Game info: website
Listening/music info: soundtrack album
Credits
BGM: Ippo Yamada, Takumi Sato, Ryo Yoshinaga, Hiroyuki Sato, Hiroaki Sano, Luna Umegaki
Theme song: Ippo Yamada, TAKUYA
Info
So for some mysterious reason, Inti Creates made a heavily Castlevania-inspired platformer spinoff of the Gal*Gun franchise. Gal*Gun is a series of shooters where an entire body of high school girls is irresistibly attracted to you and you have to fend them off by shooting them with love arrows that subdue them with ecstasy, a series I try real hard to pretend doesn’t exist but I guess I’m doing a poor job of that today. Gal Guardians takes two of the potential love interests from somewhere in the series and throws them into a demon castle to fight a bunch of monsters, because that’s all the premise you need to make a whole entire video game.
The game’s background music was done by a standard Inti Creates lineup of “a bunch of people from their sound team as well as Luna Umegaki.” As is also pretty typical for an Inti game, nearly every track has a different arranger credited from the original composer(s); in the case of this soundtrack, Hiroaki Sano arranged almost all of it. In their chiptune soundtracks it’s pretty clear that this means the person who chiptune-ified the music, but it’s less clear in a situation like this what it means exactly, especially when all of the original composers also have “arrangement” generically listed in their contributions. The production is pretty consistent across the soundtrack, so it’d make sense if everyone provided sketches or mostly completed pieces and then Sano “finished them off” to whatever extent was necessary.
The soundtrack is the kind of rock-inflected Gothic horror music you’re legally mandated to use if you’re making a game like this: spooky piano, harpsichord, strings, and pipe organ mixed with guitar, rock organ, and rock drums. I’m not generally a big fan of this kind of music and the soundtrack doesn’t do a whole lot to convince me otherwise, but it’s basically fine for what it is and if it’s a style you like then I think you’ll have a better time with it than I did. I did enjoy some of the production choices in synth design and other effects that are more prominent in the chiller tracks, and Luna Umegaki getting to flex a little prog is always a highlight for me.
Recommended tracks:
All tracks arranged by III & Hiroaki Sano, except where noted. The “III” credited here is just a collective name for Inti Creates’s sound team.
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“Unquiet” (Ryo Yoshinaga, arr. III) constantly warbles the piano in and out of tune
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“Garden of Demon Poison” (Hiroaki Sano) starts off with a fun, accelerating 8-7-6-5 rhythm before settling down into a chiller Castlevania jazz groove
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“Bloodstained Gear Tower” (Hiroyuki Sato) is one of a couple of tracks by my favorite Inti composer and features a weird melody and a couple of unexpected modulations in the chorus
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“Demon’s Throne” (Luna Umegaki) does some Prog Things at 0:50
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“The Rift” (Hiroaki Sano) is one of the prettier tracks in the game, some ambient goodness
(track titles are unofficial translations from the Gal Gun Wiki)
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