Most irritating music/sound f/x in a shmup

[handsome_rakshas]

Lords of Thunder for the Sega CD.

The SFX totally don't match up to the amazing soundtrack.

[Limbrooke]

RADIANT SILVERGUN's SOUNDTRACK IS CRAP!

Glad to see I'm not alone on this. Ikaruga's is much, much better, though still not great in my eyes (or ears). Personally, there aren't many shmup soundtracks that I like, and this is coming from a huge VG music nerd. I guess my favorites are the Gradius series and Twinbee. As far as recent shmups go, Galuda's ok, and if Touhou didn't use such irritating synth instruments, I'd probably like it a lot.

What a load of tosh, Silvergun's soundtrack is sublime.

But both Silvergun and Ikaruga (...definitely Ikaruga) soundtracks are thoroughly trounced by Gradius V - by far and away Sakimoto's best work.

Gradius 5 has a pretty boring soundtrack (Ikaruga [which is Iuchi, not Sakimoto] too, although I'd never listen to the OST of this outside the game) and ZOM, you're a bonehead. Go back to the isolation chamber.

Speaking about Radiant Silvergun and Sakimoto for a sec again, Souky's is weird. Half of it sounds like RS and the other half doesn't. The part that doesn't is fucking fantastic, like stage 5 and stage 1 and some of the boss themes. Makes you wonder for these games, what exactly that Iwata fellow does. Maybe he's the one who should be famous and all.

And yeah, Ogre Battle is clearly the best out of the old traditional Sakimoto style.

Ogre Battle is not bad, too bad the game isn't as interesting(intense). Sakimoto perhaps got redundant after Soukyu and Final Fantasy Tactics so far as Silvergun sounds, so that might explain the feelings of rehash syndrome. Personally, I listened to Silvergun first and as such I thoroughly enjoy it. Sakimoto did great work in Soukyu and FFT, but for me Silvergun will always be the top of the class. As mentioned later, the theme while ever present, is one that sounds quite good.

The music in the second stage of Border Down is pretty horrible. It sounds like the soundtrack to some 70's sitcom.

Worst first post ever.

Seconded.
The 2nd BGM is, in fact, my favorite in the whole game.

Agreed! Stage 2 is fantastic and is not alone compared to the rest of the soundtrack. YACK knows the scoop.

Thunderforce II announcer at the very beginning of the game....it pisses me off that I can't understand what the ll he is saying!!!

"It is interesting that you resist...nano, good luck!"

I always got: "[rabble rabble]... ladder, good luck!" Speak up! Otherwise, nothing else annoying there. Nice boss warning sounds too. Sounds intense/dire, that's what I initially thought when I heard the warning claxons.

As for being on topic, anything in Master of Weapon sounds like crap. Giga Wing hath been addressed and I think Giga Wing 2s orchestral rubbish should be mentioned too. So, Giga Wing 2s soundtrack blows, there.

[Zeether]

For the last time it's "This is Exceliza. Roger, good luck."

[BrianC]

A couple of the shmups on the VG Pocket Capulet have very irritating music.

[Limbrooke]

For the last time it's "This is Exceliza. Roger, good luck."

Yeah thanks kid, I totally didn't see Bills post.
Maybe you could repeat your post another 10,000 times, perhaps I'll get it then.

"This is Exceliza, I want to fly now." "Roger, good luck." Guy says "I want to fly now" like he's finally decided what to order at the drive-through that morning.

[Battletoad]

I have to mention Giga Wing 1 once again, this time because of the reflect force sound. The sound doesn´t start when the barrier is activated, but when the bar starts to fill up (and when the bar is filled, the RF is activated). That was really irritating at the beginning. Meanwhile I´ve gotten used to it, but it still happens sometimes that I let off the button when I hear the sound and thus before the barrier is actually activated. This leads of course into an almost certain death... ;(

[Specineff]

My problem with the RSG soundtrack is that is the same freaking melody, at different orchestrations and tempos, all over the game. Even during the ending sequence.

Did Hashimoto charge like a dollar per note, and the sound budget was 40?

Don't get me wrong, it's a good composition. But Hosoe's Dragon Spirit (Sorry for bringing it up again) has more variety. And I think that was his first game soundtack.

[TomuS]

Gulf War II - Worst "music" ever.
Rayxanber - Really great soundtrack, except for the Boss Theme.. I hate it.
Strike Gunner S.T.G. - Ok music, but the sound quality is horrible.

