You know that I’m completely in love with Mega Man 9. I’ve been begging everyone I’ve come in contact with at Capcom to please confirm a soundtrack release for the game, and it’s finally here.
Famitsu has confirmed that the Rockman 9: The Ambition’s Revival!! Original Soundtrack will hit Japan on September 12 with an arranged soundtrack to follow soon after. The composers have still not been revealed, but from what I’ve gathered from Capcom, it doesn’t seem likely that they’re going to be telling us any time soon. It appears as though they want to keep it somewhat of a secret, similar to how composer credits were handled with classic Mega Man titles on the NES.
Many know first hand that the music from Concrete Man and Plug Man’s stages are fantastic, and I’m confident that the 35 tracks on the album will be equally retromazing.
Are you excited about the release of Mega Man 9? Will we be seeing credits like Bunbun and Yuukichan’s Papa in the composer credits?
[via Nobuooo]
Tags: Do Want, Mega Man 9, News, Videogame
I don’t think they intend to keep the composer secret as such. Rather they feel the composer’s name is not well-known and that it’s better to say ‘someone from Inti Creates’ instead. I published the designer’s comments about the music here:
http://www.squareenixmusic.com/musicnews2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1214583084&archive=&start_from=&ucat=4&
I know they’ve said somebody from Zero and somebody from the old 8-bit titles. I posted about that before, but when I was talking to the US producer at Capcom, he said they probably weren’t going to say anything, and we talked about the old credits with Fish Man and Bunbun, etc. So yeah, maybe the reason is that the composers aren’t well known, but if that conveniently works into tradition, that’s cool too.
Did he say Zero as in the game or Zero as in the series? If it’s the former, then it’s Ippo Yamada. All the NES composers have left Capcom and the only one still in the business is Manami Matsumae. From the quote that I posted, it seemed to indicate a NES sound designer rather than composer was working on the project. However, did they explicitly say the NES composer to you?
The actual “quote” comes from a Nintendo Power interview with Inafune. They asked about 8-bit music, and he said something along the lines of, “We’re going to have an 8-bit soundtrack composed by one of the people who worked on the Mega Man Zero series as well as somebody who worked on the 8-bit titles.” I’ll have to look up the exact wording when I get home.
The Capcom reps didn’t say anything specifically. They said, “What Inafune said is all we can say for now. I don’t think they’re going to be announcing the names specifically.” Honestly, I don’t think mainstream gamers are into the music and the names of the composers enough to warrant Capcom making a specific statement. Perhaps I’ll try to contact them for more information.
I think that’s the quote I posted on that news article actually. We’ll have to see if there are any credits in the soundtrack release.
As Chris of Square Enix Online mentions in his blog, “the composer might be Ippo Yamada who has worked on the Mega Man Zero and ZX titles.”
Source:
http://www.squareenixmusic.com/musicnews2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1214583084&archive=&start_from=&ucat=4&)
…and so, I did a little bit of digging, and discovered this little morsel on the net of a scan of the liner notes of the CD release. And it does say it’s him under the sound programming.
Source:
http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/3501/megaman9noteskr1.jpg
So eureka! It’s him! At least now we know..
I just wanted to add, after putting 2&2 together from the names I gathered on the CD cover…
Aside from Ippo Yamada, there’s Ryo Kawakami, Yu Shimoda, and Hiroki Isogai, all of them from the Inti Creates “Sound Create Unit.”
Ryo Kawakami is the mixer in ZX as well, and has worked with Ippo Yamada on a lot of his other projects. Kawakami, on his own, is quite a well-known techno mixer in the circuit, so that makes him doubley cool.
Yu Shimoda is mixer/arranger, but seems to have had this recent job as his first major video game work.
BUT…
Hiroki Isogai only completes the foursome further, since all 4 of them were the team behind the Mega Man ZX game on DS.
Source:
http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/3501/megaman9noteskr1.jpg
http://vgmdb.net
So again, Eureka! At least the music shows that Capcom is prepared to give Mega Man 9 some top-treatment!