KOEI Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Bushou Fuuunroku Soundtrack (PC-88)

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Bushou Fuuunroku Soundtrack (PC-88), Yoko Kanno, 1990

Developer KOEI didn’t rock the boat much with this fourth instalment of its Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise. The game continued its predecessors’ brand of menu-heavy strategising, set amongst feuding warlords in Japan during the 16^th century. As before, it targeted those gamers who preferred intensely in-depth gameplay over elaborate visuals. Despite the geographically specific subject matter, KOEI felt that there was an overseas audience for Bushou Fuuunroko, bringing the SNES and Sega Genesis ports to the American market under the title of Lord of Darkness.

While the early Nobunaga’s Ambition games were never visual stunners, their music was an entirely different story. Since the franchise’s second title Zenkokuban, future film and TV score legend Yoko Kanno had been responsible for the games’ soundtracks. Their various PC and console chiptunes scores didn’t give a strong indication of Kanno’s burgeoning talents. However, KOEI had developed a fascinating concept dubbed “Soundware”. Soundware albums contained red book audio scores for a number of KOEI PC-88 games. These albums replaced the games’ chiptunes soundtracks with upgraded music in case the PC in question was equipped with a CD drive. Sometimes incorrectly referred to as arrange albums, these CDs were sold with special retail editions of various Nobunaga’s Ambition games. However, KOEI also sold them separately as simple music albums.

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Nobunaga’s Ambition: Tenshouki Soundtrack (PC-98)

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Tenshouki Soundtrack (PC-98), Yoko Kanno, 1994

Tenshouki, the sixth instalment of KOEI’s long-running Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise, heralded the end of an era in several ways (despite its strategy gameplay that focused on medieval Japanese warlords not changing much). It was the last Nobunaga’s Ambition game to be released on the PC-98 series of Japanese personal computers and the last franchise title to see the light of day on 16-bit platforms. Most importantly for our purpose, it was the final Nobunaga’s Ambition game to be scored by franchise mainstay Yoko Kanno.

Kanno’s star had been steadily rising throughout the early 1990s and by 1994, she was ready to focus on anime and film scoring – an area she had dabbled in as an arranger in recent years, with her breakthroughs Macross Plus and The Vision of Escaflowne just around the corner. For her farewell to the Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise, KOEI once more increased the budget allocation – and considerably so.

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Nobunaga’s Ambition: Haouden Soundtrack (PC-98)

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Haouden Soundtrack (PC-98), Yoko Kanno, 1992

As with previous instalments of the Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise, KOEI only tweaked details for its fifth instalment, Haouden. Clearly KOEI had hit upon a winning formula, happy to churn these games out to an audience hungry for their fix of historic strategy games that prioritised gameplay depth over fancy graphics. Not surprisingly, what stood out most about Haouden’s presentation was its soundtrack, provided by series regular Yoko Kanno.

Kanno had been given the opportunity to record previous franchise scores with live performers – a rare occurrence in video game music at the time. And thankfully, KOEI seemed willing to increase the music budget for each subsequent Nobunaga’s Ambition title. Bushou Fuuunroku had benefited from a mostly live ensemble – a chamber music-sized orchestra supplemented by a few solo performers and synths. For the Nobunaga’s Ambition: Haouden soundtrack, KOEI went one step further and hired a larger ensemble, now amounting to a small symphony orchestra.

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Taikou Risshiden V Soundtrack

Taikou Risshiden V Soundtrack, unknown composer, 2004

There’s no doubt that Koei’s most prominent franchises of historical war simulations are Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga’s Ambition – both of them spanning several dozen games and ports. However, Koei worked through this particular subject matter in other games as well, for example the Taikou Risshiden titles. The first game in this particular franchise – almost unknown outside of Japan – was released in 1992 for PC-98, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. The series continued up until Taikou Risshiden V, which saw the light of day in 2004 – and apparently concluded the franchise. The Taikou Risshiden games set themselves apart from other Koei history simulations through their sandbox-style gameplay that gave players greater freedom in choosing their path to victory. For example, available job classes included not just samurai but also pirates, merchants and blacksmiths, while gamers were free to roam the game’s world at their leisure.

Musically speaking, the Taikou Risshiden franchise had always held promise, but ultimately failed to make waves – despite renowned anime composer Michiru Oshima scoring the first game in the series early in her career. Finally, the Taikou Risshiden V soundtrack managed to unlock the potential that lay dormant in these games, producing one of the best orchestral PS2 scores that charms listeners with an exquisite wealth of melodies and colours. Unfortunately, there’s no information in the English-speaking parts of the internet about who composed the music – and while the game’s Wikipedia page details a score album, such a release isn’t confirmed by any other sources such as VMGdb.

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Tamashii no Mon – Dante Shinkyoku yori Soundtrack

Tamashii no Mon – Dante Shinkyoku yori Soundtrack, Masumi Ito / Yoshiyuki Ito / Fiori Wakakuwa, 1992

Turns out 2010’s God of War clone Dante’s Inferno wasn’t the first video game based on Dante Alighieri’s 14^th-century poem The Divine Comedy. But maybe that’s no surprise, given the work’s towering literary status and its vivid imagery of Hell’s nine circles, which make it ripe for adaptations into other media. Another game inspired by The Divine Comedy was Koei’s Tamashii no Mon – Dante no Shinkyoku yori (literally: Gate of Souls – From Dante’s Divine Comedy). As one might expect, players assume the role of Dante, as he struggles to find his way through the depths of hell. The developers cast the game as an adventure title with platforming and melee elements, while making excellent use of the ageing PC-98’s graphical capabilities. The clever use of a limited colour palette combined with excellent sprite art truly brought the game’s nightmarish settings to live.

For the game’s soundtrack, the developers turned to the trio of Masumi Ito, Yoshiyuki Ito and Fiori Wakakuwa, who composed the Tamashii no Mon – Dante no Shinkyoku yori soundtrack under the moniker of hyym. There’s little information available on Wakakuwa’s work – his only other credits seem to be Koei’s Super Mahjong Taikai and Inindo: Way of the Ninja. The opposite is true for the wife and husband team of Masumi and Yoshiyuki Ito. Starting out their careers as arrangers and composers on various Koei titles, they continued to arrange game music into the mid-1990s for numerous album releases – including Super Metroid, Virtua Fighter and Donkey Kong Country. They then moved into anime scoring, with Masumi Ito also launching a career as a singer with several solo albums and Yoshiyuki Ito working as Head Music Producer of Lantis – both artists amassing an impressive discography of 100+ titles each.

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