first character you see when you start the game. She becomes an important part in Cloud’s party….at least in the first of three discs. At the end of disc one, Aerith is suddenly killed off by main antagonist Sephiroth. After her shocking death, this piece plays, and it continues to play even throughout the battle against JENOVA. After the fight, the music still continues until the final scene of Cloud burying Aerith in the water. The music playing immediately after her death, during a boss battle, and the send off all at once further amplifies the emotional impact her death had on not just her allies, but you, the player.
And finally, Uematsu’s favorite contribution to the soundtrack, One-Winged Angel, the final battle theme for the entire game. Taking inspiration from classic composer Igor Stravinsky, film composer Bernard Herrmann, and legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix, Uematsu composed a battle theme unlike any he had ever composed before. Although the entire soundtrack used MIDIs, this piece for the first time in the Final Fantasy franchise, uses recorded vocals. For this piece, he came up with as many movements as he could to fit the theme of impending doom, and pieced it all together. He did this so that no one would draw comparisons to any of his previous battle themes for the series. One-Winged Angel would wind up becoming arguably Uematsu’s most recognizable contribution to the Final Fantasy series, and would become Uematsu’s favorite battle theme composed for the series.
Not enough could be said about the Final Fantasy VII music in a short amount of time. Although the sound quality was limited, considering the console the game was developed for, it was still just as impactful to the series as the game itself was. Moments amplified, characters defined, scenarios developed, all with music, MIDIs and all.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Sony PlayStation), composed by Michiru Yamane, and Tomoko Sano
Great music, and Castlevania already went well together with memorable soundtracks from earlier titles in the franchise from multiple composers. With the release of Symphony of the Night, Michiru Yamane would take the music of the Castlevania franchise to a whole ‘nother level.
Yamane wasn’t a newcomer. She had been composing for Konami games for nearly ten years up at that point, which includes the Sega Genesis Castlevania game, Bloodlines. With the PlayStation hardware, Yamane was able to give the series the kind of music that best suited her background. While studying music in college, Yamane wrote a thesis on Johann Sebastian Bach. She described her music as classic, yet dark. A very fitting description for the aesthetics of the Castlevania franchise, don’t you think? Yamane also found inspiration from the art of Ayami Kojima, who started character designing for the Castlevania series with this game.
The soundtrack wasn’t entirely composed by Yamane, however. Dance of Illusions, the piece played during the battle against Dracula in the prologue, was composed by Tomoko Sano. It’s the same piece that plays during the final battle in Rondo of Blood, which Symphony of the Night is a direct sequel of. Blood Relations, the battle theme for Richter Belmont, is an arrangement from Yamane of Akiropito’s Divine Bloodlines, again from Rondo of Blood. Rika Muranaka, Tony Hayes, and Jeff Lorber composed the vocal ending theme, I Am The Wind. The song is performed by Cynthia Harrell, who would eventually go on to perform arguably the most popular vocal track from the Metal Gear series, Snake Eater, which would also be composed by Rika Muranaka.
Nocturne is another vocal theme you hear in the Japanese version of the game, as a sort of easter egg when Alucard is sitting idle in a chair with the fairy familiar equipped. This theme is performed by Hekiru Shiina. In the PSP version of this game translated for the compilation title, Dracula X Chronicles, this song received an English adaptation performed by voice actress Wendee Lee.
Also exclusive to Japan was a version of Symphony of the Night released for the Sega Saturn. It did contain extra content not included in the PlayStation version, but it was also panned for its long loading times and transparency issues. Among the extra content are arrangements of the three main Castlevania motifs; Vampire Killer, Bloodlines, and Beginning.
The PlayStation version also has an exclusive piece in the soundtrack. If you put the disc for Symphony of the Night in a CD player, you get this piece. What you heard was an introduction from Alucard’s voice actor, Robert Belgrade, followed by an arrangement of the Dracula Castle theme.
Michiru Yamane became the one composer most commonly associated with the Castlevania franchise with Symphony of the Night. Symphony of the Night raised the standard for how Castlevania games were presented. From the gameplay to the music, everything about Symphony of the Night was an innovation for the franchise.
