I don’t know how I got suckered into marrying a man whose primary hobby is listening to videogame music…but I did, and as a result, I am regularly listening to the stuff. I was recently browsing through the old collection when I chanced upon a name that I thought was pretty, so I decided to give the soundtrack a listen.
The soundtrack was for “Misty Blue,” an extremely old graphic adventure from Enix. The songs are written by Yuzo Koshiro, who (I’m told) is a pretty big name in classic videogame scores. As a matter of fact, the second half of this soundtrack is tacked-on music from his hit “Actraiser” (the versions of the songs are different from the SNES version…they sound like an Arcade game soundtrack, but my husband says the game never went to arcade).
The whole album starts at a pretty slow pace, with simple melodies and such, then begins to build momentum. The faster songs have an “old school hiphop/groove” style going, and the other pieces are more lighthearted, upbeat, interesting, with a “dance party techno” sound. Misty Blue’s soundtrack doesn’t have much variation in style, though I did like the synths used for the harpsichord, piano, and percussion.
What I really hated about the album was the use of fadeout…I wanted clear endings. My husband has mocked me for having a problem with this, a feature used in nearly every videogame OST (because the songs can loop endlessly in a game), but I really do prefer definite end points.
The Actraiser tunes are okay, but they are inferior to the original music (which was released on its own before this album was published). Personally, I liked the Misty Blue side more, but even so, it’s not a great album in my opinion.
Also, “I wanna close to you”…?!? I wanna BE close, or GET close, or even STAY close, but someone who knows English really ought to fill in the blank on that one!
