Note: we took the liberty of fixing English spelling errors from “Behaind” to “Behind,” and from “Deamon” to “Daemon,” in the tracklist.
Here’s an interesting treat that came out of left field. Sega released the soundtrack for their version of the Falcom classic, “Sorcerian.” The Mega Drive port of the game came with a significant portion of music written exclusively for Sega’s version of the game (though some of the classic Falcom peices were used as well). And now, a full two decades later, we get a two disc soundtrack release for it. Surprised? I know I am.
There are a variety of primitive synths that were used during the old 8-bit days, and generally I would pick the Nintendo sounds over the Sega sounds of those days (same with 16-bit era, of course). But this album proves that the old Sega synths can compete with its peers. The mixing and recording quality of this release is fantastic! If you listen with headphones or with solid stereo speakers, you can detect some impressive mixing from left and right audio channels. A lot of clever audio production went into the music.
The actual compositions, however, aren’t as impressive. The best pieces, in my opinion, are those that were originally written for Falcom. The Sega-exclusive music, written by a variety of non-Falcom musicians (including Uwabo, who also worked on some early Phantasy Star titles), sound a lot like the music you’d hear in a generic Sega action game. Emphasis here, it should be noted, is on the word generic. Catchy, yes! You can dance to them. But memorable? Not really. Nothing can beat the original Sorcerian tunes. The Mega Drive-only songs make the album more robust, to an extent, but one might also argue that all it does is add more filler. The music isn’t bad, but a part of me would rather listen to “Music From Sorcerian” in place of this album.
However, generic as the audio may be, this is the first time Sega’s compositions have been released on a CD. So if you’re a collector of either Falcom or Sega music, then you better get this in your collection! And with “Wave Master” being the publisher, with their notoriety for having limited print runs, you might not have much time to act!
