Japanese
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Game Music, Japanese, Reviews
Dragon’s Crown Pro – Soundtrack (Review)
Dragon’s Crown has a score done solely by Hitoshi Sakimoto (something you only get with Valkyria Chronicles nowadays) and it boasted a cultural and western score – much different than what I was expecting at the time. Personally, it was never one of my favourites – but I treated the news about the live orchestration as a chance for the music to redeem itself.
This time with a live orchestra, done by the same arrangers for FINAL FANTASY XII: The Zodiac Age’s revamping, does Dragon’s Crown’s score hold up?
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Featured, Game Music, Japanese
Matron Maestras – Junko Tamiya (Spotlight)
Capcom has produced and nurtured a variety of female composers over the past few decades. It’s not a huge exaggeration to say that they have been probably one of the most prolific in terms of having so many of their titles featuring women composing the music. The names Manami Matsumae and Yoko Shimomura are well known in the VGM community as legends for their work on the early classic Capcom titles, but there is a score of women who have their names listed as top composer credits in several well-known titles who deserve some spotlight as well for their accomplishments. Junko Tamiya certainly is one of them.
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Featured, Game Music, Japanese
Matron Maestras – Azusa Chiba (Spotlight)
This article is another entry into the Matron Maestras series, a collection of articles which focus on women composers in the vgm industry.
Today I’ll be talking about Azusa Chiba, one of the composers working for Hitoshi’s Sakimoto’s Basiscape – where her works are scattered across her colleagues – she tends to focus on orchestrating and arranging material for Basiscape. She’s also plays the piano, where she did some piano arrangements for Sakimoto’s work in Valkyria Chronicles and Dragon’s Crown. She has had plenty of time to shine in works like Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and Oh! Samurai Girls. (more…)
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Game Music, Japanese
Preview the Music of Octopath Traveler with Square-Enix Music
If you weren’t aware of it, Square-Enix’s new RPG that’s slated to be released later this year for the Nintendo Switch has a preview soundtrack available for listening and purchase. Project OCTOPATH TRAVELER, which currently has a demo out for the Nintendo Switch and is receiving praise for its design and depth, receives its soundtrack courtesy of composer Yasunori Nishiki (Frontier Gate, Gravity Daze 2). With the demo receiving high marks, having the game’s soundtrack released in a preview album is a smart move on the part of Square-Enix Music.
The project OCTOPATH TRAVELER Original Soundtrack Preview Version features 22 tracks from the game’s full music lineup, and is currently available for download via iTunes Japan. The game currently has a proposed release date of July, and hopefully a full soundtrack will be released shortly after.
For those of you who are enjoying the demo and don’t want to wait for the full game’s release to enjoy Yasunori Nishiki’s compositions from the game, this preview version should whet your appetite.
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Game Music, Japanese
Dark Souls Trilogy Box to Feature Soundtracks to All Three Games
January 12, 2018 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Dark Souls Trilogy Box to Feature Soundtracks to All Three Games Share this
With the announcement of a remaster of the original Dark Souls game, Namco Bandai Japan has followed up the news with an announcement of a Dark Souls Trilogy Box set to be available the day before the remaster’s release.
The Dark Souls Box will feature the full releases of the Dark Souls Remaster, Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin, and Dark Souls 3: The Fire Fades Edition (All of which include their respective DLC), item encyclopedias for each game, artwork, customized bookends, as the soundtracks to all three games in 2-CD format. The soundtracks for the games, composed by Motoi Sakuraba and Yuka Kitamura, were highly praised for their dark melodies and haunting battle themes, such as “Gwyn, Lord of Cinder”, “Dark Sun Gwyndolin” and “Artorias the Abysswalker”. (All which were given tribute in Dark Souls 3)
The Dark Souls Box will be released on May 24th, the day before the retail release of the Dark Souls Remaster for multiple consoles. The current price is 49,800 yen, which equates to roughly to just under $450.00USD. A pricey piece to add to any Dark Souls collector’s showcase, but definitely a draw for bigtime fans.
