61 Frames Per Second : yasunori mitsuda

Chiptune Friday: Ethernet’s “Theme For the Water Shrine” Makes Me Want to Adventure and Possibly Defeat an Ancient Evil

John Constantine — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Ethernet is a fitting alias for IDM and ambient electronic composer Tim Gray. It implies technological sterility, the anonymity of surfing the internet, and the swirling drunk of ether itself. That is to say, it describes Gray’s music well. His droning compositions are dense but rewarding. To take a break from finishing his forthcoming, untitled debut album, Gray’s been paying homage to some of his favorite gaming composers. “Theme For the Water Shrine” is not a SNES chiptune proper since it wasn’t composed using that system’s actual hardware. It does, however, evoke the same tranquil atmosphere that earned Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda (whose work inspired the song) their slavish cults. You can listen to the track at Gray’s blog, TanukiDreams, by clicking right here. If anyone out there in the industry is looking for a composer to soundtrack their role-playing adventure, this is your man.

Related links:

Chiptune Friday: Trip to the Beat
Best NES End Credits Music in the History of NES End Credits Music
Chiptune Friday: Shut Up and Jam!
Chiptune Friday: Blaze a Blaze in the Mushroom Kingdom

Alternate Soundtrack: Fleet Foxes Meet RPGs

Bob Mackey — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

In trying to give one of my friends a good description of the awesome self-titled Fleet Foxes album, I told him that listening to it was like "wandering through a magical forest with your very own bard." It's not just my nerdy leanings that inspired the comparison; Fleet Foxes is a strange mix of James Taylor, Brian Wilson, and Yasunori Mitsuda. In fact, on the multiple holiday car rides I've suffered thus far, I've been known to crank Fleet Foxes and imagine some marvelous new RPG that taps into the power of a band whose music seems tailor-made for the genre--and I don't have a single car accident on my record.

To prove my point, I've taken one of the albums most RPGish songs, "Hear Them Stirring," and set it to some console RPG footage with my limited video editing skills. Hopefully, you'll see why I'm right.

And while I in no way get paid to promote Fleet Foxes, it'd be swell if you went and picked up their album for the meager price of five bucks. Thanks in advance.

Related Links:

Alternate Soundtrack Redux: Super Street Fighter II vs. The Go! Team
Alternate Soundtrack: Kirby's Adventure vs. girlsareshort
Alternate Soundtrack - Donkey Kong '94 vs. Les Savy Fav

OST: The Great Mitsuda Music Heist

Bob Mackey — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Charles Caleb Colton once said "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," but it's important to remember that he coined this aphorism far before the invention of modern copyright laws and Japanese RPGs. That being said, Breath of Fire III composers Akari Kaida and Yoshino Aoki must've had Chrono Trigger composer Yasunori Mistuda dead in the sights of their flattery gun (it shoots flattery, you see) while composing at least one of the tracks of Capcom's long-running RPG franchise; the similarity between the piece in question and one of Mitsuda's own is unmistakable.

If you're wondering why I've kept this news to myself for over a decade, here are some answers: A.) Chrono Trigger DS is out, so this is semi-relevant, and B.) The existence of YouTube means it's finally easy for the lazy (i.e., me) to easily provide such a comparison. Square-Enix, when the lawsuit is over, I'll gladly take a generous "legal consultant fee."

Anyway, here are the songs in question:

"Secret of the Forest," composed in 1995:

"Forest Theme," composed in 1997:

Shocking, I know. When I first played Breath of Fire III in 1998, I picked up on the similarity between the two songs, too. But back then there wasn't anyone around me nerdy enough to care. Thanks for making my dreams come true.

Related Links:

Your Way: Chrono Trigger and The Glory of Options
The Chrono Trigger Port: Are You Excited or Disappointed?
Where is Yasunori Mitsuda?

