Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: YouTube
Credits
Sound Programming: Yoshiya Imakiire
Sound Design: Isami Yoshida
Music: Sayako Doi
Info
[chanting] Sayako Doi solo soundtrack, Sayako Doi solo soundtrack, Sayako Doi solo soundtrack, Sayako Doi solo soundtrack. She apparently just does sports games now, Drag x Drive is a wheelchair basketball game with a street basketball aesthetic. There’s not a clean rip of this game because there’s no sound test or way to decrypt Switch 2 games to get at the music files yet, plus the music’s pretty dynamic, changing with the flow of the game to indicate changes of possession and so forth. Someone on YouTube has tried their best to record the music in-game anyway; we appreciate all the rippers out there doing the best with what they’ve got, which is often absolutely nothing when Nintendo is concerned.
They definitely went with the absolute most stereotypical direction possible for the soundtrack of a street basketball game: groovy hip-hop beats with faux-sampled guitar, bass, and brass riffs, you know, the style of the urban youths. There’s not a whole lot in Nintendo’s catalog that’s exactly in this style, though the Splatoon series of course comes the closest. It’s not necessarily the snuggest fit for Doi’s complex, layered, whole tone/dissonant compositional and production style (though you can definitely hear it in “Dead Sea” from Splatoon 3), and indeed for Drag x Drive she kept things more restrained and simple than she has for other works, never getting especially out there.
That said, while it may not be completely obvious if you don’t already know it’s her, once you know it’s her I think it’s not super hard to convince yourself that yeah okay I see how this is her work. The occasional chord is surprising but I think the main way it shows through is in the layered writing: if you imagine she took one her her intricately textural and rhythmic area themes from Splatoon 3 and then replaced all the layers with random riffs on various hip-hop instrumentation, then you might just land on music that sounds like this. It’s still not really the most interesting thing in the world to me, but it gave me a little bit of the same kind of “restricted to a box, but occasionally trying to poke through the box” feelings that Super Mario Wonder did. Less so for sure, though, this is definitely a more normal soundtrack than Wonder is.
Recommended tracks:
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“Rebound Scramble” builds up a few staccato figures going at it at once
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“Match 5” has a bit more of an electronic alt rock feel to it more than anything else
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“Match 7” is a bit jazzy
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“Park 5” was my favorite track, and it’s definitely because of the chord figure it starts with
(track titles are unofficial)
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