Starship Rendezvous Soundtrack (PC-88)

Starship Rendezvous Soundtrack (PC-88), Masaharu Iwata / Hitoshi Sakimoto, 1989

At first glance, precious little sets Starship Rendezvous apart from the glut of doujin games released on Japanese home computers during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Its laggy, rudimentary top-down shooting is spread across only four levels. To make matters worse, players can fire only one bullet at a time and must then wait for it to leave the screen. At least enemies notice the player only when they end up directly in their line of sight. Then again, none of this was really the point. That lay in the “boss” encounters with female characters in varying states of undress. Yes, this is an adult game, and as almost always in that field, the gameplay is little more than an afterthought.

In truth, the only reason Starship Rendezvous is still remembered decades after release is that two future stars of game music wrote its score: Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata. This was not the first game either had worked on, nor even their first collaboration, that distinction belongs to the promising if scattershot Revolter. It was, however, the first consistently excellent score they produced together.

The younger of the two, Hitoshi Sakimoto had already absorbed a wide range of influences by the time he reached his late teens. Among the artists who had shaped him were Yellow Magic Orchestra, Chick Corea, Kraftwerk and early-1970s progressive rock, alongside game composers such as Yuzo Koshiro and Miki Higashino. Iwata shared many of the same influences and, like Sakimoto, was entirely self-taught, having played in bands during his school years. Looking for work that would unite his love of music and games, he joined developer Bothtec. After scoring several titles there, Bothtec was absorbed into Quest Corporation, and Iwata left to pursue a freelance career.

During his time at Bothtec, Iwata had been introduced to Sakimoto, and the two bonded, beginning what may well be the greatest composer partnership in game music. Their next joint work was Revolter, which used Sakimoto’s “Terpsichorean” sound driver for the PC-88. At this stage Sakimoto was as much programmer as composer, and his driver produced FM synthesis of far greater richness than was commonly heard in games of the time. In fact, it made such an impact that it was later licensed and used in numerous Japanese games of the early 1990s. Sakimoto and Iwata were also entrepreneurial enough to arrange commercial distribution of their music themselves, selling a cassette containing the scores for Revolter and Starship Rendezvous at Comiket 34.

It is easy to see why the latter score brought both composers their first real industry attention. The Starship Rendezvous soundtrack is a massively overachieving work, orders of magnitude more ambitious than the game it accompanies. Sakimoto and Iwata successfully combine synth-pop, prog and grinding industrial electronica into an unlikely but wholly convincing blend of accessibility and sonic experimentation. Just as importantly, Starship Rendezvous already reveals the duo’s talent for confounding expectations without sacrificing memorable, approachable melody.

That melodic gift effectively bookends the soundtrack, drawing the listener in and then easing them out of what is otherwise one of the decade’s most intense game scores. “Operation of Rendezvous” opens as an anthemic piece of synth rock, not unlike many Japanese shoot ’em up scores of the period with their love of huge singalong hooks and firm, driving rhythms. Iwata hits all of those marks, and his harmonised leads give the melodies enough force to survive their frequent repetition. The sonic advantages of Sakimoto’s “Terpsichorean” driver are already obvious. Its lush timbres, together with the pronounced contrasts between the cue’s A, B and C sections, lend “Operation of Rendezvous” a sense of sweep and sci-fi drama far beyond anything communicated by the game’s narrative or visuals.

The soundtrack returns to melody as it approaches its close. Penultimate track “The Sunset for the America” is an astonishing achievement. Many other game scores of the time also ended with an imitation pop ballad, but here the composers, in this case Iwata, once again choose to go far beyond the norm. “The Sunset for the America” is a gleaming synth-ballad confection stretched across more than seven minutes. Its crystalline textures recall the otherworldliness of the score’s central section and transpose it effortlessly into a pop idiom. What ultimately makes the cue so captivating is the haunting wistfulness that runs through its melodies, setting up a potent contrast with the track’s glossy, sugary surface and giving the music its calm grandeur.

“Don’t Forget Your Wonderful Memory” is less ambitious and less introspective. Instead, Sakimoto’s composition returns to the upbeat spirit of “Operation of Rendezvous” and brightens it further through bouncy rhythms and celebratory melodies that land even harder after a patient 40-second introduction that expertly builds anticipation. Sakimoto and Iwata’s later music is often described as cerebral rather than immediately accessible or emotionally direct. Yet “The Sunset for the America” and “Don’t Forget Your Wonderful Memory” show that both were also gifted pop craftsmen, perfectly capable of allowing melody to carry a comparatively uncluttered piece.

Between these melody-heavy bookends, however, Starship Rendezvous packs in far more demanding material, and it is this that turns the score into such a rewarding and satisfyingly challenging sci-fi epic. Sakimoto’s “The Art of Noise” is aptly titled, hammering away like a chaotic machine on the verge of flying apart, its pistons pumping through slippery polyrhythms while an aggressive synth line suggests a roughened, destabilised take on Kraftwerk’s mechanical pulse. Interestingly, although the cue never quite forms complete melodies, its use of short melodic fragments, already a Sakimoto hallmark, lends it an unexpectedly sorrowful undertow. “Madness & Its Synergistic Effect” is equally heady, marrying prog and pop materials only to render them alienating and abstract through their harsh, mechanised environment. Once again, Sakimoto toys with melodic promise, hinting at a heroic tune only to cut it short as the composition collapses into a snarl of syncopated rhythms.

Iwata proves just as adventurous in his own contributions, which are steeped in biting dissonance. “Maze Trap!” layers three different metres on top of one another in a dizzyingly dense, chaotic opening. A surging major-key melody is repeatedly interrupted by gnawing, acidic motifs before the lead line contorts into unpredictable, head-spinning turns. If that combination of elements makes “Maze Trap!” the clearest summary of the soundtrack’s unconventional method, “Work of Digging into Manhole” may be its most daring cue. Beginning almost in the manner of Gothic horror, it becomes a fascinating study in minimalism. Its six-minute duration is sustained by little more than a sparse, chilling synth line, faint ghostly countermelodies, bell strikes and a hypnotic bass pulse. “Work of Digging into Manhole” is yet another experiment the two composers bring off with astonishing ease and assurance, marking the arrival of two major new talents in game music.