Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 86: The music of Castlevania II, Final Fantasy Tactics, Etrian Odyssey & more

Episode Date: February 12, 2017

Our second Retronauts Radio looks at notable retro-themed game music releases for February: Castlevania II, a Final Fantasy Tactics tribute, Revenge of Shinobi, Etrian Odyssey remixes, and a ton of SEGA jams! Art by Jon Stachewicz. Be sure to visit our site, which includes a complete listing of this episode's musical selections and where to find them, at Retronauts.com. And if you'd like to send a few bucks our way to help support this weekly show, please head on over to our Patreon page!

This week on Retronauts, rock out with your walkout. Hi, everyone, and welcome to episode to episode 86 of Retronauts, also known as Retronauts Radio, Episode 2, the February Roundup. I'm Jeremy Parrish, and this is our second episode in which I'm rounding up recent retro gaming music. I tried a sample episode about a month ago, and it went over surprisingly well. There was, you know, some criticism, some feedback, but for the most part, people seem to like what I put together.

So I've taken all that feedback into consideration and basically adjusting the episode structure and format to accommodate a little bit of that feedback. but some people wanted another host, some people didn't. So I think from time to time I'll bring someone else in to talk, but sometimes I won't. This will be me flying solo again. But I will try to incorporate a little bit more time for the music, so you can listen to samples of some of the tunes that I'm talking about.

But I'll continue to talk about the music that I'm featuring, the games they're from, the composers, et cetera, et cetera. Try to add a little more context. So it's not just me playing music for you, because there's a lot of shows like that already, and people seem to respond really well to the fact that I did try to add a little more context and history to the music that I'm talking about. So without further ado, I'd like to jump into some of the highlights of the past month

in retro gaming music. To start with this month, I'd like to talk about an LP release of a favorite game series and soundtrack that just came out from Mondo Records, the Castlevania 2, Simon's Quest soundtrack. This is the second Castlevania effort from Mondo Records, or Mondo Collectibles, Mondo T's. That's who it is, Mondo T's. And the first one, I actually, I came down pretty hard on it in my review at U.S. Gamer. there were some issues with that particular release that I wasn't super happy about. For one thing, the album was mastered, really hot, so it was really, really loud compared to other records. And, you know, that's a mastering choice by the record company, but I don't know, it really stuck out to me that it was so loud. Probably a bigger issue is the fact that record

a CD, and it turns out that Konami provides master tapes for Mondo, and the master tape they provided just happened to be the one that had been used in, I think, Dracula Best, but it included, you know, some sound effects in some of the tracks, and it was just kind of distracting. I'm happy to say that their release of Simon's Quest's soundtrack is much stronger. Like the first Castlevania LP they released, this is actually not an LP, it's an E.P. It's a a 10-inch 45-R-PM record. So it's a little longer than a 45-R-PM single, but it's not actually a full record.

It's about 18 or 19 minutes worth of music, and they've actually taken a really interesting approach to the way they've broken up the music on this record, which I really actually like. Because we are talking about an NES game that only has 10 minutes of unique music without excessive looping, there's only so much you can ring out of a single NES game soundtrack.

I'm sure some people would have liked to have seen them put multiple games onto a single record, but they've decided to do them as individual releases, and that's fine. In this case, I think they've actually justified the decision to go with just a single game, because what they've done is they've included two versions of the Castlevania 2 soundtrack. It's not mastered to be quite as hot as the first Castlevania release, which is nice. There are no sound effects, but instead what you get is on side A, the NES game soundtrack, and on side B, you get the soundtrack to the original Japanese Famicom Disc System release. I'm sure most people listening to this know that the family computer disc system add-on to the Japanese equivalent of the NES,

added an extra sound channel to the console, and a lot of games took advantage of this by making the most of that extra sound channel to enrich the music. Sometimes you just got extra sound effects, but sometimes you got kind of a unique, extra, almost orchestral quality. Not really, I mean, it's very much chip tune sounding, but it changes the texture and the nature of the music. Simon's Quest is one of those games. But in any case, the game originally came out on a disk system,

and they had to modify it when it came to the NES. And I think it's a matter of debate over which version of the soundtrack is better. Some people prefer the NES version, and some people prefer the more bell-like sound quality of the Famicom Disc System version. The next thing about this release from Mondo is that it allows you to listen to both, and decide which you prefer. Castlevania 2 didn't have quite as many all-time classic, you know, iconic musical tracks as the original Castlevania. But this is the game that gave us bloody tears. And that appears here in both the NES and disk system versions, and they're both great.