Final Fantasy Tactics (Sony Playstation), composed by Hitoshi Sakamoto and Masaharu Iwata
A spin-off of the Final Fantasy franchise from director Yasumi Matsuno, who up until Final Fantasy Tactics was known for the Ogre series, with arguably his greatest contribution being Tactics Ogre. He joined Square, and worked on the game that would combine what he made for Tactics Ogre with the Final Fantasy series. His intention was to make a Tactics game that was more streamlined and accessible when compared to the multi-story driven, more complex Tactics Ogre.
Joining him are the two composers who helped enhances his games, HItoshi Sakamoto and Masaharu Iwata. Unlike Nobuo Uematsu’s score for Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy Tactics uses more realistic sounding instrument samples. A large portion of the soundtrack is more dramatic, grand, and intense than any of the scores for main entry Final Fantasy titles. According to Matsuno in an interview with Famicom Tsuushin translated by shmuplations, this was done because Sakamoto and Iwata’s music were usually more energetic, upbeat, and exciting. With a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, where you were fighting other humans for nearly the entire game in a war-driven world, the music had to be more dramatic.
Sakamoto composed 47 of the pieces for the game, while Iwata composed the other 24. Neither composer worked on an individual piece together. Each piece they composed was done individually. Since 1988, they have worked together on roughly a dozen games. Two of them including games in the Ogre franchise. The two would continue to work on the same games, leading up to the founding of one of the largest Japanese indie game music companies, Basiscape.
With its dramatic presentation, memorable cast ensemble, and higher quality music than what was usually heard in a Final Fantasy game up at that point, Final Fantasy Tactics became the definitive spin-off for the Final Fantasy franchise. It introduced many gamers to the music talents of Sakamoto, and Iwata. But little do they know that this wouldn’t be the last time they would play a game featuring the two talents, and their ability to create dramatic music.
Mischief Makers (Nintendo 64), composed by Norio Hanazawa
It seemed like with the release of the Nintendo 64, Sony Playstation, and the Sega Saturn, there would be no room for 2D games. Treasure, the company behind Sega’s most memorable action platformers like Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Heady, and Alien Soldier jumped ship to Nintendo to create an action platformer that looked like an at-the-time current generation game, but felt like the kind of games that helped popularize Treasure.
Hanazawa is an integral part of Treasure, as the company’s primary, and sometimes only composer for their games. Before joining Treasure, he was a composer for Konami, working on titles like the Simpsons and Bucky O’Hare arcade games, and Castlevania: The Adventure for the game boy.
Like their games, Hanazawa’s music hardly ever crosses into dramatic territory. The music style used to enhance the action is fun, almost pop-driven in its nature. The times where the music does cross into more intense territory are the major boss battles.
There is little information on the background on Hanazawa himself. Most of the information found as of this production debates over whether Hanazawa is his name, or if his real name is one of his other aliases, Kazuo Hanzawa. Most of the information on Mischief Maker focuses on the fun aesthetics, how underrated this game is, how fun it is to shake shake the enemies, or a combination of the three.
That’s not to say that appreciation for this soundtrack isn’t recognized, nor should it go unnoticed. Mischief Makers, like Treasure’s action platformers developed for the Genesis, were fun, fast paced, and occasionally different from what was normally out there. It was a chance for Treasure to show what they could do for Nintendo, and it was a chance for Treasure to show that there was still a place for original 2D games in the late 90s.
GoldenEye 007 (Nintendo 64), composed by Greame Norgate, Grant Kirkhope, and Robin Beanland
http://designingsound.org/2010/11/03/from-n64-to-wii-re-imagining-goldeneye-007-exclusive-interview-with-graeme-norgate-and-steve-duckworth/
Rarely, with the strongest possible emphasis on the word rarely, and without any intentions of a pun, do video game adaptations of movies or television shows equal or surpass the quality of the original source material. This game, once it was released, not only overshadowed the GoldenEye movie by leaps and bounds, but also revolutionized two types of gaming styles; multiplayer gaming, and first person shooter gaming. It was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of the most influential games released in the 90s.
Norgate, and Kirkhope composed roughly half of the soundtrack. Beanland’s musical contributions to the game, were the music that you heard while riding the elevators in the Janus Control Centre. The original James Bond theme was composed by Monty Norman. It has been arranged, and adapted for every James Bond film since the original film, Dr. No. Throughout the soundtrack to this game, the original James Bond theme is used as a recurring motif by the two primary composers, right down to the moment where the enemy kills you.
