Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: CD audio, YouTube
Credits
Music composed by Jin Watanabe, Shinichi Sakamoto
Effect created by Shinichi Sakamoto
Jin Watanabe was kind enough to provide me official track titles and a composer breakdown for the CD audio, which I’ll list here along with the unofficial game rip titles you’ll find on YouTube in order to spread the word:
| Tr# | Title | YouTube | Composer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | – | – | – |
| 2 | Wild Disorder | Main Theme | Watanabe |
| 3 | Lord of Savage | Desert Dungeon | Watanabe |
| 4 | Darkazure | Water Dungeon | Watanabe |
| 5 | Gardens of Destiny | Town | Watanabe |
| 6 | fin-de-siècle | Goddess Tower | Watanabe |
| 7 | KONFLAGRATION | Boss Battle | Watanabe |
| 8 | Maximum Carnage | Castle Dungeon | Watanabe |
| 9 | Samurai Soul | Bushido Dungeon | Sakamoto |
| 10 | Mortal Starve | Ice Dungeon | Sakamoto |
| 11 | Defeat the Dungeon | Victorious Battle | Watanabe |
| 12 | Tales from the Out of This World | Introduction | Watanabe |
| 13 | Desires Come True? ~ End Titles | Conclusion | Watanabe |
Info
Time to scare off everyone who followed me because I made a puzzle and post about video game music again! I decided to relisten to this classic soundtrack, one of my favorites on the SEGA CD, again after Jin Watanabe gave me official track titles on Twitter. Besides, every day is a great day to listen to Dungeon Explorer for the SEGA CD.
Almost all of CD soundtrack was done by Jin Watanabe, a composer I really like who worked for developer westone for five years before going freelance for another seven. After that he switched careers and joined a small IT consulting firm called Blue Earth Inc., where he did web design and project management and some other stuff. It seems like he left a few years ago, though, and I’m not sure what he’s doing now!
His best known work is Monster World IV for the Genesis, though he wrote music for probably something like 10-15 other games in his career, a lot of which were only released in Japan. While I do like other things in his music like his chord choices and instrumentation, the #1 characteristic of his I immediately think of is that the guy loves odd time, a lot. Just crams it in everywhere. 5? 7? 13? Mixed meter? No problem. Like, fully half of his contributions here use odd time, usually significantly so. It’s great.
If your reaction to hearing that was “well I bet that guy likes prog rock,” he sure does. He thought it was very important to point out in his commentary on Strictly Limited Games’s Wonder Boy soundtrack collection that he named some songs in Monster World IV for Yes songs. Since Dungeon Explorer is a fantasy action game like Gauntlet, Watanabe didn’t get as far into the prog rock hole as he did in other soundtracks, but there’s still an undeniable influence in some of the song structures and synths.
Speaking of synths! This is a ’90s CD audio soundtrack, so it’s chock full of those old rompler sounds you know and love. Watanabe’s chiptune music is good, you can hear a lot of his compositional tendencies towards odd time and nice chords in Monster World IV and Blood Gear especially, though the chiptune programming is generally pretty basic and I think his pieces shine more with dem synths on ’em. I have my biases though.
Shinichi Sakamoto, Watanabe’s predecessor at westone by a few years, contributed two CD tracks to the game, and they very much sound like they’re written by someone else: they’re much more chill and cheesy jazz/funk and feature completely different instruments, especially noticeable in the percussion.
The game also features a bit of internally-generated FM music, which unfortunately does not appear to have ever been dumped or ripped, so the only way to listen to it is by playing the game or watching videos. I’ve heard a little bit of it but I have no idea how much of it actually exists, whether it’s just a few minutes of music or something more substantial. Some of the programming feels more like Sakamoto than Watanabe to me, but some of the composition feels more like Watanabe than Sakamoto to me, so they may both have worked on the chiptunes too.
Recommended tracks:
-
“Wild Disorder” (Watanabe) is the most overtly prog rock track in the game, very “concept album overture”
-
“Darkazure” (Watanabe) has the good sounds and the good atmosphere and the good chords
-
“KONFLAGRATION” (Watanabe) at 1:22 recaps a fanfare-ish phrase used several times in “Wild Disorder” but stretches the final three notes across four beats as a triplet, giving it a strange herky-jerky rhythm
-
“Mortal Starve” (Sakamoto) I was convinced had to be Watanabe because I’ve never heard Sakamoto use odd time and it’s a bit similar to “Cosmic Vegetation” from Bloody Roar 2 specifically, but both composers agree it’s Sakamoto’s! As mentioned above, the instrumentation makes it pretty clear. I kind of wonder if Sakamoto was intentionally trying to sound a bit like Watanabe with this one
Leave a Reply