You also get some memorable other tracks, like the evening theme, I can't remember its name, or the theme inside the mansion. A lot of the tunes are a little more downbeat, not quite as energetic as the original Castlevania, and that's to be expected because this is, after all, a more adventuresome game. Not as much of a straight linear platformer as Castlevania, but more of an exploratory adventure with RPG elements. So it kind of fits. It's not as good a listen as the original Castlevania, but it's still a classic, and Mondo definitely did better justice to the source material this time around than they did to the first Castlevania.

Mando has several other Castlevania soundtracks on the way and I'm really looking forward to the next release of Castlevania 3 because I'm really hoping that they knock it out of the park and include both the NES versions and the Famicom versions because that game of course in Japan came with a special

sound chip that made the music much better, not just a single extra channel of music but several. It's just a completely different soundtrack. So I don't know if they're going to fit that all onto like a single, two sides of a single LP, uh, 12 incher or if it's going to be two records, but in any case, it's one that I'm looking for it to. As with other Mondo records, they didn't go with the original Japanese packaging art or any source material from the Konami archives for this.

It has all-new original art, which actually is pretty nice. And I love the gatefold interior of the record. Yeah, even though it's a 10-inch 45 mini LP that only has about 18 minutes of music on it, it still comes in a gatefold. And the gatefold has a nice hand-drawn map of Transylvania that resembles the one that appeared in Nintendo Power Backer. in the day. So there's a nice little nostalgic touch there. It's a good, it's a good element. I also will maybe remind you of a Castlevania Order of Ecclesia, which kind of did the same thing, the same landscape view. So it's a pretty solid release.

I think it's about 20 bucks, a little on the pricey side, but it's nice as a collector's item and also as a good, solid vinyl release of a classic video game soundtrack. I don't want to make this Retronauts radio series all about LP music because that's a niche market and it can be kind of expensive. So the second Retro Gaming music news of note for February that I'd like to highlight is the fact that for those of you who don't want to spend any money on listening to game music, you now have the option to listen to nearly 50 CDs worth of Sega music on Spotify. A couple of weeks ago, Sega just randomly put 49 CDs worth of music on Spotify, and you can listen to that for free with advertisements, or if you have a premium subscription, you can listen to it without ads.

In any case, there's a whole lot of music here, and some of it is some of the all-time great video game music. Now, you may not be as much into, like, the music to Gunblade New York or Virtua Fighter 3, but I think whatever your tastes in music, something that Sega has dumped on there will definitely work for you. There's a few mid-80s arcade and I think master system games. You can listen to Alex Kidd. You can listen to Galaxy Force 2, Super Hang-on, Golden Axe, Fantasy Zone.

So there's a lot of stuff that definitely is digging way back into the past, It's very like pure chip tune type music. So that's kind of a surprising addition for Spotify, but it's nice. It's got a retro flavor to it. On the more contemporary side, there's also a bunch of sonic soundtracks, most of which are more contemporary sonics. Sonic Unleash, Sonic Rush, Sonic. Rush Adventure, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. None of the vintage Sonic games or Sonic CD, which is a shame,

but I'm sure there are some Sonic fans will be happy to hear Sonic 2006 music. Someone's got to like it, somewhere. Also from the same era, there's Shinobi and its sequel Kunoichi. You don't get the original vintage Shinobi soundtracks, the chip tune, arcade games, or Sega Genesis games, but the PS2 games are available to listen to. So there's a pretty great selection of music. The ones that I would personally like to highlight are the Outrun soundtrack. There's three CDs worth of Outrun music. Thank you. And this is a, I believe, 2014 release of Outrun.

So it basically spans the entire series. I don't think it has Outrun coast to coast on it. But the original Outruns, you know, the original arcade soundtrack for Outrun is supplemented by the original compositions that were made for the 3D version of the game, for Nintendo 3DS. So that's, you know, those are pretty recent compositions. So you get the original chip tunes, the sort of, you've got Outrunners, you have Outrun 2. So you get a lot of, you know, a lot of different versions of magical sound shower. But that's not, that's nothing to complain about.

