Shantae Original Soundtrack

[BoneSatyr]

Changed the dates.

Originally Posted by LimitedRunGames

Due to manufacturing problems, production on the soundtracks is currently delayed into November. Orders with soundtracks will not ship until soundtracks arrive from the factory. We expect to be able to ship by the end of the second week of November.

[LuxKiller65]

Is this coming out now because the game is one of the most expensive GBA games, so that there is a potential demand?

I wonder in which Chinese factory they are made (somewhere in Dongguan?), and what the manufacturing issue is

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Heyy, this looks--wait, sold out?

[BoneSatyr]

Originally Posted by LuxKiller65

Is this coming out now because the game is one of the most expensive GBA games, so that there is a potential demand?

I wonder in which Chinese factory they are made (somewhere in Dongguan?), and what the manufacturing issue is ;)

They released the soundtracks for all of the games at once, together with the physical releases of the two latest games. With the new game coming out shortly, on physical disc together with a soundtrack, I think it's pretty fitting.
I have no idea where they make it, just that they are real pressed CDDA discs, unlike IndieBox that just burned some MP3s to a disc.

The soundtracks and games all sold out within 20 minutes, but they did have two separate times for half the stock at a time. 750 each of the soundtracks, 6000 each of the games.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Originally Posted by BoneSatyr

but they did have two separate times for half the stock at a time. 750 each of the soundtracks, 6000 each of the games.

So shouldn't the link be marked as 'OOP' then?

Either way, only 750? Agh! I wish Jake Kaufman would publish these digitally.

[BoneSatyr]

Originally Posted by Jedi QuestMaster

So shouldn't the link be marked as 'OOP' then?

Either way, only 750? Agh! I wish Jake Kaufman would publish these digitally.

The other two are already free on Bandcamp (I'm assuming the tracklist is the same), so we can only hope he releases the GBC one again.

[BoneSatyr]

Should the serial number in the matrix be considered cat#? I know we've used it for Japanese Club Nintendo releases in the past, I'm just not sure if this is the same kind of number. Pirate's Curse comes with two discs, and they both have similar numbers, "MAJ3644" and "MAJ3645". This album has "MAJ3721".

[TerraEpon]

I'm PRETTY sure Jake originally had this soundtrack up for download years ago (in the days before Bandcamp, before Risky's Revenge was on Steam even).

I even tried searching it out once but came up short, though I think there was evidence of it, at least.

Incidently I did but the other two (not this one) and am kinda disappointed. Just front artwork, a single slip with a white rear as a cover, and a tracklist on back, no notes or anything else. For $15 I bought a pressed CD essentially given they are free on bandcamp (though, granted, I'm happy to support WF and Jake in this)

[TerraEpon]

Wow, talk about lazy. Everything in alphabetical order? What the hell?

[Jedi QuestMaster]

I caved and bought it secondhand. For $25 shipping included!

Even though it's only a single side insert cover with a tracklist on back, with a low quality-looking logo on the CD, and the music only loops once, and it's in alphabetical order (I usually shuffle my music anyway), it was well worth it.

[KriztofferSwank]

Originally Posted by TerraEpon

Wow, talk about lazy. Everything in alphabetical order? What the hell?

That's almost the case. The CD tracklist is basically in the same order that Jake Kaufman originally had it on his site (see: track 15, "Trapped Genie", isn't alphabetized, just like on this entry), except Limited Run Games failed to make track 1 the title track.

It is baffling, though. I'd have much preferred a well-thought tracklist. I'll just have to rearrange my ripped files myself...

The original free MP3s are available to download through Archive.org's Wayback Machine, and you can see there that Kaufman mainly put them in alphabetical order.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110919...tracks/shantae


Edit: For anyone interested, I just sorted through all the tracks in a way you would hear them in the game. This makes for a much better listening experience, I think. Shame the CD doesn't have a proper track order, but this works for a playlist.

01. Title
02. File Menu
03. Burning Town
04. Risky Boots
05. Boss
06. Flashback
07. Harbor Town
08. Dance Room
09. Day Travel 2
10. Caverns
11. Night Travel 2
12. Water Town
13. Shop
14. Conversation
15. Labyrinths
16. Found Item
17. Trapped Genie
18. Zombie Town
19. Mini-Game
20. Mini-Game Start/Lose/Win
21. Day Travel
22. Underground
23. Night Travel
24. Oasis
25. Labyrinths 2
26. Finished Puzzle
27. Bandit Town
28. Tinkerbot Boss
29. Risky Boots Battle
30. Credits
31. Game Over

[TerraEpon]

(never mind)

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Originally Posted by KriztofferSwank

The original free MP3s are available to download through Archive.org's Wayback Machine, and you can see there that Kaufman mainly put them in alphabetical order.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110919...tracks/shantae

Cool! Virt even has notes on them regarding production and influences.

Hmm... looking at them stacked on top of each other, it seems these MP3s (at least the uncompressed files) were the source for Limited Run Games' CD.



At least, they share the same weird waveform (notice the positive peaks, but no negatives?) Is this just inherent of Gameboy recordings?


Wait, these audio files are way too similar, especially for one being compressed to a quarter the size of the original. Add to that the fact that one had to be ripped from an audio CD:




Here's a comparison between the CD rip (top), the MP3 from the website (center), and a 128kbps compression of the CD rip (bottom):




The bottom two files are only about 2KB difference in size:




The clipping is more similar to the uncompressed waveform (the only editing I did was add silence to the beginning to match them up better):



Did Virt use a much better encoder than what Goldwave has? Am I being paranoid? What do you think, guys?

[TerraEpon]

No I don't think you're being paranoid at all.

It turns out that that both Pirate's Curse and Risky's Revenge use some sort of lossy source as well. This is especially shitty, given that the /FREE/ lossless files on Bandcamp are in fact full on lossless.

