game music
Super EDF by Tsukasa Tawada
This is one of the games that fueled my search for retro games online, and to the discovery of gods gift to game nostalgists like me: ROMS. Anyway this reminds me of a story that relates to this game, and its music of my childhood. When i was junior high, i had a group of friends whose entire reason for being around each other was because of the video games we loved to play(One of tm was Makio, from the Thunder Force 4 post). I had sleep overs at my other friends house, Jerry, at almost a weekly basis. Super EDF was one of the games that i had brought over for every one to try out(I was the only one with an SNES, Jerry and Makio would not defect from the Genesis camp). During one of the brief and rare moments that we were not playing, or watching someone else play a game, we decided to have an arm wrestling competition. So during the match we would have one of the people not involved play music from the sound test. I was like a little chubby frosted flakes fuled Hulk O' Maniac.
The game itself is quite good, incorporating RPG elements into the selectable weapon systems. Fortunately the music actually does the game justice. Tsukasa Tawada composed the sound track to this game, as well as Pokemon Colosseum. Its too bad that most of the games he composed music for have never made it to western shores.
The music is J-pop influnced, with a futuristic military funk to it. Midnight Intercept is a testiment to the funk; i only wish was as funky to be able to play the bass line.
Tracks of note are:
There arent that many tracks; but it is a shooter, so its not that unsual. Super EDF Soundtrack
Thunder Force 4 Soundtrack by Toshiharu Yamanishi, Takeshi Yoshida, and Tomomi Ootani
The Thunder Force series is one of the best series of shooters ever released on Genesis, or on any video game system or computer for that matter. A friend from junior high named Makio had this, along with a couple hundred other genesis games ( he was "the kid who had all the cool systems and newest games"; the one who existed in everyones' childhood). I'd go to his house to play video games, and he'd be playing Thunder Force 3(also composed by Toshiharu Yamanishi and Tomomi Ootani) from time to time. The reason why i was reminded of these games is because of an episode of Airwaves (monthly podcast of chiptunes and retro game music) that focused on Genesis (aka Mega Drive) composers. You can find this episode at the Airwaves Archives(episode 18).
Thunder Force 4 was composed by a trio of composers: Toshiharu Yamanishi (last fm), Takeshi Yoshida, Tomomi Ootani. Tomomi Ootani worked on the soundtracks for part 2, and 3 along with Toshiharu Yamanishi. Unfortunately I cant seem to find any other games scores that Takeshi Yoshida has worked on. They have a number of original works of their own, in collaboration, and on their own, that even to this day are being released. The Thunder Force 4 soundtrack is easily the most awesome among the entire series; granted I've never heard Thunder Force 1, though i can only assume it gets better, not worse. With its bass and guitar heavy tracks, with a futuristic twang , they're quite"Metal" and go along well with the theme of destroying giant intergalactic machines enslaving random planet in some far off galaxy. Despite being heavy, there are some Jazzy and J-Pop overtones (more on some tracks than others) and some beautiful synth work that make this score very hard to get sick of.
There are a number of great tracks of note for this game, with goofy names to boot:
- Metal Squad
- Don't Go Off
- Fighting Back
- Space Walk
- The Sky Line
- Silvery Light of the Moon
- Count Down
- Because You Are The Number One
- Remember of Knight of Legend
- Omake 4
- Omake 7
- Omake 9
- Omake 10
These should be listened to, religiously! The rest of the tracks also deserve to be explored, so dont be shy.
