Game info: website
Listening: soundtrack album (w/music info), YouTube (“Substory” tracks), extracted audio
Info
So I guess a new Double Dragon game came out last year? I’ve never particularly been into the series, either for its music or just the games, but this one has a pretty interesting (i.e., completely random) composer lineup, so I had to check it out. The two main composers were Kohta Takahashi, a former Namco composer known mostly for his electronic music who hasn’t ever worked on a beat ’em up before and is making his first major soundtrack appearance in more than a decade, and Raito, a longtime freelance/doujin composer known mainly for his fighting game soundtracks. They were for some reason joined by two EDM composers from the U.S. who frequently work together, James Landino and Funk Fiction, who did about a total of eight tracks between them. There’s also one more composer listed in the game, a pianist named furani who’s the least weird person here because she’s already worked on a few other modern installments in former Technōs Japan franchises, but she’s not credited anywhere on the soundtrack; there are a few “Substory” tracks in the game files that aren’t present on the soundtrack, so maybe some or all of those are hers.
While Revive is a new entry in the series and the majority of its soundtrack is original music, there are a good number of remixes from past Double Dragon games in there. The first few tracks on the soundtrack album all have some amount of electric guitar in them, giving the impression this might be a rock score, but after that it branches out a bit into more electronic music; there’s still plenty of rock to go, especially in the contributions by Raito, but things get more dance-y, or funkier, or more drum-and-bass-y in alternation with the geetarz.
My favorites were… all not rock tracks, which isn’t particularly surprising since I tend not to really care much about the kind of hard rock that’s on display here unless it has kickass chords or something in it, and the pieces here mostly don’t unfortunately. The electronic pieces tend to get a bit more into techno/house transposed chords or jazzy chord extension territory, particularly the tracks by James Landino and Funk Fiction since those are the kinds of music they like to write generally, and I liked those a bit more as a result. Honestly I feel like my takeaway from these tracks is incredibly predictable, like I could’ve written most of this paragraph without even listening to any of the music, just from knowing the composers involved and the styles of music present.
As noted earlier, though, there are a few tracks not present on the soundtrack album: some variations of the boss themes that are a little more guitar-focused, but more notably, a “Substory” track for each of the bosses too that I assume plays during a cutscene. These are all fairly different from the tracks on the soundtrack album, mostly downtempo and a few featuring piano (though with a couple more intense guitar tracks and one electronic orchestral piece), so even though I haven’t heard anything else by furani, I don’t have any trouble guessing these are her work. I’m not really a super big fan of these either, but the combo of chill hip hop beats + synths + piano noodling is a bit more to my taste overall.
Recommended tracks:
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“King of the Swing (Roper’s Theme)” (Landino) was my favorite rock track, and you’ll never guess why (it’s because of the EDM chord bit at 1:08)
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“Across the River (Chapter 2)” (Takahashi, orig. Kazunaka Yamane from Double Dragon II) is pretty cheesy
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“Pride of the Strongest (Joji’s Theme)” (Takahashi) starts off in pretty decent techno mode, kind of wish it stayed that way the whole song instead of moving on a bit after 30 seconds
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“Steel Labyrinth (Chapter 3)” (Landino, orig. Kazunaka Yamane from Double Dragon) has a little bit more of a house-y groove to it
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“Ancestral Duty (Ranzo’s Theme)” (Raito) and the associated cutscene track were the only really overtly Japan Mode pieces in the game and this one also gets a little fusiony; this was pretty easily my favorite piece
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“Under the City (Chapter 5)” (Funk Fiction) is one of the more chill and jazzy electronic tracks, we love some fake saxophone
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“Roper Substory” (furani?) had my favorite piano noodling of the bunch
(“Roper Substory” is an unofficial title taken from the filename)
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