Game info: Steam
Listening: Bandcamp
Info
shigatake is an artist and designer who works for game developer Vanillaware, for which he’s done a bunch of animation, UI design, and miscellaneous illustration work (and also game direction one time). Way back in 1996, when he was still in university, he made a shmup called DEVIL BLADE in Dezaemon PLUS, a shmup creation kit for the PlayStation. He submitted it to some kind of contest the developer was evidently having, and it was one of the 100 user-made games selected for inclusion in the next edition, Dezaemon Kids!, so that’s pretty cool.
For a few years he’s been working on a remake using the more modern Shooting Game Builder, and he just released it last month! He did most of the game by himself, though he got hasu to do the soundtrack. Most of the soundtrack is original, though the opening, stage 1, boss 1, and stage clear themes are arranged from the original PlayStation soundtrack by shigatake. hasu also credits original composition of the boss 2 & 3 themes to shigatake, though these songs don’t appear to be from the original game, so I’m not sure if they’re from a different game (he’s made several different shmups with several different versions of Dezaemon over the years) or if shigatake newly composed them for the remake.
This is a full production soundtrack, not chiptune like the last couple of hasu’s works. It’s a mix of synthy HR/HM with fake VGM guitars, more electronic and slightly fusiony stuff, and orchestral music, sometimes more than one of those at the same time. It’s not at all a clean break, but generally the shigatake-composed tracks lean more toward straightforward HR/HM and the hasu-composed tracks have a bit more variety to them. I also generally found hasu’s original tracks to be more interesting, not just because I’m a sucker for fusion-tinged electronica, but maybe a decent amount because I’m a sucker for fusion-tinged electronica.
Recommended tracks:
All selections are composed by hasu.
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“Meditation (utility)” has the lowkey hangar vibe you’d expect from a menu/select screen theme, though with big synthwave drums
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“The Lonely Journey (stage 2)” nails that chill shmup stage theme vibe
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“Doctrine of Destruction (boss 4)” has some really fun triplet chord spam at 0:50
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“Irreversible (stage 5)” is the final stage theme and my favorite of the orchestral music
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