Jam of the Day: Magma / Ice Spawn Boss Theme by Lawrence Schwedler and James Phillipsen (Metroid Prime Hunters Soundtrack)

I’m really not crazy about Metroid Prime Hunters. Between the overly FPS feel and the constant boss fights with stationary pillars, I found it a hard game to love. However, some of its music kind of fascinates me.

It isn’t that it’s especially remarkable, but that some of it is so different from what you’d typically hear in a Metroid game. This is mostly found in the drum tracks, which seem to take inspiration from more popular electronica styles. In fact, this theme in particular almost seems like it could be a song by The Prodigy.

Jam of the Day: Warlock Battle by GUIDO (Chrono Trigger Arranged Version: The Brink of Time)

With a bazillion remixes of Yasunori Mitsuda’s beloved Chrono Trigger score in existence, it’s nice that GUIDO (Hiroshi Hata and Kalta Ohtsuki) took the road less traveled in their arrangements featured on The Brink of Time. If you’ve never heard the album, you should really seek it out.

Warlock Battle is my favorite track on there and it takes some interesting creative liberties with the Magus battle theme. Everytime I hear the guitar “laugh” about 47 seconds in, I can’t help but smile. It gets pretty insane at the end and honestly the last 30 seconds or so completely loses me, but the rest is so solid that it’s hard to complain.

Jam of the Day: Labyrinth IV - Cherry Tree Bridge by Takahiro Izutani feat. Rebecca Evans (Sekaiju no MeiQ² *shoou no seihai* Super Arrange Version)

I’ve been listening to a lot of the Nier soundtrack lately which features Emiko Rebecca Evans’ vocal work quite heavily. Looking for more things she’s contributed to led me to the Etrian Odyssey (Sekaiju no MeiQ) arranged soundtracks.

The original soundtracks themselves are composed by Yuzo Koshiro whose music I tend to enjoy quite a bit. Takahiro Izutan’s remix definitely has a much more “trippy” quality to it. But as I write this during my last sleepy moments before I go to bed, it just seems right to post.

Jam of the Day: What You Need (DIGITAL REMAKIN’ TRAX) by Hideki Naganuma (SONIC RUSH Original Groove Rush)

Say what you will about modern Sonic soundtracks, but don’t speak of them in the same breath as the Sonic Rush OST (unless of course your saying “Wow, the Sonic Rush OST is much better than other modern Sonic soundtracks!”).

I’ve already made it clear how much I love Hideki Naganuma and Sonic Rush is no exception. It may not be traditional Sonic music, but it’s great. In fact, most of it (despite being a bit faster paced) would fit quite well in a Jet Set Radio game.

Jam of the Day: Give Me All Your Love -All my love- by Takeharu Ishimoto (Subarashiki Kono Sekai + The World Ends with You)

The World Ends with You is a very unique experience. This JRPG took place in Japan’s fashion district of Shibuya. The whole game had a heavy emphasis on syle and the music was no exception.

Rather than the typical soundtrack you’d here in a JRPG, TWEWY used JPop, JRock, and even some Hip Hop in both its field and battle music not unlike the Persona series. It created a really fresh feel that really fit with the game’s setting. The music was all composed by Takeharu Ishimoto, but featured a variety of vocalists.

The US version featured a few different versions of songs as well as some entirely new songs. An album was released containing the additional songs and variations from the US release as well as arranged tracks. “Give Me All Your Love” is one of my favorite arranged tracks, featuring vocal work by WAKAKO

Jam of the Day: Angelic Land by Koichi Sugiyama (Symphonic Suite Dragon Quest IX Hoshizora no Mamoribito)

Today I went to a Dragon Quest IX event to get my hands on some sweet downloadable maps. Because of this, I felt it an appropriate opportunity to share a track from the arrange album of Dragon Quest IX, performed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.

The Dragon Quest music has a very consistent feel between each game in the series. For better or worse, each new score Koichi Sugiyama works on feels like it could be put on the same album as one of the old scores without you even noticing.

Like Akira Toriyama’s unique art style, Koichi Sugiyama’s music is essential to the identity of Dragon Quest. While I don’t listen to Sugiyama’s music very often outside of the games, I have a great sense of respect for the signature sound he has. Anybody else doing music for a numbered Dragon Quest game would just be awkward just as anybody else handling the art direction instead of Toriyama would be.

Jam of the Day: Ogre Claw by III (ZX Tunes - Rockman Zero Soundtrack)

An interesting thing about Inti Creates is that for every Mega Man game they develop, they make an arrange album featuring every song from the soundtrack. It’s quite a big undertaking and it’s both surprising and awesome that they’re so consistent with it.

I was a big fan of the Mega Man ZX series. Opinions seem to be mixed on the 2 games, but I thought their blending of X Series controls, Metroid “light” map structure, and sweet transformation powers were a winning combination. Of course, I won’t deny the games had their faults, especially the first.

One interesting aspect were the missions with objectives other than the normal “get to the end and fight a boss.” One in particular had you dashing your way through burning buildings as you searched for survivors to save. “Ogre Claw”, originally composed by Masaki Suzuki, was the song that played during this section. The high energy rock/electronica hybrid really fit with the urgency of the situation. While I like sequel’s soundtrack better overall, it doesn’t have “Ogre Claw”.

Jam of the Day: A Tragic Marionette by Tenpei Sato (Makai Senki Disgaea Arrange Soundtrack)

The context behind this song is incredibly odd. Here we have a beautiful, five and a half minute track by Tenpei Sato, complete with vocal work by Yayoi Yura, and what is it used for? A “Game Over” screen. That’s right, this song is used in a situation that most people skip past before the music even BEGINS!

It’s really a shame, because I love this song. The first time I ever heard it, I had already reached Disgaea’s “Game Over” screen numerous times before. It wasn’t until I set the controller down after losing that I realized what lay in store for me. Letting the screen sit there for a full five and a half minutes, I listened to the song, fell in love with it, then immediately began to wonder how many Disgaea players even know it’s there.

While this is technically the “Arranged Version”, it is almost exactly the same as the in-game version. It’s even the same length. The only substantial difference is that this version uses slightly better sounding instruments.

Jam of the Day: Ring Tower by Yasunori Mitsuda (Soma Bringer Original Soundtrack)

Let me get this part out of the way: Yasunori Mitsuda is my favorite videogame composer of all time. I love his stuff and try to seek out all of it. That has led to some interesting finds.

Soma Bringer is an action RPG for the DS that never made it outside of Japan. All of its music is composed by Yasunori Mitsuda. “Ring Tower” sounds like it could’ve easily been dungeon music for Chrono Cross. The shuffle groove, the amount of range on the bass, the chromatic percussion, the acoustic guitar, the occasional staccato chorus bits… it’s all working together to make that signature sound I love so much.