Sea of Stars Original Soundtrack
The biggest (in many ways) release of the week was the Sea of Stars Original Soundtrack, primarily by The Messenger's Eric W. Brown (aka Rainbowdragoneyes) with additional input from Vincent Jake Jones, Reece Miller, and the hitherto unknown Yasunori Mitsuda. It currently has the most reviews I've ever seen for a Steam soundtrack DLC (14, 100% positive).
I'm kidding about Mitsuda of course, but he's got an issue here. His tracks are much softer than the rest of the music and include huge silent gaps at the beginning and the end. Apparently Mitsuda was under the impression that they would be mastered for final release by someone down the line, which Brown seemingly failed to do.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge - Dimension Shellshock
There was new Tee Lopes music released this week! There's usually some hype around his soundtracks, so I'm surprised this kinda flew under the radar. The Konamic influences from the main game's soundtrack are still there (do you hear a little Mystic Warriors, too?), with some added variety and even a couple of chiptunes.
Shin Megami Tensei 30th Anniversary Special Sound Compilation
This was released physically back in July in an odd bifurcated set of 5 CDs plus 1 USB stick. The CDs covered the three Super Famicom Shin Megami Tensei games (I, II and If...), the premiere release of the soundtrack to the Sega CD port of SMT, and the first general soundtrack release for the Xbox's Shin Megami Tensei NINE. The USB stick didn't contain any of that music, but had the complete soundtracks for SMT III Nocturne, Nocturne Maniax, SMT IV, SMT IV FINAL/Apocalypse, and SMT V. The stick is weirdly split too, as everything's in 320kbit MP3 files except for SMT V which is on there in high-res 24-bit/48kHz WAV.
If that wasn't enough, there's two bonus tracks exclusive to this release. The first is a version of the main battle track from SMT V, "Battle -Da'at-" with a 10-second ambient intro that was left off the initial soundtrack release. The second is a brand new recording of the complete SMT III main battle theme from Shoji Meguro.
If you're unfamiliar, the original PS2 release stored that battle music in very low quality 🔊 to keep load times for random encounters down. It also had numerous variations of its guitar solo -- a nice consideration for the player who has to hear it so many times per hour. It was included in high quality on the first soundtrack release in 2003, but in truncated form with a fade out after the first solo. It was assumed that this track would be fully restored for the game's HD re-release in 2020, but no -- it's still potato time. It also failed to show up on the companion expanded re-release soundtracks, leading many to fear the original recording was lost. And now we have confirmation of that fact, considering this track is titled "2023 redux" and that some of the solos just don't have the same tone as the PS2 original. Hey, it's better than nothing.
But wait, why am I including it in this post if it came out in July? Because this week, the entirety of this set, including those 2 bonus tracks, was made available on numerous streaming/download services. It's a big VGM accessibility win!*
* accessibility may be subject to geographic restrictions
• SMT: https://nex-tone.link/A00120533
• SMT (Mega CD): https://nex-tone.link/A00120530
• SMT II: https://nex-tone.link/A00120534
• SMT if...: https://nex-tone.link/A00120535
• SMT NINE: https://nex-tone.link/A00120532
• SMT IV: https://nex-tone.link/A00120538
• SMT Apocalypse/FINAL: https://nex-tone.link/A00120537
• SMT III & V Additional Battle Tracks: https://nex-tone.link/A00120531
• (III and V were already on streaming services prior to this week)
METAL BLACK Original Soundtrack
A brand new recording of METAL BLACK was released on digital services this week, specifically on the day of the August blue moon. It also includes a new arrangement of "Born to be free" by Masaki Mori.
Appare! Shougi-jiisan ~Washi to Shoubu ja~ Original Soundtracks
SUCCESS continued its streak of deep-pull back catalog releases by putting out this DS shĹŤgi game soundtrack by Kazushi Tsurukubo. It was previously available from the EGG MUSIC store.
Hyper Meteor Playdate Original Soundtrack
To finish this post, here's a Playdate soundtrack! It's not the first one of these to be released, but it seems like you don't see many of these.
I'm running out of steam, and I didn't even touch upon everything that came out on bandcamp Friday! Sorry!!