61 Frames Per Second : yoko shimomura

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

Up All Night: Parasite Eve

John Constantine — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Welcome back to Up All Night, the only place on the internet where you can be subjected to the trashiest videogame fun you can have at 2am on a Saturday night! What’s that you say? You can get that all over the internet? Well, screw you, pal. The difference here is that these are games you’re only supposed to play after drinking two liters of peppermint schnapps out of a Hello Kitty sippy-cup and after you tried to convince that chick at the bar that you’re related to Tom Selleck. Games so bad, they’re really bad. But awesome. To celebrate the franchise’s impending return on the PSP, we’re taking a look at the 1998 dollop of joy known as Parasite Eve. It’s the story of New York City cop and babe Aya Brea fighting a psychotic opera singer named Eve who’s leading a revolution on New Year’s Eve in 1997. The Shyamalan-worthy twist is that the revolutionaries are mitochondria! That’s right, cells are evil in Parasite Eve. They turn normal folk and rats into disgusting monstrosities or orange goo, depending on their mood.

Truth to tell, Parasite Eve was and is unique. First, it’s actually an adaptation of a novel by Hideaki Sena. Second, its characters were designed by Tetsuya Nomura and they all look like normal human beings, i.e. nobody wears an inordinate number of belts. Third, it was Squaresoft’s first explicit attempt at making a “cinematic RPG”, a game that openly aped filmic storytelling. Parasite Eve’s CG cutscenes were given top billing when the game came out, cementing the gameplay-into-flashy-cutscene narrative presentation pioneered in Final Fantasy VII.

Why is Parasite Eve Up All Night worthy? The gore-laden-monsters-in-Manhattan story and protagonist with secret powers (and an even more secret past!) are enough on their own, but the haphazard action-RPG play puts it over the top. Cheesecake as it is, though, I have a lot of love for this game. It doesn’t play great, but it had a lot of great ideas (game adaptations of novels? Awesome.) Also, Yoko Shimomura’s soundtrack is unbelievable, a great mix of down-tempo techno and creepy-as-sin orchestral jams. For anyone out there with a PS2 or PS3, track down a copy before the new sequel drives eBay prices into the upper atmosphere.

More Up All Night:

Trojan
Dark Sector
Ex-Mutants
Nightmare Creatures
Bad Dudes
P.N. 03

Related links:

Yoko Shimomura Gets Commemorated, Orchestrated
Square-Enix: Reeling in the Devotees, Playing the Console Market With Aplomb

Yoko Shimomura Gets Commemorated, Orchestrated

John Constantine — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

In the past twenty years, as a member of Capcom’s Alph Lyle band (the team behind Street Fighter 2’s immortal jams), an in-house composer at Square, and as a freelancer, Yoko Shimomura has arranged some of gaming’s most evocative melodies, songs that enrich their contextual housing every bit as much as character or play design. While many game soundtracks are incapable of transcending their source, Shimomura is one of those rare artists whose work is appreciable beyond the game. I have only played through Parasite Eve once in the past decade, but I still regularly listen to Shimomura’s score of operatic electronica and discordant tone poems. In a recent interview with Music4Games, Shimomura discussed her recently released best-of collection Drammatica, which features full orchestra performances of her work on Legend of Mana, among others. The interview’s brief but still an excellent read for anyone interested in the art of composing for videogames.

Our thanks to Joystiq for pointing us to the interview.