ONST: Square-Enix’s Rad Original Non-Soundtracks

John Constantine — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

When talking about the good ol’ Square-Enix days, back when most every game they published was either very good or at least interesting, it’s impossible not to note their stable of composers. Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoko Shimomura, and a number of other remarkable musicians have received more international acclaim and love from listeners of their videogame soundtracks than most Japanese traditional musicians. You may have noticed that we ourselves have something of a penchant for these composers. It’s rare, however, to hear work by any of them that isn’t related to videogames. There’s Mitsuda’s Kirite, but even Uematsu’s lone solo album, the prog-as-hell Phantasmagoria, closes with an arrangement of Final Fantasy’s “Prologue”. Little did I know that Square-Enix themselves realized their musical masterminds needed broader creative outlets. The Square-Enix Official Bootleg series, launched back in 2006, is comprised of three EPs spotlighting totally original songs by S-E composers and they are uniformly awesome. Highlights include “Aquarius Option” by Kumi Tanioka (Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles), “Feel Gravity” by Ryo Yamazaki (Front Mission 4), and pretty much everything by Mitsuto Suzuki. Suzuki’s work on the Bootlegs was actually so well-received, S-E put out his entire solo album In My Own Backyard, which sounds like a pleasant mixture of Air and Brian Eno’s Ambient Works. All the bootlegs are iTunes exclusives, so you don’t have to worry about the absurdly high cost of importing physical copies, and all four collections will run you twenty dollars. Go check ‘em out already.

Previous OSTs:
Duck Tales
Bubble Bobble
Chrono Cross
Soul Blazer
Everyday Shooter
Rule of Rose
Treasure of the Rudras

Related links:
Make the Music With Your Games, Kids!
Infinite Mega Man 9: Composer Ippo Yamada Talks Living Up to a Serious Musical Pedigree
You Can't UNhear It: Time's Scar
Kirite: The Secret Best Yasunori Mitsuda Soundtrack

Kirite: The Secret Best Yasunori Mitsuda Soundtrack

Bob Mackey — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I spent a long time bitching and whining about composer Yasunori Mitsuda's (Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Xenogears) lack of presence in current-gen RPGs, only to find out that he's still putting out music, albeit on quite a few games that have yet to make it to the states. But there's something about his work on the DS--a system he seems pretty comfortable with these days--that feels a bit watered down to me; I eagerly await the day when he pens his next soundtrack for a system that can support the stellar work he did on titles like Chrono Cross and Xenosaga.

But until then, we'll always have Kirite, Mitsuda's absolutely beautiful orchestrated concept album from 2005. Square Haven gives a nice description of this amazing album:

Kirite is a combined effort between Yasunori Mitsuda and Chrono series producer/writer Masato Kato. It adds a musical illustration to the accompanying novel Kato wrote, "Five Seasons of Kirite", which tells the story of a boy named Kirite, and the girl Kotonoha. The music plays out like Mitsuda's other standalone non-game albums such as Sailing to the World, with a gentle introduction comprised mainly of explorations of the album's main theme, followed by an element of mystery and unveiling, then capped by dynamic battle-style pieces and closed off with what amounts to an ending theme. Indeed, the album progresses much like your average videogame soundtrack.

But really, you don't need to understand Japanese to get the most from Kirite; the music speaks for itself. Here's "The Market In Volfinor," which is one of my favorite songs from the album. Listening to it makes an RPG happen in your brain.

All in all, Kirite feels like a true successor to Mistuda's Chrono Cross soundtrack, and it's definitely a nice snapshot of what the composer can do. I shouldn't be spiteful about all the work he's putting out on the DS, but damn it, just listen to Kirite! This is something we need more of.

Related Links:

Where is Yasunori Mitsuda?
OST: Chrono Cross
OST: DuckTales

You Can't UNhear It: Time's Scar

Bob Mackey — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

It's true; the Chrono Cross soundtrack is one of the most ass-kickingest collections of music to ever exist in our unworthy world. And the pinnacle of said soundtrack--at least, in my opinion--is the opening song, "Time's Scar;" Yasunori Mitsuda's stirring mix of wistfulness with a sense of urgency may be the highest point of his career. That's being said, I've probably heard the song hundreds of times in my life; and because I'm such a big fan of Time's Scar--and anything Mitsuda--something very minor about the recording of the song makes me cringe every time I hear it.

Crank up your speakers to 11 and wait for the sound at 00:16.

Did you hear that tiny little thump? It has haunted my dreams for the past decade.

I have no idea what it is, but it certainly can't be part of the composition. Was something being plugged in? Was a music stand kicked over? Did the conductor drop his Big Gulp? Whatever the case, every time I listen to Time's Scar, I tense up until that little thump comes and goes. It's a pretty big blemish on an otherwise awesome recording/song--and if you think I'm being a tad crazy about this, just remember: I wouldn't be a gamer if I didn't get psychotically obsessed over meaningless details.