This was all completely intentional. Norgate even admitted in an interview with Miguel Isaza for Designing Sound that once he and Kirkhope realized that they had the license to use the original Bond theme, they went ahead and came up with as many variations as they could for the soundtrack. The soundtrack wasn’t just variations of the original Monty Norman theme, it was music that captured the feel of an espionage style action game, rather than just playing it safe with generic action music. And not every stage required action themed music, or even music at all. It was exciting, intense, and action packed. Just like the Bond films. But the music was composed in a way that it didn’t sound like a contrast to the game. It sounded like it belonged in the world of James Bond, whether variations of the original Bond theme were used as recurring motifs or not.
Norgate was originally supposed to be the primary composer for the game, but he got so busy working on another 1997 Nintendo 64 release, Blast Corps. So Kirkhope joined the music staff to help offset some of the responsibility. GoldenEye would end up being Kirkhope’s first game as a primary composer. He worked a little bit on the Killer Instinct 2 soundtrack, and did arrangement work for Donkey Kong Land 2 for the Game Boy. But GoldenEye would be his first major game. However, he wasn’t able to finish composing for the game, as he had to move onto another Rare game, Project Dream, which would ultimately be revamped into the 1998 release of Banjo-Kazooie.
Norgate had slightly more experience than Kirkhope at the time, being one of the primary composers for the original Killer Instinct, which includes arrangement work on the Super Nintendo port. He also got to do arrangement work on the original Donkey Kong Land. And as stated earlier, he also had early experience with the Nintendo 64, working on the score for Blast Corps.
GoldenEye was both an opportunity, and an innovation. GoldenEye paved the way for the first person shooter genre to thrive on consoles, when it was typically something that could only be experienced on computers. GoldenEye showed that adaptations of existing licenses can equal, and possibly surpass the original source material. It showed the world that Rare was more than just Donkey Kong Country. All in all, it was something that had never been done before. Both from the gamers perspective, and from the perspective of all who worked on this game, especially the score.
Total Annihilation (PC), composed by Jeremy Soule
Game soundtracks during this time were usually composed with synthesizers, and compressed audio. This soundtrack was composed by the Northwest Sinfonia orchestra live. The orchestra is based in Seattle, Washington, and has been composing for movies, television, and video games since 1995. Total Annihilation would be the first video game the orchestra contributed to. They have since gone on to help contribute to scores in the Medal of Honor series, the Halo series, World of Warcraft expansions, and other memorable games like Gears of War, and Dragon Age: Origins.
Jeremy Soule began his composition career with Square, working on the Super Nintendo title Secret of Evermore. While the game was being developed, there were rumors going around that Nintendo would get a CD-Rom expansion through Sony. Soule had hoped that the deal would go through, as it would give him more opportunities to create memorable scores. The deal fell through, Sony went on to create their own system instead, and in a dream job, joined former LucasArts alumni Ron Gilbert in his new studio, Humongous Entertainment.
Soule was a huge influence on the development of the game itself. He was the one that came up with the name “Total Annihilation” when the game was originally called “Partial Annihilation.” He was also the one that suggested that the game have a live orchestra, to make this real time strategy stand out when compared to other RTS games that were flooding the market at the time. He was even willing to take a pay cut if his ideas didn’t help Total Annihilation sell well, and gain good reviews.
The soundtrack itself is very small. But with a small package, comes great benefits. The game benefited from having a dymanic soundtrack. The moods between each piece varied, and would play depending on how far you were into battle, and the mood of the music would be more ambient during pre and post battle situations. The size of the soundtrack also made it to where you could load the game onto any CD player to listen to the entire soundtrack anytime you wished. And if you wanted to enhance the gameplay experience with other music, the game allowed you to use other music to make your own custom soundtrack for the game. Imagine yourself preparing for battle to the tunes of Savage Garden, battling it out to The Prodigy, celebrating victory with Smash Mouth, and then coping with defeat to Chumbawumba. Whether you wanted the authentic music experience, or an experience that matches your music tastes, Total Annihilation had you covered.
