RPG Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Cthulhu Saves the World Soundtrack – Review

Cthulhu Saves the World Soundtrack, Gordon McNeil, 2010

With the rise of indie games, the number of 8- and 16-bit styled titles has exploded. One of the most beloved genres from that era in gaming were JRPGs. It’s no surprise then that the retro game market has been flooded with titles that try to recapture the magic of genre classics like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Star Ocean, Tales of… the list goes on and on. One of the better JRPG throwbacks was Zeboyd Games’ Cthulhu Saves The World. For the game’s soundtrack, Zeboyd Games turned to Gordon McNeil.

McNeil had provided a couple of tracks to Zeboyd Games’ earlier Breath of Death VII: The Beginning. His contribution to Chtulhu would be significantly larger, clocking in at more than 70 minutes of music. McNeil’s stylistic approach to scoring this hybrid parody/homage was unsurprising. In his words: “Since I was a tod I’ve wanted to score an RPG of the J variety, so I jumped at the chance. The whole idea behind Zeboyd’s RPGs is to make as much an honest tribute as well as parody, and so I decided to go whole hog and put together as iconic a JRPG soundtrack as I could.”

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Dark Law: Meaning of Death Soundtrack – Review

Dark Law: Meaning of Death Soundtrack, Satoshi Nagano / Michihiko Shichi, 1997

By 1997, software supply for the SNES has dwindled to a trickle – but intriguing new games for the ageing console still popped up here and there. One such title was developer Sakata SAS’ Dark Law: Meaning of Death, the sequel to 1991’s Dark Lord. While the premise of its fantasy narrative was fairly pedestrian (ancient evil returns – and kidnaps the damsel in distress!), Dark Law surprised with its unexpected take on RPG gameplay tropes. Focused less on combat and more on exploration and puzzle solving, Dark Law was considerably less linear than most other JRPGs. Instead of following a clearly delineated path, gamers would select from a series of short stories or scenarios that ultimately all turn out to be connected with each other. And true to its ominous name, Dark Law: The Meaning of Death dealt with unusually sombre subject matter (at least for a 16-bit RPG).

To craft the game’s soundtrack, Sakata SAS hired a team of game musicians going by the name of Target Laboratory. Led by veteran composer Yusuke Takahama, Target Laboratory had been active since the mid-1990s. Four of its members worked on Dark Law – Takahama himself as sound producer and Nobuo Horie on sound effects, while Satoshi Nagano and Michihiko Shichi handled composing duties. Both artists – fairly new to the industry – had collaborated on previous Target Laboratory projects such as 1995’s Kat’s Run: Zen-Nippon K Car Senshuken and Tokimeki Card Paradise: Koi no Royal Straight Flush. Nagano’s career seems to have trailed off after a few more Target Laboratory games. Shichi joined developer Omega Force and became sound designer and director of their Samurai Warriors and Dynasty Warriors franchises – before joining tri-Ace and sound directing high-profile titles such as the later Star Ocean games and Resonance of Fate.

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Diablo Soundtrack – Review

Diablo Soundtrack, Matt Uelmen, 1996

When Blizzard announced Diablo III at the 2008 Blizzcon Worldwide International, they chose a simple way to do so. All guitarist Laurence Juber had to do was to play the first few chords of the original Diablo’s signature tune. Of course, the piece in question was Matt Uelmen’s immortal “Tristram”. And according to Diablo III’s lead composer Russell Brower “over 10,000 people in the room knew EXACTLY what was coming”. Such is the power of a truly classic soundtrack composition that it can become the most memorable and thus quickest reference to the game or film it accompanied. That makes it all the more remarkable that it took 15 years for this composition – and the rest of Diablo’s music – to get a soundtrack release.

No wonder that “Tristram” is still fondly remembered by millions of gamers. In short, Uelmen’s composition is a masterpiece of subtly evoked atmosphere. Those opening strummed guitar chords herald a piece that still remains fascinating for its ambiguous, multi-layered atmosphere.

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Dragon Quest III Soundtrack (Nintendo 3DS) – Review

Dragon Quest III Soundtrack (Nintendo 3DS), Koichi Sugiyama, 2017

While its predecessors had been immensely successful in their own right, it was really with 1988’s Dragon Quest III that the venerable franchise turned into a commercial juggernaut. The original NES game itself sold a staggering 3.8 million copies in Japan alone. Add in a few more million copies for the game’s various remakes and Dragon Quest III turns out to be the franchise’s most successful entry (it also spawned an urban myth about the Japanese government blocking future releases of Dragon Quest games on school days to curb truancy). The game itself didn’t revolutionise the JRPG genre, but developer Chunsoft still expanded upon the gameplay of the first two Dragon Quest titles with the introduction of a character class system. This feature would become a staple of future Dragon Quest games.

After Dragon Quest II’s music had been a marked improvement over its predecessor, Koichi Sugiyama returned for the Dragon Quest III soundtrack, further expanding its breadth and diversity. Sugiyama continued to move away from the template he had established on Dragon Quest I, now including a greater number of location-specific compositions (as opposed to using the same composition for each town / dungeon / castle etc.) The NES score’s quality remained somewhat patchy, but the soundtrack also featured several highlights such as the magisterial ending theme “Into the Legend”.

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Dragon Quest IV Soundtrack (Mobile) – Review

Since an internet search for screenshots of the mobile version’s cover came up empty, a screenshot of the PlayStation port’s cover has been used above.

Dragon Quest IV Soundtrack (Mobile), Koichi Sugiyama, 2014

It is to the credit of developer Chunsoft and publisher Enix that coming off the jaw-dropping success of Dragon Quest III, they decided not to play things safe with the next game in the franchise. Instead, they went to shake things up, going so far as to turn the game’s story into a series of initially unrelated chapters that introduce the various party members – before they all come together in the final chapter. Other innovations included day and night cycles, an early artificial intelligence system to give non-playable party members combat instructions, and the choice of which characters to use in battle. Dragon Quest IV turned into another million-seller for Enix – not quite as successful as its predecessor, but 3.1 million copies sold just in Japan for the NES original is not exactly a bad result either.

As per tradition, Koichi Sugiyama was back on board to score the Dragon Quest IV soundtrack. It turned out to be one of the most expansive NES scores ever written, clocking in at nearly a whole hour (looped). Sugiyama once more increased the breadth of the score, writing a theme for each world map, as well as several other location-specific compositions – on top of the pieces written for the usual suspects (town, dungeon, castle etc.)

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