I mean, magical sound shower was great. And then in addition to the original incarnation of Magical SoundShower, you have the Outrunners version, which is kind of weird. But then you had the Outrun 2 version, which is great. It's maybe actually better or at least more laid back than the original Chiptoon arcade edition. But it's all a lot of great music. Outrun, you know, really kind of set a different tone for racing games by by creating this sort of chill, laid back, cruising through the tropics atmosphere with its racing style. That wasn't really a vibe you got from a lot of racing games back then.

And not even now either. It's kind of the defining feature of Outrun. So having that soundtrack on here for free to listen to at any time is great. Another great one is actually kind of a duology, Jet Set Radio and Future, and Sonic Rush. and Rush Adventure. Let's look at the fun. Both of those games have soundtracks

Contracts largely primarily composed by Hideki Naganooma, who really completely upended the idea of what game music could be. JetSat Radio, it sounded like nothing else before it. I mean, you had a little bit of, you know, rap or R&B or urban-influenced music at the time. But he took it to the next step by adding back in a lot of Japanese influences. So it's kind of like this really fast-paced, very creative, very sample-heavy hip-hop influence. just rock beat music. It's hard to describe because it throws together a lot of different influences, but it's one of the great video game soundtracks,

and it absolutely, it's just perfect for Jet Set Radio with its scenes of dystopian urban futures and kids who fight the power by spraying graffiti across the city. A great game and a great soundtrack, it's definitely worth a listen. Nagano also composed the soundtrack to Sonic Rush, which, uh, it's not what you expect from a Sonic game. It has a ton of pop vocals in it. It has that same sort of hip-hop influenced electric rap and rock beat. Japan-tinted take on the Beastie Boys, if you want to call it that.

to a game that could have just been, you know, another 2D Sonic game. But I think the combination of the 2.5D visuals and the amazing soundtrack by Naganooma really helps set Sonic Rush apart and continue to make it one of the more unique entries in the Sonic series. It's also with checking out the soundtrack for Rhythm Thief and the Emperor's Treasure, which is one of the more overlooked games that Sega has produced. It came out in, I want to say, 2012 for Nintendo 3DS, and, you know, it's a rhythm game, hence the title, but it has a unique setting. It's kind of like a classical Paris mixed with...

modern day nightclubs. And as a result, it has a soundtrack that perfectly fits that. It really captures both elements of that. There's like Baroque chamber music, lots of harpsichord and, you know, small string arrangements. And then there's electronic beats, there are vocal lines, there's accordions, it's just, it's all over the place. But it all segues really well, and when you listen to the soundtrack, even isolated from the game, there's a lot of unique music put together for the narrative sequences of the game. And then those all kind of blend into the subsequent game portions, which all are tied back into the narrative. So there is a really nice sense of flow, despite the disparate sounds of the soundtrack.

It could have been just a complete creative mess. But instead of that, what you have is a very bold and very daring collection of music that I strongly recommend you check out. And I believe you can play Rhythm Thief. It might be kind of hard to find on 3DS these days. But if it's not available on the e-shop, you can definitely find it on, I want to say iOS, maybe on Steam. I know there have been a couple of conversions, ports of it. So even though it was kind of obscure and is destined to be a sort of cult classic,

I think you can kind of get in on the, maybe not the ground floor here, but, you know, second floor at least, to say, oh yeah, I liked that game back before it was, you know, an expensive, hard-defined retro gaming classic. Now I mentioned that among the the Sega Spotify dump was not included any classic Shinobi games, which is a real shame because those games had amazing soundtracks. But fortunately this month, data disks stepped up to fill the void. I talked about them last month with Panzer Dragoon, and their immediate follow-up to Panzer Dragoon is Revenge of Shinobi, or in Japan, the Super Shinobi.

