nastybun

I shall attempt at this point to write something that’s been a ponderance of mine for a while now. The music I’m currently listening to is the soundtrack to a game some of you may have heard of called Chrono Cross. Chrono Cross is the erstwhile sequal to a game I’m rather fond of called Chrono Trigger, which was released for the SNES back in the day and recently (ish) re-released and optimised for the DS. You can read about Trigger here, the (excellent) article from the current book about the pair of them isn’t available online yet but will be at some point. Read the rest of that site anyway, it’s tops.

So anyway, why am I listening to a game soundtrack from a PS1 game that I never played. The best answer is of course ‘it’s nice’ but that wouldn’t make for very interesting reading, so I’m going to have a go at some sort of reasoning. It was done by a chap named Yasunori Mitsuda, who also did the soundtrack to the Chrono Trigger (as well as a host of other games) so there’s some definate familiarity to the style. It’s also from a PS1 game, which means it’s much more instrumenty than the SNES allowed for due to the CD format of the system. Most of all though it’s really just a nice series of music to sit down and listen to while, say, blathering about crap on the internet. It flows through lovely guitary pieces describing a town or its surrounding countryside to upbeat songs for battle scenes and creepy songs about a mansion or a fortress, and because it’s a game soundtrack it climaxes with epic battle scores and wraps up with peaceful melancholy befitting the game’s apparently rather sad at time story. Apparently the game wasn’t well received by fans (something along the lines of all the Trigger characters being killed off and whatnot.. there are treatises around, as mentioned earlier) so for some the soundtrack might even be the highlight of the game. If, that is, they ever got the chance to listen to it in entirety.

The other thing about a lot of game music from the PS1 era is that it’s an era from before game music when all hollywood blockbuster. Back in the early days you’d have a catchy tune for a town, a shop, an overworld, a battle.. the soundtracks had real character to them. Nowadays many soundtracks are unremarkable, uninteresting and not memorable at all. Or it’s just licensed music chucked in because you need music in a game. There are exceptions to this of course, and I’m sure if I delved into it sufficiently I’d disprove my own point so I’m not going to. Suffice to say, the game music I listen to is pretty much limited to SNES and PS1 stuff (even though I never had a PS1). Or the Diablo II soundtrack. Or Need For Speed 3. Or.. shit, there goes that point I was making..

Suffice to say, there’s a remarkable amount of care and attention in many game soundtracks. They’re still out there, ready to be aquired and sampled, so if I’ve piqued your interest get your googlin’ on have a listen. You may be pleasently surprised… or find I’ve wasted your time. Either way, my work here is done.