The people (and by people, I mean heroes) at Aksys Games who brought us Blazblue: Calamity Trigger are now giving even more awesome niche Japanese goodies to North America. In this case, it is the first officially localized title from shoot-’em-up (or “shmup”) developer CAVE. Said game is Deathsmiles, available on Xbox 360 since the end of June.
If you can still find it, the Limited Edition release of this game comes with a bonus pressed soundtrack CD. Aksys is usually pretty good about their soundtrack releases (you’ll remember Blazblue came more complete than either Japanese release, and Record of Agarest War came with that hilarious porn-groove track). In this case, though, we were scared. The CD only had 15 tracks, but the OST printed in Japan was 20+ tracks. What gives?
Well, here’s the deal. They didn’t give us a reprint of the Japanese OST. No, instead, they gave us the Deathsmiles Premium Arrange Album, featuring arrangements from a variety of composers. Though people will argue both sides of it, I have more often heard people ranting (happily) about the arranged album than the OST, though both are great.
So they’ve done us a huge favor by giving us access to a physical print version of this excellent, hard-to-find Japanese arranged CD. Not to mention an excellent game. Our thoughts on the arrangements just after the jump! (more…)
