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

Game info: Steam, TetrisWiki
Listening: soundtrack album, extracted audio

Info

After three thousand years and one cancelled attempt, Arika finally released a fourth TGM a few months ago. TETRIS THE GRAND MASTER 4 doesn’t have substantially more modes than its predecessors, but all six modes have unique music this time around, so the soundtrack clocks in at nearly an hour and a half. TGM4’s soundtrack does have the same, more diverse spread of EDM that TGM3 did, plus two modes bringing in even more: KONOHA mode expands on the one cute pop track from Sakura mode by arranging it for FM and adding two FM covers of synthpop songs Hosoe wrote for earlier compilation albums, and MARATHON mode features electronic remixes of “Korobeiniki” and “Katyusha.” Because you can’t have a Tetris game without Russian folk music covers, it’s literally illegal^[1].

The production on this soundtrack is much more standard synthy EDM and a lot less sample plundery than its predecessor, it’s a very bread and butter SuperSweep kind of sound. Several tracks reminded me a bit of the music for Tetris 99, which SuperSweep also composed, so that all makes sense. I was a little bummed that Ayako Saso barely contributed anything to the third game, but she came back and did a good amount of this soundtrack, which we love to see. A few of her tracks also include polymeter or pseudo-polymeter, which is something she likes to do and also something we love to see.

I think I liked it about the same as the third game, a little less distinctive instrumentally but a little more interesting to me compositionally. Just another structurally sound SuperSweep product.

Recommended tracks:

• “MODE SELECT” (Shinji Hosoe) pleasantly incorporates a bunch of TGM sound effects

• “MARATHON LV2” (Ayako Saso, orig. “Katyusha” by Matvey Blanter) had the kind of ambient intro I was hoping was going to lead into some sick DnB nonsense, but nope we drop into happy hardcore country instead

• “NORMAL LV1” (Hosoe) is one of the more chill tracks in the game, a moment of calm before you get murdered to death by tetrominos

• “ASUKA LV1” (Saso) has some nice 3-3-3-3-4 bits

• “MASTER LV4” (Hosoe) is one of the weirder tracks, with a random jazz break at the end of the loop

• “KONOHA URA” (Hosoe) has my favorite source tune of the FM tracks, so I like its cover the most

• “SHIRANUI LV5” (Saso) starts off pretty normally before busting out the random unnecessary vocal sample and then the rave chords and then both at once