Game info: TetrisWiki
Listening: series soundtrack album (tracks 18-35), extracted audio
Info
Game #3 almost doubles again the amount of music from the previous game; in addition to there being six progressive levels of in-game music, this edition also includes a new puzzle mode, Sakura, which has its own unique set of three songs. For this game, developer Arika moved to Taito’s Type X arcade hardware, which ran embedded Windows (most arcade games from the last twenty years or so are just bespoke PCs), so TERROR-INSTINCT doesn’t have a soundtrack programmed for a specific sound chip but rather just streams music files directly.
The first two games’ soundtracks were already mostly by Shinji Hosoe, but this one is really almost all him, with Ayako Saso only handling two menu themes. The extended length of this soundtrack allows it to be the most stylistically diverse so far; while it is still mostly EDM, there’s a little bit more of a range, with some trance and house flavor in there along with the techno and gabber, along with a cute pop fusion track in Sakura mode that sounds like Umihara Kawase. Since the hardware allowed the composers to write full production music this time, the tunes have a lot more random instrument samples than they did in the first two games, giving it a bit more of a plunderphonics feel, especially with there being some occasionally unexpected instruments like gamelan.
I feel like a broken record saying that every one of these is a solid enough soundtrack, but I can’t stop because every one of these is a solid enough soundtrack! The range in both the styles and production in this one makes it my favorite so far.
The final track on the album, “Sakura Mode Again,” is a remix by Hosoe of his “TI Sakura Mode Normal” theme, the cute pop fusion one. It’s mostly just an instrumental upgrade and slight expansion of the original piece, and to that end I slightly prefer the original FM-ish instrumentation.
Recommended tracks:
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“TI Mode Select” (Saso) was the most directly house track in the game
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“TI Lv2” (Hosoe) is one of the chiller grooves of the soundtrack, though it’s still got some intensity in there for an intense video game
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“TI Lv5” (Hosoe) was probably the most plundery of the plunderin’ tracks
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“TI Result” (Hosoe) clobbers you with dat bass
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“TI VS Game” (Hosoe) starts off with a nice mallet-y figure, I really like when it comes back later at 1:12 and duels a bit with a synth riff in a segment where it’s really easy to lose track of the downbeat
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