The number "2" weapon SFX in R-Shark is so grating, I avoid the weapon because of that.
Meta Fox's SFX is irritating because it's so loud, I want to hear the music too.

[ColonelFatso]

My problem with the RSG soundtrack is that is the same freaking melody, at different orchestrations and tempos, all over the game. Even during the ending sequence.

Did Hashimoto charge like a dollar per note, and the sound budget was 40?

Haven't played RSG or heard the soundtrack so I can't pass my own judgment, but I had to stop you here.

It sounds like you're bashing the soundtrack for HAVING A THEME. A central motif goes a long way towards creating a cohesive musical experience, whether it be a soundtrack, symphony, opera, or even just a short piano piece. Hearing the various developments of that motif and how different they can be within the same elemental structure is part of the magic of music.

It would be a problem if there wasn't anything else to balance it out, or if the developments were lacklustre and all sounded the exact same. And again I can't be sure whether I'm reading your post correctly, but the idea of bashing a soundtrack for good musical conduct is lol.

EDIT: Just gave the soundtrack a listen to be sure. Yes, the main theme is a little too prevalent and without other motifs to provide balance it soon runs dry, but the real problem with it is that it doesn't even attempt to sound real. There's no balancing between the digitized strings and the digitized brass (which don't even have very good sound patches either), and the timpanis may as well be DPCM samples from the NES for all the expression in them.

[Enhasa]

Haven't said this yet, but the music that irritates me the most is wannabe epic orchestral stuff like Donpachi and Battle Bakraid. I'd rather hear anything else, even Zing Zing Zip or DDP or RFJ.

Haven't played RSG or heard the soundtrack so I can't pass my own judgment, but I had to stop you here.

It sounds like you're bashing the soundtrack for HAVING A THEME.

LOL, once you've heard it, you will understand what he means. There's having a theme, and then there's Sakimoto "pound you on the head over and over again with the same motif." He does it all the time for most of his games. I do find it pretty annoying. And he also doesn't do the different classical variations like inversions and all that. The only thing that ever changes is modulation, tempo, or timbre.


Bonus Sakimoto content! I did some research on what he does vs Iwata in certain games that I cared enough to find out about and were easy to find out. I've concluded that Iwata does get shortchanged. The pattern for Sakimoto is that he can turn out some good ideas, which means he has enough material to make wonderful credits for example, but can't typically generate enough solid content to fill out an entire soundtrack. Which means either there's a good amount of filler, or he has to take the one or two ideas and stretch them out for the whole soundtrack, which leads to the problem above. Sakimoto only has two main styles too, which for shmup fans are best known as the Radiant Silvergun style and the Gradius 5 style.

Verytex (1991): All Sakimoto.
Magical Chase (1991): The mp3s I got didn't make a distinction on who did which songs.
Ogre Battle (1993): Sakimoto only does 6 songs, but they are the more recognizable series ones like the overture, character creation, first stage song, ending, and credits. Matsuo has 3 songs (2 late stages and pre-final boss), Iwata has all the rest. So he should really get the credit.
Kingdom Grand Prix (1994): The distribution is 9 Sakimoto/10 Iwata, although most of the short tracks you only hear for a couple seconds are Sakimoto, so the actual split is much more Iwata. Iwata must be Sakimoto's bitch though, because Sakimoto gets to do the first stage, final stage, attract, character select, and so on. Clear win for Iwata, although Sakimoto did Norvice Reining (the second boss theme, and my favorite from the game).
X-Kaliber 2097 (1994): Essentially all Matsuo. Master of Monsters, Dragon Force 2, and Front Mission 3 had crappy music, don't care about this guy.
Tactics Ogre (1995): 25 Sakimoto/20 Iwata. As always, Sakimoto handles the bookends of overture, character creation, intro, report, ending, credits, and other plot-oriented stuff. Stage songs are pretty much split. I'd give Sakimoto the win here actually. The bookends and plot stuff are the best he ever did in this style (much better than say FFT), and Avilla Henya (the rainy stage song) is my favorite in the game.
Treasure Hunter G (1996): Out of 73 songs, Sakimoto did 7 and Iwata did 6. 7 composers in total, you know what they say about too many cooks. Again, Sakimoto gets to do the attract, intro, big boss, plot, and ending (although not credits this time). I think he must be some kind of bookend specialist. A scratch in terms of this thread.
Soukyugurentai (1996): All Sakimoto, actually. Pretty nice to hear him go out of his main two styles for half of this one. The other half is the Ogre/RS stuff.
Bloody Roar (1997): Too lazy to find out about this one. Maybe I should though, it also has Namiki, so it would be interesting to see who did what.
Radiant Silvergun (1998): All Sakimoto.
Armed Police Batrider (1998): I figured Wikipedia was just wrong, but Sakimoto did make the attract theme. Most of this is Namiki of course, with some Koyano for later stages and bosses (another underappreciated guy I guess then). Iwata has the song from KGP.
Ogre Battle 64 (1999): Sakimoto with Iwata and Matsuo. Didn't care enough to look.
Vagrant Story (2000): All Sakimoto.
Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis (2001): With Iwata, again I don't care enough.
Legaia 2 (2001): With Mitsuda (he's famous or something) and Oshima (the lady who did Ico, Legend of Legaia, and Arc the Lad 3). Don't care at all about this one. Seemed pretty generic, which is odd since Sakimoto and Mitsuda are very recognizable if nothing else. Guess Oshima probably did most of it since she scored the first game after all.
Breath of Fire 5 (2002): All Sakimoto.

