Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: YouTube, extracted audio
Credits
Audio Supervisor: Scott Petersen
Sound Design: Mike Behrman, Frank Bry, Matt Piersall, Todd Simmons
Additional Sound Design: James Barker, Matt Chaney
Music: Kenji Yamamoto, Minako Hamano, Masaru Tajima
Info
For the third game, Kenji Yamamoto was joined by two composers I really enjoy, Minako Hamano and Masaru Tajima, so unsurprisingly this is by far my favorite soundtrack of the trilogy. In fact, it played a big part in me eventually figuring out that I like Hamano and Tajima, because it was my favorite before I really knew who they were, so it was one of the dots I connected of “wait, everything they do is good, isn’t it?”
I have three very strong mental associations with Hamano, especially pertaining to her Metroid music:
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She likes odd time a lot, particularly with very angular, “prog” rhythms and rhythm changes (though she can be very subtle about it)
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She likes to weave elements of jazz into her spooky music, the example I think about all the time is a track from Metroid Fusion which is just a straight up fusion jam (though not confirmed hers)
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There’s often an overwhelming “fakeness” or artificiality to the way she sequences things, like hammering the super exposed piano sample in a Super Metroid boss theme
A lot of the boss themes in Prime 3 feature these elements, so I suspect a lot of them are her. And I like them a lot, they’re definitely my favorite battle themes of the trilogy.
Tajima is a bit harder to pin down, since his music for other games tends to be extremely different, often of the “Nintendo cute” or “Nintendo jazz” variety. Though that’s actually useful in itself, since he definitely seems to have a much higher predilection for extended harmonies than the other two, which are present in Prime 3 in a way they weren’t in the first two games.
Recommended tracks:
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“Bryyo Ice” (Yamamoto?) is an amelodic, layered remix of the Phendrana Drifts theme from Prime 1, which is great because the melody is my least favorite part of that track (nuclear take)
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“Phaaze” (Yamamoto?) is an extended, lusher remix of the Phazon ambience from the first game
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“GFS Olympus” (Tajima?) is some transposey ambience and you know I love both of those words
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“Crawltank Boss Theme” (Hamano?) has some subtle piano & synth unisons, which is something I didn’t really notice that Hamano did until Chimeratio pointed it out to me but it seems to be another one of her hallmarks
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“Steamlord” (Hamano?) has this really warped sound to it that almost sounds like it’s melting as you listen to it (also it has that piano + synth thing going on too!)
(“Phaaze” and “Steamlord” are official track titles from the soundtrack gallery; the rest are unofficial)
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