Pretty tempted to sell my CDs in fact, because of this.

[PonyoBellanote]

What? o.o Are you serious? They had the chance to do something of quality and all they did was just press lossy MP3s on a CD? Woah.. but does the sound quality changes at all?

[TerraEpon]

Not really, but still. It does sour my thoughts of buying ANY future OST from Limited Run though.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

I decided to contact Limited Run about this, so I created an account on their forum... didn't get my activation code.

So I contacted their helpdesk:

Hello, I purchased the Shantae Original Soundtrack with the impression that the CDs were pressed from lossless audio files. However, this came up:

http://vgmdb.net/forums/showpost.php...5&postcount=13

Does this mean that the Shantae OST was pressed from MP3 files?


Response:

Hi James,

I do apologize, but we do not have those specifics.
Our CDs are supplied by a 3rd party disc maker.

Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Ticket: https://limitedrungames.freshdesk.co...k/tickets/3315

Limited Run Games Support Agent

Sarah Elliott

[TerraEpon]

Here's my email chain:

Me:
So. I realize that it has been some months, however it has just been made known to me that the CDs you sold for Shantae and the Pirate's Curse as well as Shantae: Risky's Revenge were made from a lossy source -- that is to say, someone used Mp3s (most likely) when making the master for the discs. This is confirmed with any program able to read spectrograms.
Risky's Revenge cuts off at 18k and Pirate's Curse cuts off at 16k.
This wouldn't necessarily be an issue, excepting the fact that Jake Kaufman, on his Bandcamp site, offers these soundtracks from a lossless source -- moreover, FOR FREE. There is no cutoff in the specs of these.
This is pretty clearly unacceptable. I cannot claim to know why this happened, only that it did. This is especially disappointing when wrapped in such a limited edition.

Them:
I can definitely understand your frustration.
The soundtracks are definitely still a limited edition no matter the format used but I can see why the lossy format would not be ideal.
I am going to check further into this and see what information I can find for you so far as the creation of the soundtracks we distribute since those are not actually create in-house, and so it might be something we can specify in the future.
Limited Run Games Support Agent

Sarah Elliott


Me:
Thanks for the reply. I am not overly surprised you don't do the production yourselves, but regardless of where it came from, the facts remain as they are. The fact the CDs were limited had no bearing on my own purchase, but given that their quality is worse than the available (and especially free) digital version would have swayed it had I known.

Them:
It does look like at this point we are past when I could issue any kind of refund for a return (normally we don't accept open soundtracks as returns, but I was going to see if we could in this instance). You could always post them up on our trade forum since there is a pretty high demand for those.

[Brad Evans II]

I was lead here by Jedi QuestMaster's note on his sales posting for one of the Shantae albums.

Thanks for that note by the way! Never would have realized this myself.

I was actually looking into getting all of these OSTs on disc, but if some of the discs are just the mp3s quality files on CD's I'll just stick with mp3s or downloads if they're still available.

My question is are ANY of the Shantae discs of high enough quality to buy? I'm not an audiophile per say, but if I'm going to the effort of buying something on disc I want the quality to be above what would be provided by the above examples.

[TerraEpon]

Well check out the above posts. Risky's Revenge and Pirate's Curse are both made from Mp3s whereas the FREE downloads on Bandcamp are true lossless.

[Brad Evans II]

Originally Posted by TerraEpon

Well check out the above posts. Risky's Revenge and Pirate's Curse are both made from Mp3s whereas the FREE downloads on Bandcamp are true lossless.

Sorry about that. I saw the above after I posted that.

Anyway, I did snatch a copy of the Risky's enclosure from the PS4 game for $10 on eBay, but I'll probably just go with the DLs on the others.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

For the GBC game's music, I would go with the vinyl release: https://vgmdb.net/album/82510

Download codes to the lossless digital files are provided by Fangamer upon purchase, so you don't need a record player.

[Brad Evans II]

Originally Posted by Jedi QuestMaster

Download codes to the lossless digital files are provided by Fangamer upon purchase, so you don't need a record player.

Funny thing is I DO have a record player; I just don't have the room to hook it up right now and, not to indirectly bash anyone, I'm not the biggest fan of the VGM on vinyl thing. I mean it's cool for those that are into it, but I dipped my toe into the whole thing with Mondo's Castlevania releases but realized I was essentially chasing the same phantom as the "retro games" thing I did years ago.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

I never really understood the point of putting simple, 8-bit music on vinyl. I can understand really nice, complicated arrangements. And why only vinyl?

By the way, how do those Castlevania vinyl recordings sound? I'm tempted to get the Simon's Quest one just for the NES (not FDS) recordings, and also the beautiful artwork. I couldn't even stand the artwork for the other two releases.

[Brad Evans II]

Originally Posted by Jedi QuestMaster

By the way, how do those Castlevania vinyl recordings sound?

To be honest I was very pleased with the sound quality on the first three albums. I was kind of annoyed with the Castlevania one however. I think the entire soundtrack should have been put on one side of the vinyl so you wouldn't have to flip the record to hear the second half. I think both sides should have had the entire score so they were mirror duplicates, but that's my opinion.

It also be said that the sound source for first album (Castlevania) is taken from the first Dracula Best. This annoyed some people and Mondo appeared to stop this as the other two don't don't this - obviously.

As for negatives, some people say these releases are too loud. I didn't feel that way, but yeah, these releases are solid enough that I wish Konami would offer a newer and more straight forward version of the music on Dracula Best 1 on a new and updated collection.

[All You Need Is Practice]

Does anyone know if any other physical CD soundtracks from Limited Run Games have the same MP3 issue as the Shantae soundtracks?

[TerraEpon]

(nevermind)