To calm my nerves, and make you less worried about me, here's an awesome guitar arrangement of Time's Scar that's played using official Procyon Studio (Mitsuda's HQ) sheet music. I would pay for an entire album full of stuff like this:

Related Links:

OST: Chrono Cross
Where is Yasunori Mitsuda?
The End of Time and the Beginning of Fan Drama

Where is Yasunori Mitsuda?

Bob Mackey — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Chrono Trigger is coming to the DS this holiday season, and we should all be happy. If it were any other game, Square-Enix would be lambasted for bringing such a quick-and-dirty full-priced port (plus the typical five-dollar "Square tax") to its brainwashed fans, but this is Chrono Trigger. Since the game has basically been out of print for 13 years, and available only as a gimped PS1 port for seven of those years, it's a treat to finally get a legal, playable version of Chrono Trigger without a dead save battery and sans loading times. I don't know what pushed me through the Final Fantasy Chronicles version of the game, but I'm going to go ahead and blame September 11th.

One of the nicer bits of news about Chrono Trigger DS is that the soundtrack--one of the best out there, technically and musically--has actually survived the transition to Nintendo's handheld console; this is no small feat, what with Square-Enix's GBA remakes sounding disappointingly tinny and crunchy. You can credit the greatness of Chrono Trigger's soundtrack to the SNES sound chip--which certainly was a great tool--but Yasunori Mitsuda deserves most of the acclaim for putting together one hell of a soundtrack. And it was his first!

But in the past few years, it seems like Mitsuda has been slumming by working exclusively on forgettable DS RPGs. This is something the needs to change.

Mitsuda's early career with Square resulted in some of the best soundtracks to ever come out of the medium, even if the quality of the games themselves were suspect. After composing the music for Trigger, he worked on three high-profile projects, and perfected a style that went beyond your bog-standard "epic" RPG music. First came his work on Xenogears, which introduced the Celtic overtones his compositions would soon be known for; Mitsuda's Chrono Cross soundtrack followed a few years later, and is considered by most to be some of the greatest video game music of all time--and it's a crime against humanity that Cross never got an arrange album. His work on 2002's Xenosaga: Episode I is not as immediately Mitsuda-y as you'd expect, but it does show a composer breaking out of his safe zone and using the high budget of a failed franchise to really see what he can do with a live orchestra.

Really, I can't do justice to Mitsuda's music by explanation alone, so you should just find your favorite outlet for listening to video game soundtracks and I'm sure my awkward descriptions will begin to make sense.

And now for an award-winning segue: what doesn't make sense is Mitsuda's relative obscurity since working on Xenosaga. Don't get me wrong, he's still put out some great stuff since then; Mitsuda's original album Kirite is right up there with Chrono Cross in the "best things he's ever done" category. But I get the feeling that--if he's not burned out--Mitsuda is just a victim of Japanese video game composers not being as big of a deal as they used to be. The 90s and early 2000s featured big bad composers doing big bad things, but today, while there are quite a few good soundtracks being pumped out, the Monsters of Video Game Music don't seem to be around anymore. I think Japan's got some 'splaining to do.

Related Links

OST: Chrono Cross
The Chrono Trigger Port: Are You Excited or Disappointed?

The Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack - An Inside Look

Peter Smith — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

In this exclusive follow-up to our interview with Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix soundtrack producers David "djpretzel" Lloyd and Larry "Liontamer" Oji, djpretzel himself gives us a breakdown of four tracks from the game:

E. Honda 'Dosu-Koi'
djpretzel

"This was the track that I set my sights on early in the process. McVaffe has had an excellent mix of this track on OCR for a long while, modeled after Madonna's song 'Music,' but Capcom weren't feeling it for in-game usage, so I decided to take a shot. My initial version was way too aggressive, and got the hundred-hand slapdown itself, but I went back to the drawing board and did something mellower, with more of an emphasis on Asian instrumentation. There's shamisen, koto, shakuhachi, AND taiko in there, so it's got the 'big four' of Japanese instruments (more or less) and is more appropriate to the sumo bath house setting."

Guile 'Combat and Service'
Big Giant Circles, Justin R. Coleman

"Jimmy Hinson, alias Big Giant Circles, put together a really kicking take on Guile's theme, which is definitely one of the classics off the soundtrack. Capcom generally dug what he was doing, but were iffy on the lead synthesizer sound, and wanted something different. Jimmy got Justin to lay down an electric guitar lead that added some rock edge to the more electronic backdrop, achieving a good blend that Capcom gave the green light."