The first Genesis outing for the first Genesis outing for the first Genesis outing for the Shinobi series, and a game kind of regarded as an all-time classic. I think it's better known these days for the sort of hard-defined original release of the game that included some bootleg licensed characters, or actually unlicensed characters, like a very obvious fake Batman, Spider-Man, Godzilla. And apparently Sega got in trouble for those and had to go back and change up the sprites for those bad guys. So they weren't quite so obviously ripped off from DC Comics and Toho Toe, whoever owns Godzilla, but it's still a great game, and the soundtrack is a big part of the reason why.

It's a great, kind of, you know, for the time, very unique set of music. It's like a high-tempo ninja techno music. It's part rock music. It's part traditional Japanese music. It's hard to describe because it doesn't quite sound like any other genre. I can only describe it as video game music. It combines genre and influences. and technology in a way that doesn't quite work as any other format.

Like, it's a video game. It's video game music. It is the music that you hear as you control a ninja fighting Spider-Man in a Japanese city. I don't know. In any case, it's great stuff. It's really fresh and extremely energetic. It's a great release from DataDiscs. As always, they put a lot of effort into capturing the best and most authentic version of the game

using different versions of the Genesis hardware to capture the soundtrack. The music, of course, was composed by Uzo Koshiro, the composer who had come to Sega after leaving Falcons. and composing the E's series music, he would go on to compose Streets of Rage, of course. And in a lot of ways, Revenge of Shinobi feels almost like, you know, it's a very early Koshero soundtrack, one of the first games he worked on after leaving Falcom. And it really kind of feels in a lot of ways

like a rough draft for Streets of Rage. The track of the Dark City in particular, it really feels like an early draft of some of the music that you hear in Streets of Rage. It's like electronic beat ragtime music. Really an odd mish. Really an odd mishmash of genres. but it's very distinct, not necessarily what you would think.

Oh, yes, this is the music of a ninja fighting through modern Japan, but it works. It's generally a light, almost a danceable vibe to the game. It goes pretty easy on the base. It's much more in the high registers. And you have some really kind of, you know, like I said, very classic video game tracks. But then you have things like the track Make Me Dance, which is like a, it's almost a funky spy theme. It's really hard to describe. It just has a unique sensibility to it,

and you can really see Koshiro beginning to experiment with different genres and styles here after doing the sort of orchestral rock thing that Falcom was known for. Here he's going more for electronic music, for kind of like club-influenced beats, and it's not necessarily what you would think of as ninja music, but it's great. as a 45 RPM disc. It's a 12-inch disc. It has about, I don't know, like 25 minutes of music total. So it's longer than Castlevania 2.

The interesting thing I discovered about this, just kind of by accident, is that if you accidentally play it at 33 RPM, it sounds like a more traditional ninja action game. You slow it down, it becomes like, I don't know, like Ninja 5-0. But you should definitely listen to it in its proper intended format because that's how Kosciro composed it. As with all-data-disc releases,

The packaging for this is superb. It comes in a nice heavy sleeve, printed with the original American box art, you know, in 12 inches on the front. It has an obi on the side that kind of gives you the information about the mastering and about the tracks and the ownership of it. The inner sleeve, instead of being like a lightweight, you know, one of those plastic mylar sleeves or thin paper, it's actually printed on very heavy paper stock

with a lot of original character illustrations from the, from the game, dredged up from the Sega archives, and reprinted in sort of a three-by-three grid. It's a really nice piece. And then, of course, it has the 12-inch lithographs of original artwork. So there's a whole lot of material here. I know data disks has had trouble with some of the games that they've covered, like Panzer Dragoon and some of the arcade games. I think it was difficult for them to source archival artwork for that. But clearly, Sega did a much better job of archiving its Genesis artwork, and it really shows there's a lot.

lot of material in here and it's just a great, great release as usual from data disks. As always, this is one you should definitely consider. But again, I realize not everyone wants to spend a lot of money on video game vinyl. And the good news is that Yuzo Kishiro also kind of popped up in the news in the past few weeks by releasing some music for free. He's put together, well, he has actually a retro gaming music sound cloud account where he, it's not so active anymore, but throughout, you know, the past five or six years, he has posted sort of retro arrangements of some of his works. And, you know, one of the things that makes Yuzo Kishiro so interesting is that he does most of his composition. Sometimes he does it on an original Japanese PC from the 80s, the PC801, where he kind of cut his teeth as a composer. He doesn't do so much of that now, but that's still the mode he prefers to work in.

