Archives

In a series as famous and prolific as Final Fantasy, there are bound to be proverbial red-headed stepchildren within it who get mercilessly beaten upon. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for the GameCube was one such red-headed stepchild for a variety of reasons. One reason is the music. Kumi Tanioka‘s atmospheric and sometimes new-agey compositions were… Read More »

The latest in a growing number of live orchestral recordings for the Final Fantasy series, Distant Worlds was recorded at the Stockholm, Sweden concert. Arnie Roth selected a handful of pre-arranged tracks from FFVIII Orchestra, 20020220, and More Friends. That is to say, little of what’s offered here is original. In fact, the only new… Read More »

What better way is there to celebrate twenty years of game music than by releasing a rock-oriented arrange album featuring fourteen different tracks from all sorts of games spanning from Space Invaders all the way to NiGHTS? I can’t think of anything else that would have a more enjoyable result than the 20th Anniversary A… Read More »

This small project slipped under many Uematsu fans’ radars. The first album to be printed under the Dog Ear Record label is the soundtrack for Anata wo Yurusanai, a graphic adventure developed by AQ and Cavia (the same teams working on Cry On). To understand Uematsu’s score for this game, it’s important to know the… Read More »

When Hironobu Sakaguchi left Squaresoft (now Square-Enix) and struck out on his own, he left behind the series he had created, Final Fantasy. Nobuo Uematsu, the series’s renowned composer, also left shortly after. Uematsu’s score for Sakaguchi’s first new creation, Blue Dragon, was a good effort, but as a more comical score, it didn’t attempt… Read More »

The original Persona 3 soundtrack was pretty awesome. Check out my review of it for the full explanation. It was a mixture of hip-hop and techno done in a very Meguro style. It was pretty hip and dance-y. So how do you build on that for an arrange album? The answer is you make it… Read More »

Persona 3: FES was the expansion Atlus brought out for its hit title, Persona 3. It brings tons of new content to the original, and was seen by fans of the game as even better than the original in many ways. Unfortunately, the US will probably never get it, and with the difficulty of the… Read More »

My favorite parts of the SRT series’ music have always been the character theme songs. Other songs were good, but it is the character themes that have so much style and the catchiest melodies. The music in Original Generation 1 and 2 on the GBA were especially good, featuring songs present in that game only.… Read More »

If you’ve read my other reviews of JAM Project’s singles, you can easily figure out that I love this group. I originally discovered this J-Rock group from the opening to the anime, Soul Taker. Their melodies aren’t the greatest, but it’s their amazing vocalists that strike me. Their latest single is “Rocks,” which is the… Read More »

Here’s a question: what music has come out of Poland that is worth acknowledging? Well, there’s Chopin, and a handful of other classical composers, particularly Henryk Gorecki, composer of “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.” As for Polish game music? There isn’t much of which we can speak. As far as VGM is concerned, one might say… Read More »

A variety of games have been made in relation to the classic “Lodoss” anime. One noteworthy title was a Super Famicom RPG, simply entitled “Record of Lodoss War” (no fancy subtitles). This is the soundtrack for said RPG. A pair of Sakai’s put together the music for this particular RPG. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stand out… Read More »

One of the best soundtracks for an RPG based on an anime that I’ve ever heard is the arranged soundtrack for the first Record of Lodoss War game. This RPG was released for the PC Engine in 1989, and the soundtrack released (on cassette, vinyl and CD) around the same time. Jiro Irima‘s score receives… Read More »

This soundtrack is for the sequel to the generally unknown PC Engine RPG “Record of Lodoss War.” This soundtrack is more prevalent in used CD stores, and more English-speaking VGM fans know about this album as well. However, while much of the same composition and arrangement team is the same as the previous game’s score,… Read More »

Let me tell you all about one of my all-time favorite J-pop songs. It’s Chihiro Yonekura‘s “FEEL ME,” and it was released as the opening theme song for Data East’s love adventure Revive… for Sega Dreamcast. Back when I had just started writing for RPGFan, and I was in charge of our now-defunct “movies” section,… Read More »

The OST for “Revive” (the subtitle, “Sosei,” is just the Japanese word for Revive) uses music that fits the setting of the game quite well. There are some happy, light-hearted songs, but for the most part, the soundtrack features mysterious, ambient, enigmatic sounds that I dare say are not melodic. And as much as I… Read More »

Armodyne: a small-scale strategy RPG from Omiya Soft. Omiya’s track record includes some games in the Culdcept series, as well as Front Mission: Gun Hazard. Gun Hazard marks the last time Omiya worked with composer Yasunori Mitsuda. They got together again for this unique, mecha-centric strategy RPG. It’s been awhile since Mitsuda took on a… Read More »

Growlanser VI: it’s more of the same, but in a good way. The composers Tuschiya and Seki return from their experience on Growlanser V, a soundtrack I praised for its oldschool compositions with high quality synth, to do their work on Growlanser VI. Everything I liked about the G5 OST, I like it about G6… Read More »

Don’t be confused by this soundtrack’s name: It’s not a drama CD. The Strategy RPG “Quo Vadis,” with its strong cast of characters, was actually privy to a long series of drama CDs (six, to be exact). This album contains all of the music put into the six-part drama series. Some of it is arranged… Read More »

Warner Music Japan printed a soundtrack for QuoVadis that was completely different from the MEM Records print in 1996. “Quo Vadis: Iverkurtz War” was released for PlayStation in 1997, and this is the soundtrack for that game, as well as (apparently) some music from the Sega Saturn sequel. It’s got different songs from a different… Read More »

With the release of Namco’s Tales of the Tempest for the DS, Namco used misono’s single, “Lovely Cat’s Eye,” as an “image” song associated with the game and commercials for it. The single was released five days after the game’s release. With the single, another of her works, “Tomorrow” is also included. I have mixed… Read More »

With the release of Tales of the Tempest for the Nintendo DS, the game uses a song from J-Pop star misono (lead vocalist of the former band DAY AFTER TOMORROW). Her first single, “VS,” was used as the opening song. Along with “VS,” her other work, “Glass no Kutsu” (Glass Shoes) is included along with… Read More »

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology is a game where it seemed a lot of effort was put into one aspect while the other aspects fell short. The battle system in the game is brilliant and the visuals are generally good. But that’s about it. The storyline is a weak, throwaway plot. And the music?… Read More »

A word of caution: this ain’t the Wizardry of yester-year. BUSIN‘s soundtrack is totally different from all previous Wizardry scores. Not better, not worse, but certainly different. Okay, well … maybe a little worse. Instead of the usual neo-romantic orchestra pieces we’re used to, this Wizardry title uses sequenced, synthesized instruments and loops to create… Read More »

BUSIN Ø continues in the musical tradition of BUSIN, in that it sounds nothing like the classical works of Ikuro Fujiwara or Kentaro Haneda. It’s a new breed of Wizardry, truly an “Alternative” style. Like BUSIN, BUSIN Ø goes the route of synth. But there is no pretense this time. They’re not even trying to… Read More »

One of the few PlayStation era Wizardry titles to receive a soundtrack was DIMGUIL. Like many a Wizardry title, this game never reached the US. It’s a shame, because the music was decent, regardless of the game’s quality (i.e. – I have no idea if this game was any good). What makes this album good?… Read More »