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Super mario rpg composer notes12/2/2023 What are you doing with your life exactly? Hey, do you want to feel old? Miki Higashino, who composed the music for this game, was 17 when she wrote the soundtrack. Keino invented this concept, just as she invented the melodic video game leitmotif and dynamic music. But brand new concepts tend to start out simply. Like with Pac-Land, this is a very simple version of that concept. The chord progression always begins: C - Bb - Ab - G (all major chords). Every level BGM in the game is built from the same pattern, with different melodies and waveforms. Now with Dragon Buster, she expands that concept, unifying the soundtrack around a single harmonic idea. She is the one who invented the concept of a unified soundtrack, based on a single theme, with 1984’s Pac-Land. This is the fourth time Yuriko Keino has appeared on this list. Not only that, but it does something no other game had done yet. ![]() Dragon Buster inspired a genre of games which would outmatch it in every way. ![]() Excuse plots are still common in adventure games but this one is especially bare-bones. The poster above is gorgeous, but the in-game graphics look bad, even for 1985 (I posted the best pic I could find). Whatever you do, don’t click the link and download these tracks, because that would be against the law.Īnd now, a reminder that this a list dedicated to finding the best game audio, not the best overall games. You can’t even listen to this soundtrack without going to a website where you must illegally download it. I don’t even remember what I was going to say about Commando. It’s aggravating to see these corporations be just concerned enough about their works to punish anyone who breaks the slightest rule, but not concerned enough to make them accessible. But where can you go to get access to the music without stepping on someone’s toes? Every rights holder for every retro game has plenty of opportunity to make it legal to listen to the OSTs, and every one of them willfully refuses to do so. The owners of that music (who are never the composers) are well within their rights to remove offending material. Oh, I’m very aware that OST uploads for retro games are almost unanimously unauthorized. Now this write-up is going to be a complaint about how corporations handle the rights to their older titles. But then the OST of Commando got removed from YouTube and the account was scrubbed from existence and I can’t find anyone else posting it. My original write-up here spoke about the style of noise prevalent in arcades and so on. I haven’t forgotten anything! I’m well aware your favorite might not be on the list, and that’s because I don’t think it should be on here. I also want to anticipate any comments, from both my fans, along the lines of “hey cool list but you forgot game X.” Besides being an extremely obnoxious comment, it’s also not true. Is this whole introduction my excuse for why I’ve made the most obvious choice for the winner of 1985? Maybe. There are plenty of hidden gems, obscure games with beautiful soundtracks, but are they worthy of a top-ten? Am I so dedicated to being unpredictable or a contrarian that I’m going to claim that the unknown titles actually were a bigger deal than the ones that completely dominated the culture? It’s a popular hot take to do an “actually, the popular thing is bad and this obscure thing is better, and you’re better if you agree,” to the point where it’s almost a hotter take to just say the most culturally dominant art happens to also be good. Nevertheless I’m confident when I say I don’t think I am unfairly leaving them off if no one’s ever heard of them. It’s possible I leave games off the list even if they are great games or have great music. ![]() Some video games have been completely lost to time, and still more were technically discoverable but I just ran out of time on the search. ![]() All of this ends up being something we like to call “work,” and plenty of it.Īs much as I want to be extremely fair and give every title an equal shot regardless of notoriety or popularity, notoriety and popularity are factors which contribute to the “greatness” of a piece of music. Unless I can immediately tell it’s a stinker, I like to listen multiple times, take notes, watch playthroughs, and look up facts about the game’s development and its composer. Then I compile those into my own list, look up soundtracks, and listen to them all. So the first thing I do is some very in-depth research (five minutes on google) in order to find all the titles which were released in the given year. I want to evaluate as many titles as humanly possible. You may be wondering: how do I decide what counts as the “best of the best” for each year? Well, I’m wondering that myself.
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