So he works in a soundtracker that has PC88 style sound fonts. And so the original versions of many of his compositions these days, you know, they turn out differently in the final. the final mix because publishers or whoever will say, well, we'd like, you know, that to be a string arrangement or whatever. But he still likes to create music on the PC 88. And every once in a while, a publisher will release a soundtrack by Koshiro and include the PC88 mixes. And the entry in Odyssey games are a good example of that. But even those, the sort of FM synthesis arrangements, aren't true PC88 music. But a couple of weeks ago, Kosher actually did post real recordings taken from a PC-88 of some music from Entry and Odyssey One.

You know, I'm gonna. You know, and I'm No, No, No,

I'm gonna be the I'm gonnae'n't I'm gonna'n't I'm gonna'n't I'm gonna'n't I'm gonna'n't I'm, and I'm,

You can't check the show notes for a link to that. It's just two battle tracks and the first dungeon theme of the original Entry Odyssey game, which is one of, in my opinion, the greatest game tracks of all time. Like I could just listen to that loop over and over. It makes a sense of exploring so relaxing, so enticing. You know, I don't know. Thank you.

And these arrangements are so good because they really are authentic to what the music would have sounded like in the 80s. Like if this, if Etriot Odyssey had come out on a PC88 30 years ago, this is what the games would have sounded like. And it's actually not that different than what they sound like, you know, in-game. You've played Etriy and Odyssey Untold, that you've heard these mixes more or less. But there is something really charming about hearing a true, authentic PC-88 mix of these arrangements. So definitely check out those three tracks. And then check out Koshero SoundCloud, because his retro SoundCloud is amazing. There's so much great stuff on it.

And now we're going to be able to be. really big release for the month, which is Zodiac, Final Fantasy Tactics Remixed, which was put together by a group called The Materia Collective. Kind of like last month's Scarlet Moon Christmas album, The Collective is a whole lot of different artists, working in a whole lot of different styles, producing a whole lot of tributes to Final Fantasy Tactics music. In fact, it's about three and a half hours of music altogether,

and while it's not available for free, it's a very inexpensive download, and you get a lot of music for, I think, the $10 that it costs. I don't remember the exact price, but it's not very expensive, and there's some really great stuff in here. The Zodiac Colleges. here, covers, like I said, a whole huge different span of styles, so there's probably going to be some tracks you don't enjoy, and there's probably going to be some tracks you

do. And because there's so much music, it's probably going to be worth it for you to like sit down and listen throughout the entire album and then sort of winnow out the ones that you like the most or the ones that you think, you know, kind of work better together. It's all over the place. It goes from like gentle acoustic guitars to very authentic chip tune tracks to heavy metal to Disney-style musicals and ballads with lyrics and vocals added. I was not born of noble folk. I've had no choice but to be bold. And now you,

a story, a mirror, on the reflection of my own. We were not worn upon a throne that we are here. Look at me now. We can make our own. And so because it's so up and down all the time, it's probably going to be an easier listen for you if you kind of do a little bit of editorializing on your own time.

But there are some really, really enjoyable tracks on this album. And as a huge fan of the Final Fantasy Tactics soundtrack and the work of Hitoshi Sakimoto and bass escape, I was really impressed by both the faithful arrangements here and also some of the more adventurous musical compositions. I'm going to be able to be. So there aren't actually as many faithful arrangements as you might expect. The album opens with a track called Tactics by the artist's Nightmare, which is, you know, pretty much kind of, it sort of eases you in to the Final Fantasy Tactics

tribute by not straying too far from the source material. Another good. of a faithful arrangement is Antipuretic by Michael Hoffman. Formation Screen by the Coupa Troop. And I also really enjoyed Corruption of Faith by Matthew S. Harrison. A few of the more popular compositions from Final Fantasy Tactics get multiple treatments here. One of them is the shop theme. It's kind of arranged a bit like 80's Steve Vi.

