Hi, folks. I had a little fun replaying a good game on the GameBoy Advance, Gradius Generation. I wonder why there isn't a review of it on SHMUPS yet?
Anyway, the game is very fun, but the music is quite mediocre. Some of the tunes are good (like stage 2's) but most are poorly composed -- even to the point of sounding randomly generated in some stages. And then I played stage 6 and the music sounded VERY familiar. The tune in this stage is very similar (and almost plays note-for-note in some places) to a song from Magical Chase on the PC-Engine! If you have Gradius Generation, play through stage 6, and then give a listen to the song "Azure Way" in Magical Chase's sound test. You'll find them startlingly similar.
I checked the music staff in Gradius Generation and there doesn't seem to be a staff overlap. I guess they were such fans of the great Hitoshi Sakimoto that they wanted to rip off one of his tunes...
Quite a sad effort overall, really.