Soule took some creative risks with his own personal career, and the development of this game. All of which paid off. It goes to show that playing it safe with the music tools you’re given won’t always work. The music experience in games need to evolve and grow, just as the games themselves. Soule understood this, and because of that, he helped compose a soundtrack with the level of quality that actually did match what was heard in other forms of entertainment, rather than simply emulated them, or “came close” to them. Something rarely seen in the 90s, but as games developed over the years, would slowly become more and more common in larger titles.
Bomberman 64 (Nintendo 64), composed by Akifumi Tada
The Bomberman franchise was never really known for its music, or anything other than being a fun multiplayer game where you try to make your rivals explode as much as possible. But with the release of the Nintendo 64, Hudson Soft sought to make a Bomberman game that brought that same multiplayer fun to a 3D world, while simultaneously implementing a single player plot driven story mode to add more replay value to the game.
It would be a more plot driven story than director Hitoshi Okuno’s previous attempt at a Bomberman plot through the original Nintendo game, Bomberman II. And instead of relying on primary Bomberman composer Jun Chikuma for the score to Bomberman 64, he brought in anime composer Akifumi Tada for the job. Tada’s most notable contributions to anime were multiple Pokemon movies, multiple Crayon Shin-Chan movies, Skip Beat!, and he composed vocal tracks for the Ah My Goddess series, including the insert song from the Ah My Goddess movie, Koi no Lesson 3.
Bomberman 64 would be the only video game Tada did a score for. And with his experience in anime, he was able to compose scores that fit well with the mood of the game, specifically the story mode. There were even eye-catch style motifs that would introduce each world, and the mood of the motifs would depend on whether you were being lead into a stage, or if you were being lead into a boss battle. A signature technique Tada used throughout this soundtrack are the allegro’s. Specifically in the boss battles where either the bass, the percussion, or both were enhanced by their allegro’s. Unrelated to Tada, the North American advertisement for this game is notable for using a song about Bomberman to the tune of the original Spider-Man theme.
Bomberman 64 may not be the most memorable game in the Bomberman series, but for its music, it stands out. And for Akifumi Tada, it was the opportunity to showcase what he could for video games, in addition to what he’s been doing for, and what he continues to do for anime.
Einhander (Sony Playstation), composed by Kenichiro Fukui
http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/vbz/showthread.php?t=136181
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOhfKnDlGdk
Square solidified itself with its role playing games over the years. After so many role playing games, it was time for Square to tackle a brand new genre. The scrolling shooter style popularized by games like the Gradius, and R-Type series. For the most part, Einhander played like the popular shooters that came before this one, but what made Einhander stand out was the atmosphere, the graphics, the Greek mythology based storyline fleshed out throughout, and of course, the music.
Einhander is Fukui’s first game as a primary composer for a console game. Before this, he worked on the music and sounds for arcade games released by Konami. He left Konami because at the time, it wasn’t easy for a single Konami composer to receive recognition and credit for their works, especially in arcade games. He joined Square hoping to compose something that would help give the challenges and recognition he desired as a composer. In Einhander, Fukui incorporates modern music styles like techno, electronica, and hip-hop with classical music styles like opera, and piano music. It was a sharp contrast of music from different periods of time meshed together to create an eclectic audio visual.
One of the most popular pieces in the game is the boss battle theme, Shudder. It is very notable for two different reasons. First, in the middle of Shudder, a rap sample is used. This rap sample is notable for two different reasons. A game that got an E rating in North America from the Entertainment Software Rating Board somehow got away with using the F word in the rap sample. More than likely due to how incredibly fast paced the rap is, and how it’s blended over the sounds of you and the boss enemy firing several different weapons at each other. The second reason the rap sample is notable is how often it appears in several other Japanese games. Street Fighter III Third Strike, Ollie King, Ape Escape Prime and Pumped, Ar tonelico, just to name a few. The rap sample is taken from a track called Masterbits Rapsody Vocals 2 Climax 9 from the Masterbits RAPsody Vocals II Sample CD.
