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  #1  
Old Mar 17, 2020, 08:27 PM
Spirit_Chaser Spirit_Chaser is offline
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Default Games That Need Better Soundtracks

We already have a games without soundtracks thread but what about games with existing soundtracks that need to be improved?

Game soundtracks with many missing songs: Breath of Fire II (original release), Deus Ex, Terranigma
Secret of Evermore (claims to be complete), Kirby 64, Mother 2,

Ninja Warriors Again: This game has received two soundtrack releases yet both have terrible quality.

Mega man series: Haunted by sound effects in several songs. Seems to have been fixed in the recent re-releases.

Revelations: Persona: There is a complete version of the soundtrack but the quality is inferior to the arrange version that has a lot less tracks.

Gradius III: Tracks are several songs put together instead of being split individually.

Vinyl Releases: This is frustrating for several reasons. Some games don't have digital or CD versions so the audience that can consume this is very low. Sunset Riders, Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time are 3 examples of excellent soundtracks ruined by vinyl only releases.

Turrican series: The original music exists but on flash drives released by Huelsbeck. They are rare now.

Soundtracks where songs don't loop: Too many to name. Is it important for songs to loop?

Compilation boxes: Maybe it's just me, but I significantly prefer the quality of several game soundtrack's original soundtrack releases to that of box releases such as the Konami Shooting Collection.

Plok: A cassette only release? What were they thinking? Plok deserved better.
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  #2  
Old Mar 17, 2020, 08:51 PM
RFGalaxy RFGalaxy is offline
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I had no idea Plok had received a cassette release.

If it makes you feel any better, it's supposed to be getting a vinyl release in a month... but since you've already mentioned multiple soundtrack releases with terrible quality, I'm guessing not
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  #3  
Old Mar 17, 2020, 09:06 PM
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Originally Posted by Spirit_Chaser View Post
Mega man series: Haunted by sound effects in several songs. Seems to have been fixed in the recent re-releases.
They have and they haven't. The newer MMX Sound Box fixes all the issues from the old one, but with the Rockcan/MM Sound Box they fixed the issues with the Team Entertainment releases of MM7 and MM8, but messed up MM1 and MM2 which were fine in the original.

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Plok: A cassette only release? What were they thinking? Plok deserved better.
This pisses me off to no end. It's a retro meme release. I think people forget that CD's were a thing in the '80s and '90s.

You mentioned Mother 2, but I'd also like a full OST with separate tracks for the first game. They're all on a single track at the end of the arrange album, which is annoying. Same goes for Super Mario Land, though most of that is available on the 30th anniversary album (still missing the ending theme though, one of my favorites)

Super Metroid: One of the biggest travesties in VGM. Not only is it missing tracks, not only do the tracks not loop twice, but most don't even complete a single loop before fading out. Absolute trash release and its only value is as a shelf piece because of how rare it is and not because it's a quality product. If I was lucky enough to own this, I'd sell it immediately and get something better.

Mystic Ark: A low buzz permeates the left channel on every. single. track.

Castlevania GBA trilogy: These are complete, but poorly mastered. It sounds like they were recorded from the headphone jack rather than ripped straight from the source.

Mr. Driller, Tales of Legendia, God Eater: Go Shiina likes to omit or change tracks on everything for a better album experience. Some of the changes are neat, but I'd still like to have everything.

Paper Mario: The whole thing is crammed onto a single disc and is missing a lot of great tracks like this one.

King's Field series: We've gotten two best of collections but both are rare and incomplete.

Star Ocean 1 (SFC): We only have about a dozen of the original tracks from the "soundtrack" that isn't really a soundtrack.

Tales of Destiny: The "OST" to this game, like Star Ocean and the original Tales of Phantasia release, isn't a real OST but is the same sound data with different instrument samples. I actually prefer the mastering on the album over the in-game version (whoever did sound programming for Sakuraba's PS1 stuff went overboard on the rhythm sections), but this is still a big hole in VGM history.

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 3: The album for this game is a weird combination of drama and OST in each track, and most of the OST is absent. It's a real shame because there were some really great arrangements and original battle themes from Sakuraba and Shiina for this game, but unlike the rest of the albums I've listed here, a gamerip isn't really an option because of how compressed PSP audio is.

