Alterna Citizen Program M-00: Init (Test Noise)

Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: soundtrack album (disc 1), emulated audio

Credits

Sound Director: Soshiro Hokkai
Sound Program: Kiyohiko Yamane
Sound Effects: Hidenori Onishi
Composer: Michiru Yamane, Takashi Yoshida, Soshiro Hokkai

Info

Here’s the game I used to deride as the less-good GBA Castlevania soundtrack, which is… I still definitely feel that’s true, but the reason I was insistent on it was out of a need to fervently defend Harmony of Dissonance, which was widely hated (I think it’s a little more liked these days, not a lot but a little). That framing is quite unfair to this soundtrack, especially since it also features the main composer of HoD, Soshiro Hokkai. It’s also actually pretty decent!

I mentioned contrapuntal complexity last time talking about Takashi Yoshida, but the undisputed champion of that at Konami is here and his name is Soshiro Hokkai. He loves having multiple voices interlocked in a complex dance at basically all times, it’s all over his music and on display a few times in this soundtrack. I think HoD is a much better showcase of his talent than this game, but I like him a lot! He hasn’t worked on a huge amount of games and he’s really more of a sound designer who also composes than a pure composer, so several of his works aren’t for music at all. After Konami he went to Skip for a while, working on a couple of Chibi-Robo! games, after which he moved over to Good-Feel, where most recently he composed for Princess Peach Showtime!.

The lead composer was series stalwart Michiru Yamane in her fourth go at one of these. If you’ve heard other Castlevania soundtracks she’s been on and their fusion of spooky, Baroque-ish orchestral music with rock and jazz/funk, then you know what you’re getting into here. In general, I tend to like her chiller, synthier tracks more than her spookier music, and that’s the case here too. The soundtrack album also includes a bonus arrangement by Yamane of her composition “Phantom Palace.” I kinda prefer the original because of the swung piano accompaniment and cronchy bell sample, but I’m weird like that.

The soundtrack album only credits specific songs to Hokkai and Yamane, leaving all five^[1] boss themes uncredited with Hokkai to comment on because “the composer was absent.” These tracks are probably all by Takashi Yoshida, who had left Konami three years before this album came out. Theoretically though one or more of them might be by a super secret uncredited composer, as the companion game on this soundtrack (Dawn of Sorrow) also has a bunch of uncredited tracks with composer Masahiko Kimura being omitted… but Michiru Yamane’s liner notes actually credit one track to sound programmer Yuka Watanabe, who was only listed in special thanks.

They’re all definitely by Yoshida though, they’re in a consistent orchestral style that he also displayed in Suikoden III. It might just be a coincidence and not intentional stylistic development, but you can absolutely see Yoshida just getting more absurdly proggy in his music from Suikogaiden Vol.2 to Suikoden III to this, with all five boss themes being some ridiculously angular nonsense. I love ’em! Like I said two posts ago, these songs are what made me want to look more into Yoshida. I’m excited to find out if he kept writing music like this after going to KOEI TECMO or if he took his music in a different direction, as I imagine songs like these may be less fitting for something like the Nobunaga’s Ambition strategy series. We’ll see!

Recommended tracks:

• “Ruined Castle Corridor” (Yamane) is the obligatory Big Damn Castlevania theme, love the prog runs at 0:43

• “Premonition” (Hokkai) was the most counterpointy Hokkai track in the game and therefore my favorite Hokkai track in the game

• “Confrontation” (Yoshida?) closes out the loop with an extended chordspam bit at 0:52 I really like

• “Sacred Cave” (Yamane) is one of them chill Yamane tracks, some nice percussion samples in this one

• “Chaotic Realm” (Yamane) I don’t remember at all but damn this is one of my favorite Michiru Yamane tracks ever now, wtf is going on here

• “Battle Against Chaos” (Yoshida?) is all over the place (laudatory)

(track titles are unofficial translations from VGMdb)