Ken / Online Menu 'Clamato Fever'
AE, Prozax

"While Sixto Sounds did the version of Ken's stage that's actually used in the game, Capcom wanted something special just for the online menus and the title screen, since users spend a good amount of time setting up matches, checking rankings, and tweaking options. Alex Esquivel (AE) and Dan Orosz (Prozax) put together an alternate take on the Ken theme that works perfectly for this context. The first time I fired up the beta and heard it, I just smiled — they nailed it! As an interesting side note, AE learned about the game through other channels and contacted Capcom directly, and was a little surprised to be redirected to Shael, Malcos and I to coordinate his involvement. Everything worked out, though, and I'm glad Alex and Dan were included in the long lineup of OC ReMix artists."

Zangief 'Red Cyclone'
The Grammar Club

"Shael Riley's been mixing humor, VGM, rock, and anything else he cares to throw in for a long time now, and his latest project is The Grammar Club, a band that's been making waves with their album Bremelanotide. The fellows put together a rock arrangement of Zangief's theme that's unique on the soundtrack for being a little less refined and more in-your-face, New York garage style. When I think Zangief, I certainly don't think 'refined,' so this ballsier type of production worked really well."

61FPS Q&A: David Lloyd and Larry Oji of OC ReMix on the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack (Part 2)

Peter Smith — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

What are some of your favorite game soundtracks? Favorite composers?
djpretzel: Yuzo Koshiro, Dave Wise, Yasunori Mitsuda, Tokuhiko Uwabo, and Koji Kondo are all amazing... Super Castlevania IV, Revenge of Shinobi, Lunar (Sega CD version!!), Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Final Fantasy VI , Mega Man II, and Super Mario Galaxy are my favorite game scores at the moment.

Larry Oji: Favorite soundtracks and composers tend to go hand in hand. I'm a big fan of Koji Kondo's work on the Super Mario series, Masato Nakamura's on the Sonic the Hedgehog series (Sonic 3 & Knuckles, though not his, was excellent too), Alph Lyra for the Street Fighter II series, David Wise for Donkey Kong Country and Battletoads, Kazunaka Yamane for the Double Dragon series, and Yuzo Koshiro for the Streets of Rage series. That covers a lot of the games I played as a kid. Since learning more about the history of game music, I love so much stuff now, I can't even rattle it off. But my second-favorite composer, little known in the States, is Yasuhisa "Yack" Watanabe. His stuff is a lot more known in Japan, including as a member of Taito's Zuntata group, but almost no one tries to arrange his material; it's pretty far out there, so I can understand why. Sometimes his stuff doesn't resonate with me, but he's put out some incredible compositions. Then my personal favorite is British composer Tim Follin, whose nearly two-decade career composing for games was unparalleled, as far as what I've personally enjoyed. Check out his compositions for Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Solstice, Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge and Silver Surfer. He always strove for creative techniques and cool textures with his chiptunes. Plus, his modern soundtracks like Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future and Lemmings for the PSP were equally impressive. I've been slowly plugging away at a small OC ReMix album project paying tribute to his work, so before the end of this year, Dirge for the Follin should finally be out there, lamenting the fact that he retired from the industry.

Do you prefer the old-school chiptune style, or are you more into the CD-audio present?
djpretzel: I prefer the melodies and compositional approach of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras coupled with more modern production aesthetics; in other words, I like slick production, but only when it's paired up with a great melody. Which is not to say that game composers of today aren't writing great melodies, just that the limitations of earlier consoles meant that almost every piece needed to survive on compositional strength as opposed to production values.

Larry Oji: I've got no major preference. The only bias I have is that I grew up with chiptunes, so there's going to be some nostalgia pushing me to those. But modern stuff holds up a lot better to active listening. Either way. [pauses] Was that a cop out? ... All right, let's go with modern stuff. I actually prefer the melodies that were written in the chiptune days. But modern music has the potential for great writing as well, combined with higher quality sounds. Some fans feel there's an inherent compositional quality trade-off in newer videogame music compared to the older stuff, but I believe the best of the modern stuff is simply more elusive. Besides, people tend to gloss over the fact that not every chiptune was amazing back then either.

