Game info: Sega Retro (Tokudaigou 1, Tokudaigou 2)
Listening: physical soundtrack (tracks 18-21, incomplete), digital soundtrack (tracks 31-34, incomplete)
Credits
Sound Technical Director: Masaru Setsumaru
Sound Director: Hiroyuki Hamada
SE: Tomomitsu Matsushita
BGM: Shinichiro Sato
Engineer: Hirokazu Akashi
Assistant Engineer: Yoshitada Miya, Sawako Sogabe
The physical soundtrack release includes an overall list of composers for the entire music selection; Shinichiro Sato is not included but Hiroyuki Hamada is, suggesting that Hamada may have been the composer of the four included pieces. “The album’s credits are bad” is another perfectly viable explanation, however.
Info
Sakatsuku Tokudaigou is an expanded edition of the first Dreamcast game with additional team and player data, along with some other gameplay enhancements apparently. They also decided to completely replace the soundtrack for some reason, outsourcing the music and sound effects to longtime game audio company T’s MUSIC. The sole explicit music credit is to Shinichiro Sato, who worked on a bunch of different games for the company over a period of 15-20 years. I haven’t heard a lot by Sato so I can’t tell you much about him, but he did do a few interesting tracks for the game July, like whatever the heck this battle theme is.
This game has a little bit of jazz fusion in the vein of the first few games (though a little more electric guitar heavy) in the “Sports News” tracks, but for the most part the soundtrack has switched over to Latin jazz-y music with the addition of a bunch of piano montunos and chord claves, as well as an increase in brass and electric guitar shredding. There’s also a little bit of a bluesy tinge to a few tracks, plus a little orchestral and an occasional one-off style like reggae. But mainly the Latin jazz thing, you’ll notice the difference immediately just on the title screen.
I didn’t like this as much as Shiratsu’s last two scores for the series, but it’s not bad at all. Mainly what I like about it is that a bunch of the tracks have some nice chord changes in them, though a lot of the time it’s just a vamp between two or three chords and not a longer, more complex progression. Aside from that aspect, the music is otherwise fairly straightforward, though some of the guitar shredding is fun. Unfortunately, this time around I thought the jingles, which are now mostly in a little more of a rock/metal style, weren’t as good, but the game over jingles specifically are more jazzy in the style of the earlier games and I liked ’em.
In 2001, SEGA would release another update, Sakatsuku Tokudaigou 2, but they didn’t change the music at all, at least as far as the sound test is concerned. The first three games all had a couple of movie tracks that don’t appear in the sound test, and I can’t rule out the possibility that the Tokudaigou games do too and there are differences between the two games in that area.
Recommended tracks:
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“Large City” goes super Pokémon mode at 0:32 for some reason
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“Unhappiness 2” is the reggae-ish track, I like the way the wind melody and background figure combine
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“Sports News 2” is the beefiest of the news themes, dunno why the keyboard solo just kind of ends though
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“Opening” has a more bluesy/oldies first minute before activating later with the guitar shredding
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“Closing / Setup” has a rare acoustic guitar appearance
(track titles are unofficial translations by me of titles from the sound test)
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