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Game Music, Japanese
Square-Enix to Release Seiken Densetsu 25th Anniversary Orchestra Concert CD
January 3, 2018 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Square-Enix to Release Seiken Densetsu 25th Anniversary Orchestra Concert CD Share this
Last year saw a fantastic performance honoring the 25 anniversary of the Seiken Densetsu series of games. The Seiken Densetsu 25th Anniversary Orchestra Concert was held in Tokyo on March 24th, 2017 sponsored by Square-Enix, and now after several months, the concert will be released in physical format.The Seiken Densetsu series, also known as the Mana series of games, features several games that started with Final Fantasy Adventure, continued with the wildly popular Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3, and continued through several games, including a remake of Secret of Mana later this year. The Seiken Densetsu 25th Anniversary Orchestra Concert features performances of 12 songs from five of the games in the series.
Part 1
1. Rising Sun
(Composition: Kenji Ito / Arrangement: Kosuke Yamashita)2. “Endless Battlefield” ~ “The Boy Heads for the Wilderness” ~ “Swivel” (Medley)
(Composition: Kenji Ito, Hiroki Kikuta / Arrangement: Naoya Iwaki)3. “Legend of Mana ~Title Theme~” ~ “Earth Painting” (Medley)
(Composition: Yoko Shimomura / Arrangement: Natsumi Kameoka)4. “Mana’s Tale” ~ “Crisis” (Medley)
(Composition: Kenji Ito, Hiroki Kikuta / Arrangement: Sachiko Miyano)Part 2
5. “Angel’s Fear” ~ “Meridian Child” (Medley)
(Composition: Hiroki Kikuta / Arrangement: Naoya Iwaki)6. City of Flickering Destruction
(Composition: Yoko Shimomura / Arrangement: Natsumi Kameoka)7. “In Sorrow” ~ “Let Your Thoughts Ride On Knowledge” (Medley)
(Composition: Kenji Ito/ Arrangement: Naoya Iwaki)Part 3
8. “Pain the Universe” ~ “Black Soup” (Medley)
(Composition: Yoko Shimomura, Hiroki Kikuta / Arrangement: Sachiko Miyano)9. “The Fool’s Dance” ~ “The Final Decisive Battle” (Medley)
(Composition: Kenji Ito / Arrangement: Kosuke Yamashita)10. Meridian Festival
(Composition: Hiroki Kikuta / Arrangement: Kosuke Yamashita)Encore
11. “Hometown Domina” ~ “Places of Soul” ~ “Hometown Domina” (Medley)
(Composition: Yoko Shimomura / Arrangement: Natsumi Kameoka)12. Hightension Wire
(Composition: Hiroki Kikuta / Arrangement: Sachiko Miyano)Square-Enix and Music 4 Gamer are now bringing the concert recordings to physical format with a CD release, to be released January 24th. The CD is currently available for pre-order through Play-Asia and Amazon Japan, as well as through the Square-Enix store.
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Chip Music, Game Music, Japanese
Massive 147-track Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary Blu-ray Detailed
December 21, 2017 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on Massive 147-track Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary Blu-ray Detailed Share this
Another piece of Square Enix’s multi-year Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary celebration is drawing closer to release and there’s new musical details to be shared. Releasing January 24th, 2018 in Japan is “FINAL FANTASY 30th Anniversary Tracks 1987-2017“, a double Blu-ray, audio-visual anthology of 147 songs from the fifteen numbered entries in the series. Last week Square Enix revealed the full tracklist, conveniently organized by title, which you can dive into on their official site. And this week they posted a preview video showing off the visual treatment you can expect alongside all that music.
Another newly announced bonus of the Blu-ray bundle is that you’ll be able to copy MP3s of all the music off of the discs to a PC or wirelessly beam them to your phone, laptop, or other handheld devices. I feel like that’s an incredibly generous move for Square who could easily have put out a separate CD version for sale alongside the Blu-ray.
Sadly, this is another Japan-exclusive product but if you’re up to the challenge of international shipping you can pre-order the roughly $60 package from Square’s shop, Amazon Japan, or Play-Asia.
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