There's also another take on that called Flute Shops Showdown, which includes a bit of Jethro-Tol-like flute aspiration. You know that, Gusp, while the flautist plays. Trisection gets a couple of different takes, including one called Tricotomy, which is heavy metal. Thank you. And while there's not a ton of metal, probably the most standout example of a sort of metal style is Decisive Battle, which has a borderline speed metal with double kick drums. It really kind of stands out on the album because it's so much more energetic than anything else in the collection. Probably the most controversial or heavily debated tracks in this collection will be the ones that add lyrics in. People seem to be either hot or cold on the idea of turning video game soundtracks into, you know, into musicals or just into songs with interpreted lyrics.

And there are quite a few of those on this collection. The one I personally found most challenging was Under the Stars Blind Devotion by Julian Spillane, which starts out with a very intriguing, basically borrows the drums from the drum machine from In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins. But then it adds in a lot of play acting and kind of like almost like a Cameron Macintosh musical style, which I wasn't super crazy about, but some people may enjoy it more than I did. On the way, the path is not clear yet our souls to fight. The other hand, I really enjoyed memories by Matthias Manente, which kind of sounds like the band Renaissance with a female vocalist and acoustic guitar, but then underneath it there's almost like a Robert Fripp

or Brian Eno-esque's electric guitar soundscape. It really is a unique piece on the album and kind of stands out and seems to have a bit of that sort of like classic 70s, 80s electronic music influence with just a hint of Prague Rock, which is always a good thing in my opinion. I wonder when we need the grass we're so sad in our eyes. Oh, memories of the time won't be for the prime, but made us cry.

Was our time coming past us by? Sunday through different sides. Memories of a time won't be further prime of morality. Other vocal tracks worth noting that I actually liked quite a bit. On We Walk in a Random Walt by Darby and Ian. A new adventure calling out. A cry of a bitter heart, which has great tune percussion and a female vocalist. I don't know

I'm going to be able to be. I don't know. ...you know. Thank you. And Ramza's song, which includes a Spanish guitar and a violin and a woman singing. And then almost kind of lyrics by the steel, the lower place. And then almost kind of like borderline lyric vocal style is an artist by the name of Jesse put together a track called What is the Sound of One Party Forming, which is the party formation screen theme done with a sort of eerie, like throat singing style.

It's strange, but I like it. It's such a different take on Final Fantasy. But then again, the most different take on the Final Fantasy Tactics music might be the one by the Bwak Choir Cadets, which consists entirely of a cappella chocobo singing, and is kind of amazing. Finally, a few more standouts. There's the console video game big bands.

Jazzy take on doubtful atmosphere. The equally jazzy remnants The equally jazzy remnants And then proving that everything that involves Professor Daravon turns into comedy, there's Teach Me How to Daravon, a goofy technomics of the game's tutorial screen theme. Anyway, that's called Zodiac Final Fantasy Tactics Remixed by the Materia Collective. Definitely worth checking out. Again, check the show liner notes and retro notes.com for more information about that.

some highlighted tunes and information on where you can check it out yourself. And finally, as I said last time, I'd like each month to highlight a classic soundtrack of the month, one particular game soundtrack that I think deserves special attention. And this time I'm going to kind of keep with the Sega theme and go with the soundtrack disguise of Arcadia, which was part of the Sega Spotify dump, and I think is one of the more underrated, underappreciated game soundtracks of the past 15. Ooh, it's been longer than that. Gosh, 17 years. Skies of Arcadia was, of course, the sort of return to single-player RPG form for

Rago Kodama, the original one of the original designers of the Fantasy Star series. Of course, on Dreamcast, the Fantasy Star series went into the sort of multiplayer online style of Fantasy Star Online. And while Sonic Team did great work with Fantasy Star Online, there was, you know, a cry for a classic single-player RPG, and we never have gotten another single-player fantasy star, but Kadama has occasionally jumped into single-player games, most recently with Seventh Dragon, but on Dreamcast there was Skies of Arcadia. And at the time, it was a really refreshing kind of a throwback RPG, a very sort of simple, not simple story, but uncomplicated, let's say.