What do you think of the recent trend towards contextual music? In old Zelda, you'd just have a melody looping for the whole time you were in a dungeon. Now, you often just have ambient effects and then an "action" motif when you approach an enemy.
djpretzel: Well, I think most good game music, even very old stuff, is still contextual on some level — it still makes sense for the environment. But more recently the focus/buzz has been on making that contextuality of a more real-time, responsive nature, as opposed to the loops you mention. In essence, this makes the experience more cinematic, with the score reacting to players' actions just like a well-cued Hollywood soundtrack would. For FMV sequences in games, obviously, this is nothing new and has been the standard for years. The challenge is in maintaining that very polished interactivity once a user's actions become unpredictable. There are different ways of accomplishing this, including triggered motifs like you mention. I think it's all very interesting and exciting, but I also think we need to take a step back once in awhile and remember that games are a different medium from movies, and that emulating them is an option, but not the only option. Who's to say that looped melodies a la Zelda and older 8-bit titles don't make complete sense for certain games or genres? Game creators are creating interactive worlds... those worlds can resemble a film experience, and if that's the goal, then responsive, interactive scores are perfect. But the true art of game creation, to me, is remembering that there aren't any limits, that conventions of all other mediums can and should be bent or broken, and thus I think too much emphasis on targeting a cinematic experience could be dangerous. In essence, I think this trend is very positive, so long as it expands the arsenal of approaches to music in games, rather than narrows it.

How about the shift from short melodies to more expanded or moodier compositions? The difference between, y'know, Zelda II's Palace theme and Ocarina of Time's Forest Temple theme?
djpretzel: This is totally natural; audio and music have progressed alongside graphics and other technical aspects of console hardware and gaming, and more ornate and varied compositions flow from those progressions. With Ocarina, you've no longer got a limited palette of bright colors on screen, you've got a fully 3D world, and it'd be odd if the music didn't match. This sometimes means the number of "hummable" tracks on a game soundtrack is reduced in favor of more ambient, atmospheric fare, but it's usually right for the game, and composers like Koji Kondo in particular can almost always hit a balance between "song" or theme tracks and more environmental, BGM stuff.

How did you meet up with Capcom on Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix?
djpretzel: OCR is mostly about individual mixes, but every once in awhile we release album projects, where artists get together and focus on a specific game, composer, etc. We've released albums for Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country and most notably Final Fantasy VII with our Voices of the Lifestream album in 2007. Shael Riley and Stephen Malcom-Howell (a.k.a. Malcos), two veteran OC ReMixers, put together an album of Super Street Fighter II Turbo mixes called Blood on the Asphalt back in 2006. Capcom found the album online and contacted Shael, who in turn referred them to me. At first we were actually suspicious of being Punk'd or something, since it was such an amazing opportunity, but once we confirmed it was legit, we obviously jumped at the chance.

The HD Remix soundtrack is based on Blood on the Asphalt, but it's not exactly the same. What are some of the changes?
Larry Oji: Firstly, I definitely need to stress that the remixers didn't do any mere drag-and-drop jobs on these. A lot of the pre-existing arrangements selected for inclusion on HD Remix were full-on, four-to-five-minute arrangements with original sections, solos and so forth, which doesn't fly in Street Fighter II. So everything's been edited down to a more standard sixty-to-ninety seconds and looped, focusing on the core of each theme to work like the old-school themes did. Dave had to handle relaying all of the desired modifications handed down by Capcom to the artists and got a variety of requests. This is where he gets music-nerdy!

djpretzel: In addition to length and formatting requirements, Capcom had some very specific feedback, and some comments that were more general in nature. In certain instances they wanted individual instruments changed out, tempo increased by a few beats per minute, or other modifications to production that were very easy for artists to implement. Other times, they were looking more for a different feel, or more subjective changes to texture, which were more challenging. We were blessed with a pretty long development cycle, so we had a lot of time to present different versions/permutations of each track and go through an iterative process.

Where are you getting the themes that aren't originally from the album? Are these all new remixes?
Larry Oji: Along with eight edits of mixes from Blood on the Asphalt, three of the seventeen character themes are modified versions of other OC ReMixes. That left six themes with all-new takes, as well as nearly all new material for the fast versions of all the character themes, character endings and other assorted themes, with everything provided by our crew of remixers. Gotta give props to José E. Felix (a.k.a. José the Bronx Rican) for coming through in a big way with nearly every ending theme besides providing both the Dee Jay and Vega themes!

