Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: emulated audio, YouTube (single video, incomplete)
Credits
Sound Composer: Kenji Yamamoto, Masaru Tajima
Sound Assistant: Minako Hamano
Info
Alright, this is the big one. This is the peak, the best Virtual Boy soundtrack already in post #2. Nintendo came out swinging with this one, and it’s downhill from here.
Galactic Pinball is, as you’d expect, an outer space-themed pinball simulator with four different tables: Cosmic, Colony, UFO, and Alien. It was the debut work of Masaru Tajima at Nintendo, and it’s cool to see that right out of the gate he was just busting out jazzy music with chill extended harmonies and transposing chords, and that combined with the overall spacey vibe of the sound is :chefkiss:. This soundtrack was pretty instrumental in me figuring out that Tajima likes that kind of stuff, back when there were barely any songs specifically known to be his; this kind of music shows up a lot whenever Masaru Tajima is in the staff roll, but never when frequent partner Kenji Yamamoto is without him. I’m fairly sure that most of the tracks in this game that I love are by Tajima.
Minako Hamano’s role in this game isn’t clear, since “sound assistant” isn’t something that shows up in Nintendo games particularly often. She rarely, if ever, did sound effects, so I’m inclined to believe that she just contributed a couple of tracks to the soundtrack. There’s a spooky prog/fusion one that kinda sounds like her, and maybe she was responsible for some of the ambient SFX-y tracks with odd time in them too?
Also as an appreciator of sick jingles, I feel an urge to point out whenever a game has sick jingles in it, and this game has a few sick jingles in it. Some fun, frantic, jazzy stingers.
Recommended tracks:
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“Important” plays during the operation warning screen when you turn on the game and reminds me a little of Metroid II’s ambient cave themes
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“Colony” has some nice spaceship engine flyby sound effects in the second half
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“UFO” goes into rave mode at 0:23
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“Million Chance 2” is that spooky prog/fusion track that I think sounds like Minako Hamano
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“Lucky Star” is a cute li’l space waltz with pretty chords (oops I’m posting these again)
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“Distortion” is a corrupted hell catastrophe version of “Colony” (and other tracks???) and I have literally no idea what its in-game context could possibly be
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“Credits” is an extended version of the title theme, starting off in peak Tajima mode before busting out the feel-good inspirational melody at 1:18
(track titles are unofficial)
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