There was no, you know, no shocking revelations about the true nature of the hero and how he was secretly the villain's father without realizing. or no, no time travel or anything like that. It was all pretty straightforward. You were a roguish sky pirate with a heart of gold, fighting against an evil empire that was unambiguously bad. And they were trying to resurrect these ancient behemus, these titans, from throughout the world, and use those to harness their power and conquer the rest of what remained of the world,

which actually wasn't that much. The world had kind of been reduced to, floating islands in the sky, separated by turbulent skies and windstorms, never really explained what happened to the world, or if this was supposed to be the planet Earth. And in fact, that mystery was a kind of a central part of the game's appeal. The game was set in an age of exploration, and you were one of the explorers, you know, in your airship flying around, venturing into new lands, breaking into new layers of the sky by upgrading your ship. There was a competitive an element where you had to go out and race other explorers to make discoveries.

pretty interesting battle system that, well, again, wasn't too complicated. The game soundtrack, I think, really kind of plays that up. It's a very classic video game soundtrack. I mean, there's no mistaking that this is video game music. It kind of wants to be orchestrated, but they didn't use real instruments. So it has that sort of, you know, late 90s, early millennial sound quality to it, where it's so close to being, you know, authentic instruments, but not quite. The game, the game does a good job of harnessing to that to its own advantage.

It has a grand sweeping style that is still very video gaming, and I would describe that as, you know, a perfect embodiment of what Skies of Arcadia was about. It was a big, grand adventure. You were out swashbuckling through the sky, but, you know, it was still a video game. There were still lots of, lots and lots of random encounters, lots of video game battles, lots of boss battles, then these big airship battles. and the soundtrack shifts accordingly. have a heroic swashbuckling feel to them. The battle themes are bombastic. And even better, they have a dynamic quality to them.

As you fight through a battle and turn the tide and, you know, get the boss that you're fighting down to the halfway health point. The battle theme shifts and becomes more triumphant. It's like a rallying cry saying, you can do it. You've got them on the ropes. Go for it. We're going to be able to be. Oh!

Oh! Dungeons of course tend to be more atmospheric, a little more atmospheric, a little more and subdued and mysterious. typical ethnic theme, South American or East Asian, and the music shifts accordingly. In fact, the music literally shifts when you're flying in the airship. The game's airship themes have a sort of dynamic element that updates to reflect the part of the world that you're traveling through. So when you're traveling through the area that's more like South America, then you get

these tribal drums. When you're traveling through the empire space, then everything is a little more militaristic martial. And then, of course, when you make your way into the Eastern Asia. inflected areas, you get sort of a Chinese flare to the music. So it's not really breaking any boundaries. It's not doing anything just amazing and cool, but it's all memorable. It all perfectly fits the game.

It's a great game that deserves a remaster or a remake. At some point, there were always rumors of Skies of Arcadia HD for an Xbox 360 that never materialized, but it's not too late Sega. You can still make it happen. So the game goes from happy, upbeat sky pirates to grand sweeping battles in the sky against unknowable Eldritch Evils. covers a pretty big span, but, you know, that's a sign of a great RPG. So if you're going to listen to anything on Spotify, that's Sega Dump,

I recommend starting with Skies of Arcadia. Even if Sega's pretty much forgotten about Skies of Arcadia, at least you can pour one out by listening to the music. Get those composers, their one thousandth of a cent for your time. And that about wraps it up for this second episode of Retronauts Radio. Hope you enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed the music. you'll check out some of the music. If you happen to catch any interesting video game

music related news, any retro gaming related music news in the next couple of weeks, give me a shout on Twitter. I'm GameSpite. Or you can ping Retronauts on Twitter as retronauts. Of course, we're also on Facebook as Retronauts. And the podcast, as always, is supported through Patreon. This is my full-time gig now. And so I need your support to keep me fed and clothed and housed so I can focus all the time on making great episodes of Retronauts, great videos about classic video games, writing at Retronauts.com with interviews and articles and God knows what else. As I mentioned a couple of times throughout the show, you can find extensive sort of liner notes for this episode at Retronauts.com.

The post will outline all the musical selections I've included here and where you can find them for yourself. Some of them are free. Some of them cost. money. It's a combination of things, but all of it's worth your time. I only highlight the good stuff. So thank you for listening. We'll be back again next week with the debut episode of Retronauts East and at about a month or so with another episode of Retronauts Radio. So please look forward to that. And until then, keep the video game music dream alive. Thanks. ready to get funky the most important part of dance is music so now let us listen to the music and identify the beats one two three but that was too soft

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