Fukui would continue to be an integral part of Square’s music team, leading up to major opportunities like being the primary arranger for the film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and he eventually became one of the co-founders of instrumental rock band The Black Mages, along with fellow Square composers Tsuyoshi Sekito, and Nobuo Uemetsu. After leaving Square in 2007, Fukui became a lecturer, leading up to a teaching job in 2009, working as a game composer teacher for Tokyo Mode Gakuen’s HAL Tokyo.
Fukui gave Square a new, unique style of music through Einhander by blending multiple music styles together. And now, he leads the way for a new generation of game composers to take the mantle in enhancing the experience of future games.
Diddy Kong Racing (Nintendo 64), composed by David Wise
It started as real time strategy game….seriously, look it up. Then it became a spiritual successor to Rare’s racing game released on the original Nintendo, RC-Pro Am. And it would have remained that way had Banjo-Kazooie, Rare’s most anticipated title at the time, not been delayed from the 1997 holiday season to the summer of 1998. After Banjo-Kazooie’s delay, Rare needed a strong enough IP to help them do well financially during the holiday season. So they turned the would-be spiritual successor into an adventure meets kart racing title built around a character that helped Rare through the Super Nintendo years, Diddy Kong.
Rare already had hits on the Nintendo 64 with Killer Instinct Gold, Blast Corps, and GoldenEye. None of those games featured the one composer that originally helped enhance the experience of playing a Donkey Kong Country game, David Wise. Diddy Kong Racing would be his next composition job after Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble, which Eveline Fischer was the primary composer of. In an interview with Square Enix Music, Wise states that for the score, he “unashamedly [paid] tribute and showing respect to some of the great Nintendo compositions from Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64...with every cliché [he] could lay reference to, with a bit of added Diddy Kong icing on top.”
For being developed as Diddy Kong Racing in such a short amount of time, the game is fondly remembered as being one of the best racing games on a Nintendo system. Even when game reviewers weren’t big fans of the game, they still couldn’t help but give credit to how dynamic, fitting, and catchy the soundtrack was throughout.It is still debated as to whether Mario Kart 64, or Diddy Kong Racing was the superior racing title on the Nintendo 64. But regardless of which racer you prefered, you still got a memorable racing title with a memorable soundtrack. And Diddy Kong Racing was definitely enhanced by David Wise’s score, who already knew how to use music to amplify the Donkey Kong franchise, and did so while simultaneously paying homage to the games that inspired what Diddy Kong Racing became.
Grandia (Sega Saturn), composed by Noriyuki Iwadare
Gamers knew that developer Game Arts were very capable of producing great role playing games, like the Lunar games and their enhanced remakes. Grandia was developed by most of the key staff that worked on the original Lunar series, including the series director Takeshi Miyaji, and the primary series composer Noriyuki Iwadare, who was asked to join the team due to his experience with Game Arts at that point. The art for the game immediately resonated with Iwadare, as he was able to compose the main theme of the game in one night, based solely on the inspiration he got from looking at the concept art for the game. As for the overall soundtrack, he was able to use what he descried as "the latest technology at the time." In addition to finding inspiration through illustrations, he also found inspiration in the works of Hiroshi Miyagawa, composer for the Space Battleship Yamato series.
In addition to the synth pop rock style incorporated in the soundtracks of the Lunar games, Grandia features some of Iwadare's most soothing, symphonic, relaxing works at that point of his career. It helped make his work on the Grandia games just as popular as his work on the Lunar games. There are no vocal themes in this game, but the game was promoted using the song It's the End by popular JRock group, L'Arc-en-Ciel. Grandia indirectly became Sega's flagship role playing game, while Sony had Final Fantasy 7 as theirs. Since it's original 97 release, fans outside of Japan clamored to play the game, even starting a petition on fansite Lunar.Net. It wasn't until 1999 that North America would receive a port of the game released on the Playstation, published by Sony themselves. Future installments of the game did not take nearly as long to localize as the first one did. Iwadare would serve as the sole composer for every game in the entire series.
Taking the encouraging synth pop rock style of music that helped estblish the Lunar series, while doing more with the eclectic and etheral style of music, Iwadare redefined his music career with his work on Grandia. Grandia would also become his more successful soundtrack since the original Lunar game, and would continue to help enhance the entire Grandia series with his ability to put you in a relaxed state, or in a motivational mood to fight and do your best.
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