What've your production duties been like on the soundtrack?
Larry Oji: I'm a detail-oriented person, more behind the scenes. Dave functioned as the lead producer and director for the soundtrack, serving as the point of contact with game producer Rey Jimenez and Capcom to keep things streamlined on the communications side. He handled the legal stuff, as well as ensuring Capcom had all of the remixers' latest work as things progressed. I handled contacting remixers that were difficult to get a hold of in order to secure some pre-existing tracks, recruited and provided critique for some of the new music, and helped keep track of smaller details with all of our personnel. Even stuff like preparing our credits list for the game and getting new track titles for all of the remixed themes, I enjoy making sure the finer things are in place at the ground level, while Dave works with the big picture. If you had told me back when I played Street Fighter II in my friend's basement that I'd be in the credits of a game in the series nearly two decades later, I wouldn't believe it. It's an honor to help coordinate something that will always be a part of a historic franchise, especially Street Fighter, the one that truly pulled me into game music beyond being a casual fan.

djpretzel: Working with Capcom was truly awesome. We brought our fandom — the way we express ourselves through mixing/arrangement — full circle, right back to a commercial product that is itself a remix of an absolutely classic game... it's very meta, when you think about it. I think it's something that could only have happened in a post-internet environment, with a company that was groovy enough to realize their fans could play a meaningful role. Mods, user-generated content, etc. have been around awhile, but I think there's often an artificial wall — "this is the official content, this is the fan stuff" — that segregates things. This project tears down that wall, at least for game music, and integrates the two, without emphasizing the distinction. I think that's a fantastic precedent to be setting, and I'm proud OverClocked ReMix was involved!

Click here for Part 1! And check back tomorrow for a detailed look at the four all-new themes on the SSF2THD soundtrack!

61FPS Q&A: David Lloyd and Larry Oji of OC ReMix on the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack (Part 1)

Peter Smith — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Here at 61FPS, we couldn't be more excited about the upcoming Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. So it's with great pleasure that we present our in-depth Q&A with David "djpretzel" Lloyd and Larry "Liontamer" Oji, of the definitive game-music remix site, OC ReMix. In a deliciously fan-friendly turn of events, OC ReMix was tapped to produce the music for SSF2THD — and we've got the inside scoop on this glorious reimagining of one of the greatest game soundtracks ever. We also took the opportunity to chat with these gurus on a wide range of game-music-related topics. Enjoy!

David, can you tell us about founding OC ReMix?
David W. Lloyd (djpretzel): Way back in 1999, I was making a 3D comic strip dedicated to the emulation scene called "OverClocked" — a few episodes were actually pretty funny, and it played a part in popularizing the whole "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" craze, but it was also a way for me to get better at Photoshop and 3D Studio MAX. I wanted something I could work on for music as well, to get better at composing, arranging and producing; I had this idea to do videogame arrangements of my own, but also to open it up to others. At the time, there were sites which were specific to Commodore 64 games, and which focused on techno mixes, but nothing that was more open-ended. I wanted a website that encouraged jazz, classical, rap, rock and anything else, in addition to electronica genres, and which allowed arrangements from computer games, console games, handheld games and arcade games alike. There was nothing like that in existence, so I figured I'd start something myself. "OverClocked ReMix" started as a side-project to "OverClocked" the comic strip, but eventually became a hundred times bigger. In the early days, I was like a door-to-door salesman, emailing people asking for their permission to post their mixes on the site, but once it grew large enough, people started sending us stuff. Eventually there were so many submissions that we needed to create a judges panel and more official guidelines/standards, which really helped clarify what we're all about — interpretive arrangements, not just the original with drum loops on top. The rest, as they say, is history!

Larry, how did you get involved with the OC ReMix community?
Larry Oji (Liontamer): I love hearing stories on how people have found the site, and I share mine when I can in order to encourage people to check out everything OCR has. I did college radio at Emory University 's WMRE in Atlanta, where I loved playing video game music on my shows alongside mainstream music, mostly Britpop stuff. A friend of mind as well as a casual gamer and fellow DJ, Matt Kertz, saw that I played videogame music and recommended that I check out what was then remix.overclocked.org in early 2002. That was my first exposure to the site. The site was only two years old at the time and had more than 500 mixes by that point; I downloaded about thirty, sticking only with the few games I grew up with, and was extremely happy. But I didn't follow the site closely or try anything from games I had no history with, which was a huge mistake.