Last edited by Aifread; Mar 17, 2020 at 09:31 PM.
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  #4  
Old Mar 17, 2020, 09:57 PM
112B2018 112B2018 is offline
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Mother 3 only has limited tracks and there's no complete version

Star fox assault has a promo with 9 tracks but no official soundtrack

There's quite a few examples of arranged soundtracks without an original soundtrack like the original F-Zero for example.
Edit: Most of F-Zero SFC can be found in "Nintendo Super famicom Game Music" (TOCT-6429)

There is no version of Assault suits Valken with the SFC music.

Every Animal forest/crossing album only contains the "K.K." tracks

Ganbare Goemon~Neo Momoyama-(aka Mystical Ninja Goemon 64) tracks do not loop

Super Donkey kong and Super Donkey kong 2 have sound balancing issues, and all versions of DKC2 are missing the track "mining melancholy"

I almost bought a copy of Metroid sound in action last year, I'm glad I didn't, for what it's worth the NSFGM album I mentioned earlier and Play it loud Vol.1 have some tracks from Super Metroid looped and in decent quality.

Thanks to everyone on this forum for bringing attention to these, same with Mother 2 and Mystic Ark and the others mentioned here.
I was considering buying the GBA Castlevania soundtracks, Star ocean, and Tales of Phantasia too.
I'm still waiting for a CD release of Plok...

Edit: I found another one, the Elebits soundtrack is missing some of the best tracks, both of the tracks I consider the best in the game are not included...

Last edited by 112B2018; Sep 18, 2020 at 01:20 PM.
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  #5  
Old Mar 17, 2020, 10:11 PM
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Originally Posted by 112B2018 View Post
Every Animal forest/crossing album only contains the "K.K." tracks
This album for City Folk has a good selection (including my favorite, 8PM) and there's some bonus tracks from Wild World on the movie soundtrack, which itself is mostly arrangements from the game. But still not complete and yeah, I find it odd that they focus so much on the live versions of K.K. songs when the airchecks are much better.
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  #6  
Old Mar 17, 2020, 10:16 PM
112B2018 112B2018 is offline
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Oh, my mistake I forgot about the City folk album

Last edited by 112B2018; Mar 17, 2020 at 10:24 PM.
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  #7  
Old Mar 18, 2020, 12:06 AM
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Nisto Nisto is offline
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Digimon World. I sorely miss the Toy Town theme on the official soundtrack which I spent so much on.

Silent Hill 1-3, all with missing tracks or tracks vastly different from what's in-game.

Last edited by Nisto; Mar 18, 2020 at 12:38 AM.
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  #8  
Old Mar 18, 2020, 01:45 AM
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Originally Posted by Spirit_Chaser View Post
Turrican series: The original music exists but on flash drives released by Huelsbeck. They are rare now.
Aren't those on Bandcamp under Turrican Soundtrack Anthology 1 & 2? He has also released some other on his early days under SID Anthology volumes 1~4. Unless you're talking purely about physical releases.
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  #9  
Old Mar 18, 2020, 02:19 AM
aquagon aquagon is offline
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I'd mention the PS1 PopoloCrois games, since the soundtracks are missing a lot of music from each of them, not to mention the poor choice the PopoRogue soundtrack had to mash several themes into poorly mastered medleys.

And while the Ar tonelico games do have mostly complete soundtracks, there are some glaring omissions like "The Melting Morning Dew" from AT1 fading out before the track has even gone through half of its first loop; the AT2 one missing the variations for "A Small Journey", the Infelsphere entrance theme and the vocal track "Emptiness", and the AT3 one outright missing 3 of its final boss themes from all its related albums.

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Originally Posted by Nisto View Post
Digimon World. I sorely miss the Toy Town theme on the official soundtrack which I spent so much on.

Agreed, and I'd also add the night theme for Misty Trees.

Last edited by aquagon; Mar 18, 2020 at 02:22 AM.
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  #10  
Old Mar 18, 2020, 05:22 AM
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The soundtrack to Alundra would benefit from an expanded release, quite a few tracks are missing from it. Well, I can at least be happy that the tracks don't loop.
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Last edited by ilef; Mar 18, 2020 at 05:26 AM. Reason: Small fix
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  #11  
Old Mar 18, 2020, 04:25 PM
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Originally Posted by Spirit_Chaser View Post
Ninja Warriors Again: This game has received two soundtrack releases yet both have terrible quality.
Could you elaborate on this? I have Clarice Disc's Natsume/Taito album and the Sunsoft one too and never noticed anything off with them.
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  #12  
Old Mar 18, 2020, 04:27 PM
TheGazelMinistry TheGazelMinistry is offline
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The vinyl releases need digital releases at minimum.

