I'm sure I'm forgetting someone but I can't think of another active veteran VGM composer with a weaker grasp on their former sound than Jun Senoue
I don't expect dude to magically become a more versatile composer but would it kill him to, like, listen to Sonic 3 again every once in a while
Remembering the atrocious new Super Sonic track from Origins that literally just sounded like Sonic 4. Sometimes the getting original staff back isn’t actually the right choice for a project!
Haven't looked into this at all but I do wonder if, like in the case of Masato Nakamura, Senoue-san didn't actually "work" with FM synth. Might have been the case that he composed pieces and then handed them off to programmers to be "arranged" for the hardware? Senoue is a proven composer and musician, so if anything I'm just baffled why this keeps happening. A mandate for a "retro" sound from higher up, maybe?
Personally, even as an FM synth lover myself, I reckon they should have just let the composers on staff cut loose. The Hideaki Kobayashi final boss track is practically a PSO2 battle theme, so letting them all play to their strengths would have been a boon.
I do wonder about that... I know 3D Blast has composer/arranger credits for every track in the ROM and, for the most part, Senoue and the other composer (Tatsuyuki Maeda, IIRC) handled most of their arrangements themselves, but I don't know if that specifically means they manually converted their own tunes. I remember him talking about the specifics of Metal Head's music in the liner notes of one of the 32X soundtrack liner notes, too, so I certainly don't think he was simply handing over demo tapes.
I guess it mostly irks me because it's not like he hasn't taken this same approach multiple times already and gotten flack for it, so if he can't or doesn't want to leave that style to anyone else, would it kill him to at least find another VST to work with? There are multiple more interesting and/or authentic ones being used by his colleagues in this very game, even.
I do agree that there is ultimately something charming about how little synergy there is from track to track, and how people like Hideaki Kobayashi and Takenobu Mitsuyoshi didn't bend an inch.
they just gotta have him hand the compositions over to hataya he still seems to get what fm was supposed to sound like