Luckily for me, I told my best friend Joe Mauri about the site and he downloaded everything OC ReMix had. If he hadn't done that, I wouldn't be where I am today. That summer, I sat down at his computer, listened to all the free remixes one by one over three days, and was simply amazed at how creative everything was. Even the games I wasn't familiar with had some amazing themes that were being remixed, and I ended up doing the research and downloading chiptunes of the original tracks to better understand what inspired the remixes. So it was a great crash course in the history of videogame music, and from that point on I was hooked. I shifted my radio show's format to videogame music exclusively, and volunteered for the site by filling in the database with info on remixers, composers and songs. I also grew as a music critic to the point where I was invited to join the site's judges panel in July 2004, where I help evaluate submitted material. Listening to music and spreading the word on OCR is one of the most enjoyable jobs I can think of.

Let's talk about game music in general. What got you into game music?
djpretzel: My earliest VGM memory would be the happy little tunes in Smurfs for the Colecovision and Dream House for the C64. The use of the Peter Gunn theme in Spy Hunter, also for the C64, was pretty classic as well. But it was really the Sega Master System that got me hooked — I loved the music from Alex Kidd, Shinobi and Space Harrier so much that I recorded the output of the console to tape and, sadly, did my own lame seven-year-old's version of DJing between tracks. To the best of my knowledge, those tapes are long gone, which I'm more than okay with from a human-dignity perspective, but they nevertheless represented my first steps into actually interacting with VGM.

Larry Oji: My earliest days of gaming were with the NES with a tiny bit of Master System. The SNES and Sega Genesis came a little later, so all of those systems planted the seeds. I didn't own too many titles, but I loved a lot of the soundtracks I heard. Super Mario Bros. 3 was the epitome of an excellent game and Koji Kondo's music from it was no exception. The first Donkey Kong Country on the SNES was amazing to me as well, and I loved the Streets of Rage and Sonic the Hedgehog series on the Genesis side. I can't forget Street Fighter II either. That was first in a long line of Street Fighter games that stuck with me, even when I didn't realize how immersed in game music I'd be down the line. It goes without saying, but the best games truly have a synergy going on between the gameplay and soundtrack that provides the total package.

What do you love about game music?
Larry Oji: The music from the games I grew up with had some of the best melodies and hooks imaginable. And the tunes had such range in terms of genres. As a kid, I obviously didn't think about it on a scholarly level, but I subconsciously latched onto the depth that videogame music possessed. Think about the range when you compare the soundtracks of Super Mario Bros. to Double Dragon to Road Rash. The 16-bit era, especially the SNES, was a big step up in realizing game music's potential, thanks to the wider array of sounds and more complex textures. The best composers really didn't put those extra resources to waste. The thing I love most is that game music is a medium and not a genre; game music can, and often does, involve any and all genres, so you get a flavor for all sorts of styles if you keep your ears and mind open. The fact that many game themes are malleable and can be reinterpreted makes me love game music that much more. Every time I hear an OC ReMixer take a theme and transform it into something fresh that I wouldn't expect, it validates being a fan of the medium.

djpretzel: ...what he said. It's worth mentioning that I'm a big fan of soundtracks in general — film, television, anime, etc. — and that contextual music that's part of a larger work always has a certain appeal for me. With almost all other mediums, though, it's a linear, non-interactive experience, so you only hear certain themes once or twice. With game music, because it's interactive, and because you can end up hearing the same piece ad infinitum, I think there's a much stronger mental association between the music and what it represents. A classic example for me would be the first town theme from Lunar for the Sega CD — every time I hear it, I can envision the town layout in great detail and feel like I'm there. You can get that type of strong association with film scores and even non-soundtrack material, sure, but I find it happens more often with VGM. This of course requires that you've actually played the game the music is from, though, which isn't necessary at all just to enjoy the music at face value!

Click here for Part 2!

OST: DuckTales

Peter Smith — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Licensed games have never really worked for me. Somehow having an explicit tie to another medium damages the game's claim to its own reality; the sense of place that makes a game unique is diminished if you know it's just a digital recreation of a film set. Games even seem to lose something when I find out they're based on some obscure manga, even if I'll never read it. This may make me crazy — it's been said before. But in any case, adaptations from the NES era could occasionally circumvent this effect. Maybe it's because the technology of the time had a naturally abstracting effect. You could at least count on a game, whatever the source, to have more architecture than plot — which was good, because if you'd wanted plot, you would've just watched or read whatever the game was based on in the first place.