Woefully incomplete soundtracks would benefit from (more) complete releases. Xenosaga II-III and the Arkham games come to mind.

Soundtracks with unfortunately short tracks, like Ocarina of Time and the Legaia. Ocarina of Time cuts the Fire Temple track criminally short.
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  #13  
Old Mar 18, 2020, 05:31 PM
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Soundtracks with unfortunately short tracks, like Ocarina of Time and the Legaia. Ocarina of Time cuts the Fire Temple track criminally short.
The Nintendo of Europe release for the OoT soundtrack was done in two volumes that have all their tracks looped, though I think those still don't include everything. The larger problem with Fire Temple is that we're never gonna get the original version. It's annoying since there never was any controversy over it to begin with (its removal was a preemptive measure done before the game even shipped) and people seem to be fine with it even in this age of being hypersensitive over this sort of thing. The neat thing about the temple themes in OoT was that they all used different samples to create a unique sound for each, but the revised Fire Temple music ruins that.

Last edited by Aifread; Mar 18, 2020 at 05:47 PM.
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  #14  
Old Mar 18, 2020, 05:35 PM
Spirit_Chaser Spirit_Chaser is offline
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Originally Posted by Aifread View Post
Could you elaborate on this? I have Clarice Disc's Natsume/Taito album and the Sunsoft one too and never noticed anything off with them.
I have the Natsume/Taito and I was devastated. When the game reappeared with an arrange soundtrack it seemed to pretty much copy paste the same soundtrack. The music in general sounds muffled and as if it's recorded under water. The balance in sound is off and overwhelmed by the bass and drums. I would redirect you here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsdB...9&index=2&t=0s

That is a fan "remaster" that got it right. Compared to the so-called official releases this version is crisp, clear, balanced and what I was hoping for in an official soundtrack release. The bass and drums here are strong but not overwhelming as the official releases.
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Old Mar 19, 2020, 03:16 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Spirit_Chaser View Post
I have the Natsume/Taito and I was devastated. When the game reappeared with an arrange soundtrack it seemed to pretty much copy paste the same soundtrack. The music in general sounds muffled and as if it's recorded under water. The balance in sound is off and overwhelmed by the bass and drums. I would redirect you here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsdB...9&index=2&t=0s

That is a fan "remaster" that got it right. Compared to the so-called official releases this version is crisp, clear, balanced and what I was hoping for in an official soundtrack release. The bass and drums here are strong but not overwhelming as the official releases.
Oh wow that is quite a difference. I never played the game so I wouldn't have known. Seriously, what is so difficult about getting SNES albums to sound right?

One more that I don't think anyone has brought up yet are the N64 Rareware soundtracks. The albums only contain the core level themes and a few other important tracks like opening themes and credits, but everything else is missing. I realize including all the different versions of the level themes which change depending on where you are might be a bit unrealistic (Grant Kirkhope had uploaded all 6 and a half hours of Banjo Kazooie to his Bandcamp at one point before being told to take it down) however I'd at least like to have all the cutscene/minigame/event stuff.
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Old Mar 24, 2020, 04:21 PM
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Originally Posted by 112B2018 View Post
I was considering buying the GBA Castlevania soundtracks, Star ocean, and Tales of Phantasia too, now I'll save my money.
Note that I mentioned the original release of Tales of Phantasia. They've since released all three in-game versions in a box set. Again, I'm not a fan of the sound programming on Sakuraba's PS1 games, but that's a problem with the games themselves and the PS1 music in the Phantasia box set is faithful to that. I actually prefer the old non-OST release over the PS1 version, but SFC still trumps them all, which is the main reason to own the box set imo.

Last edited by Aifread; Mar 24, 2020 at 04:24 PM.
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  #17  
Old Mar 25, 2020, 10:32 PM
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Originally Posted by Spirit_Chaser View Post
Revelations: Persona: There is a complete version of the soundtrack but the quality is inferior to the arrange version that has a lot less tracks.
SMT1 Law & Chaos and SMT2 Sound Relation are likewise poor quality. On SMT1 in particular, the tracks all lead seamlessly into each other⁠—which is neat⁠—but the way they're cut means that you'll get a short clip of the previous track when listening to them separately. Both were supposedly "remastered" for the 25th anniversary reprint, but these were just slightly cleaned-up versions of what they already had rather than a full re-recording which is what was really needed. Thankfully much of the same music from SMT1&2 reappeared in SMT If which finally got a (very nice) soundtrack release just two years ago and those are all new recordings.