I don't know and don't care about anything past this (I think his recent stuff all sucks a lot), so feel free to read the right column here instead of me repeating it. He has more solo stuff now anyway, less to dig through.


Super bonus content! Top 3 Sakimoto soundtracks according to some random guy on the internet:

1) Breath of Fire 5 -- wins easily, Gradius 5 style but pioneered it and is also much better, bonus points for actually being composed entirely by him
2) Kingdom Grand Prix -- even though Iwata did most of the awesome tracks, Sakimoto does show he can sometimes go out of his main styles with the 2nd boss theme and final stage
3) Verytex -- Strangely, this Asmik game (developers of the infamous D-Force!) sounds very much like another Asmik game, Xardion. More so than it sounds like Sakimoto. Most of this is the sound library, but also the fact that this is 1991 and pre-Ogre Battle (which pioneered his RS style). I think Xardion's soundtrack beats the pants off this one, for what it's worth.

[sunburstbasser]

Battle Bakraid balances it out with kick ass guitar rock.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

just about any high pitched japanese voice acting like in Mushihimisama it would drive me insane hearing it over and over again

[handsome_rakshas]

Thanks for all that info Enhasa!

[Shelcoof]

I'd have to give this to Sapphire.... that game's sound FX is horrible. Though the damn soundtrack is amazing.

Way to balance a shmup eh

[Specineff]

I think that Rayxanber 2 and 3 have bad main gun sound effects. As in "reach for the mute button and fire up something else for sound" bad.

[Skyline]

RADAR SCOPE

I don't give a fuck whether it's classified as a fucking shmup or not...good god even the sound that's blaring after you press start is enough to make you want to shove piranhas in your fucking ears

[lgb]

Koyano is above and beyond unappreciated. I don't find Motoyama absolutely terrible, I just find Mahou "better" than much else; Koyano was able to do that with Daimahou.

[Hydeux]

8 bit lasers, all of them
most of 16 bit lasers (I hate the one in Eliminate Down !!!)
'must have been said hundred times before though...

[Thunder Force]

I think the sound FX in alot of PCE shooters overpower the awesome music, which bothers me. Gate of Thunder for example. The shitty sound FX are WAY too loud.

This almost ruined Gate of Thunder for me. It makes me want to stop shooting so I can hear the pleasant music instead of the crap FX, which of course gets me killed resulting in me just wanting to rage quit the game.

I still hear the Genesis' shield pick-up speech as "Bring that shit on," every time.

[Ed Oscuro]

hey kids, the rap music

check out ozma wars in MAME

THE BRAIN DAMAGE

[PC Engine Fan X!]

This almost ruined Gate of Thunder for me. It makes me want to stop shooting so I can hear the pleasant music instead of the crap FX, which of course gets me killed resulting in me just wanting to rage quit the game.

To remedy that potential problem of possible"rage quit" session of Red/Compile's Gate of Thunder, just stick said Super CD-Rom2 game into a regular CD player and enjoy the Redbook audio in pure 44.1kHz goodness. Easy as pie. FYI: Just don't play tracks 1 or 2 & you're good to go. ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~