Moreover, since pulling music from the source usually wasn't an option, you sometimes (if you were lucky) got a delicious batch of tunes, which always helped give the game a feel of its own. Here I'm thinking of Yoshihiro Sakaguchi's score for DuckTales, probably the best of Capcom's late-'80s Disney adaptations. With the exception of the DuckTales theme — which plays only over the title screen and the ending — the DuckTales score is completely original. And with all due respect to the beloved cartoon, the game soundtrack does a better job suggesting globetrotting adventure and exploration. (Not surprising, since Sakaguchi also worked on the soundtrack for Mega Man II, probably the most revered NES soundtrack of all.) Start with the stage-select music. Clocking in at three seconds, it's about as simple as you can get, but it immediately sets a mysterious tone with its pizzicato melody and arpeggiating bassline. From there, head to Transylvania, where a spooky minor-key tune builds to a quick descending series of syncopated chords. I may be imagining things here, but somehow even the basic square waves that comprise this track (and every track on the NES) seem to be tweaked for a ghostly shimmering effect. Listen closely to the chorus section, from 0:30 to 0:41 or so, to hear what I mean. (Interestingly, the beta version of DuckTales had a completely different track for Transylvania; it's got a less-melodic hook, but it's pretty cool on its own right, and features the same spoooooky square waves.)

But of course, the highlight of the DuckTales soundtrack and one of the greatest tracks on the NES is the theme from the Moon level. Evoking the bittersweet melodicism of Yasunori Mitsuda (think "To Far Away Times," the wistful track that concludes Chrono Trigger), this theme loops a celestial sixteenth-note pattern under a melody that stays just on the sweet side of cloying via a perfectly considered key change at 0:36. In its mixture of triumph and yearning, this classic song captures the spirit of wanderlust in a way its source material never could.

Previous OSTs:
Chrono Cross
Soul Blazer
Everyday Shooter
Rule of Rose
Treasure of the Rudras

OST: Chrono Cross

John Constantine — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Many weeks back, when 61 Frames Per Second was still being molded into what you’re reading now, the OST feature was conceived (at least by me) as nothing more than a venue for talking about Yasunori Mitsuda. Music was the source of my first real emotional engagement with videogames; the frenetic excitement of early Mega Man soundtracks and the somber coda of Mega Man 2’s ending, the desperate minor key of stage 5 in Bionic Commando. These melodies sparked my imagination, created a foothold for my experience with these works beyond the visceral rush of successfully playing them. But it was Mitsuda’s work in Chrono Trigger that made me, for the first time, physically put down the controller just to listen. It was "Guardia Castle", a booming march whose synthesized horns implied fading grandeur more than patriotism. I sat on the floor of my bedroom, eyes closed, and let the song loop for close to twenty minutes.

Mitsuda gravitates towards the same styles in his game soundtracks, specifically jazz fusion (Chrono Trigger), punctuated baroque symphony orchestration (Chrono Trigger, Xenosaga), and celtic (Xenogears, Tsugunai). But my personal favorite Mitsuda work, the soundtrack to Trigger’s divisive sequel Chrono Cross, is his most adventurous and strange. Chrono Cross’ soundtrack is a sonic mélange of every style Mitsuda composed in previously, alongside folk rock (“Radical Dreamers”) and Caribbean modes (“Fields of Time *Home World*”) that perfectly suit the game’s archipelago setting. As opposed to his previous work, whose compositions were typically based in jazz combo or symphony orchestra arrangements, the majority of songs in Cross are based in solo acoustic guitars (“Beginning of a Dream”), and acoustic guitar melodies layered with exotic instrumentation (“Guldove *Home World*”). Mitsuda didn’t completely turn away from the new age, “gamey” style of compositions found in his work on Trigger and Xenogears, but they are rarer and more elaborate in Cross (see the ominous, industrial “Chronopolis” or the tribal “Death Volcano”). As much of a stylistic departure as his work on Chrono Cross is, Mitsuda visits the same themes that typified his work in Chrono Trigger, songs that evoke a melancholic tenderness even at their most triumphant.

You can check out the full soundtrack at Galbadia Hotel right here.

Previous OSTs:
Soul Blazer
Everyday Shooter
Rule of Rose
Treasure of the Rudras