I never thought my words would have such an impact...
I'm glad you two enjoyed this album, because my only intention was to attract to people to listen to this album. I mean, this album deserves all the attention it can get. It's absurdly rare, a true hidden gem, for various reasons:
First, it was released almost twenty years ago, in a time when only big and succesfull franchises (Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy) or wealthy companies (Falcom, KOEI) could afford to produce orchestral vgm albums.
Second, Sega hired to an incredibly talented arranger to do the job of adapting a Genesis score to orchestral language. Anyone who listens to this album can attest to that Yasuhide Ito took seriously his job. In terms of orchestration is hard to top what Y.I. did with this album, it's absolutely brilliant.
Third, this album is a treasure to behold and completely unprecedented. The name of Yasuhide Ito or KNU is not found in any other vgm album, just here. And it's a pity, because these two have talent to spare.
By the way, Leon, I read your review on SEMO and I hope that many others read it and the album gets the recognition it deserves. To me, this album is perfect, but not in the sense of not having flaws, but in the sense of magical and fantasy soundscape it conjures up in my mind. It has a kind of narrative arc that leaves my mind to wander into a epic journey.
One last thing, about the mysterious KNU I was doing a little of research and this is what I have found:
Bio-Hazard Battle's credits
This is the other game in which KNU worked and my guest (maybe a wild supposition) is that
KNU could be
Kazumi
Nas
u. It's the best I could do with the information available about KNU.