Last edited by Aifread; Mar 25, 2020 at 11:02 PM.
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  #18  
Old Oct 13, 2020, 11:09 AM
LiquidAcid LiquidAcid is offline
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the AT2 one missing the variations for "A Small Journey"
I'm currently listening to the ADX files from the AT2 gamerip, and I see the original version (A Small Journey, as included on the OST) and the two (Ruka and Kuro variations). Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me, but I thought I remember hearing another variation of the theme, probably when the game transitions from one phase to the next. Hmm....
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Old Oct 13, 2020, 03:00 PM
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Some almost-complete-but-not-quite:
- Neo Contra: missing 10-15 tracks, should have been a 2CD release
- Unreal: 3 releases, none good enough
- Shin Megami Tensei 3: missing some cool cutscene tracks and moody dungeon themes (plus battle riff variations).
- Flower, Sun and Rain: there are two albums that are nice enough together (if unordered) but miss some good stuff like the ending or vocal arranges. There were hints about making a full OST around the DS release, then Masafumi Takada left Grasshopper.
- Devil Summoner Kuzunoha Raidou 1: missing the main battle theme. You know, the song that plays the most in the game (it was included in a sampler so they left it out, lame).


Quote:
Originally Posted by Spirit_Chaser View Post
I have the Natsume/Taito and I was devastated. When the game reappeared with an arrange soundtrack it seemed to pretty much copy paste the same soundtrack. The music in general sounds muffled and as if it's recorded under water. The balance in sound is off and overwhelmed by the bass and drums. I would redirect you here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsdB...9&index=2&t=0s

That is a fan "remaster" that got it right. Compared to the so-called official releases this version is crisp, clear, balanced and what I was hoping for in an official soundtrack release. The bass and drums here are strong but not overwhelming as the official releases.
The OST sounds basically like a SNES (aka muffled 32khz), while that youtube link is just .spc using the plugin's "high quality" mode (aka fake 48khz with changed filters), so I don't think the OST is inadecuate.
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  #20  
Old Oct 13, 2020, 06:26 PM
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Yeah I recently relistened to Ninja Warriors Again off of that Clarice Disc Natsume/Taito album and it sounded fine to me. It's neat that the remaster exists though.
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  #21  
Old Oct 14, 2020, 10:17 PM
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I wrote this in the other thread, but the Overwatch soundtrack would also benefit from another volume/expanded release: we're still missing music from certain Heroes' Cinematics and various PvE events and new maps.
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  #22  
Old Nov 22, 2020, 06:29 AM
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Shenmue II, for sure. The only release it has is 20 tracks, and there's a lot of obvious missing things, both exclusive to the game (Queen's Street (Day) and Five Star Corps stand out as missing) and carryovers from Shenmue I (why is there no proper release of the Tomato Convenience Store theme yet?).

Last edited by Elena; Nov 23, 2020 at 10:11 AM.
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  #23  
Old Nov 29, 2020, 09:25 AM
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one of best snes soundtrack seiken densetsu 2 needs double loops and missing song or songs : )

and some albums releasing only 100-300 units only if you are not buy that fast you dont get it all.. ebay but price is 2x, 3x .. no tnx =) MORE units pls =) "final was that seiken densetsu 2 remix record album"

and Stacraft 2 needs full soundtracks not only 1 disc for race

Last edited by SNKhero; Nov 29, 2020 at 11:28 AM. Reason: adding forget think
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  #24  
Old Nov 30, 2020, 06:04 AM
IConsumeBinary IConsumeBinary is offline
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Halo 3: ODST could do with a redone soundtrack. As it is now, most of the songs are stuck together into larger tracks. A lot of them could be separated into smaller songs, and then double looped. The soundtrack's also missing some cutscene songs, some alternate versions of songs, and all of the songs from the firefight game mode.
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  #25  
Old Dec 8, 2020, 01:26 AM
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castlevania lord of shadow trilogy need full soundtrack collection and Ninja Gaiden Z, Z2 & Razor Edge likewise full soundtrack collection...
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