#1
|
||||
|
||||
Ys IV composer breakdown
The time has come to put an end to one of the oldest mysteries of all VGM: a (possible and almost complete) composer breakdown of "Ys IV" - one of the best soundtracks in the entire series and (IMO!) a masterpiece of VGM. The content of this post is the result of a few days of investigation, now that I have a bit of free time to do so.
A bit of backstory: Quote:
What most people don't seem to know (i.e. no one unless you're a die-hard Falcom nutcase from East Asia completely obsessed with their glorious Sound Team) is that DoY has ANOTHER debug mode according to this Chinese blog post (in which you CAN actually hear all the CD-DA/PSG songs with some kind of in-game music player!). The post itself didn't draw my attention... until I saw THIS: If you didn't know, that "KIM" thing is actually the alias of Naoki Kaneda - one of the four composers that joined to the Falcom Sound Team J.D.K. in 1992 (and thus resulting in some of my all-time favourite Falcom scores: Brandish 2 and 3, Ys IV and V, LoH III and IV...). Then there's also this thing I found on an area called "Cemetery" while playing Brandish 3... His birthday on VGMdb coincides with the in-game date. With isdapi's post + this, we can pretty much confirm at this point that KIM = Naoki Kaneda. What impressed (or left me utterly SHOCKED and confused!) me the most was... why there was a mention to "KIM" in The Dawn of Ys, a game not developed by Falcom themselves? The blog post mentioned Sugimo, so I decided to lurk around the archives of his "Falcom Daisuki!" website and found THIS page. Look at all these codes - Google Translate doesn't allows me to make out very much, but from what I can understand, looks like these codes are actually suspected composer codes. It seems that Hudson left untouched the original filenames of the songs that Falcom sent to them in order to make their versions instead for The Dawn of Ys, a "mistake" they just made my fucking life as this may be the closest thing that ever existed to a Ys IV composer breakdown. So, in summary, this is all we have so far: Spoiler:
TL;DR: Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys has suspected composer codes in it. Shirakawa and Kaneda freaking killed it with this one. Naoki Kaneda is the GOAT (I must simply check-out his post-Sound Team jdk output!). I might be overthinking it or just plain wrong, so feel free to say what you think/have in mind and if you agree or not - I look forward to discussing this with you all! P.S. So, should we edit all the Ys IV albums and add the known credits at the notes? ;p Last edited by 《J》; May 10, 2015 at 08:04 AM. |
#2
|
||||
|
||||
awesome research! wish something like this could be found for Sonic 3 & Knuckles :P
EDIT: isn't that website supposed to be just fan guesses? I remember finding a site like that (probably the same one) that had composer credits for Sorcerian. then again, it seems these codes come directly from the game, hmm. Last edited by dissident93; Aug 14, 2014 at 01:04 PM. |
#3
|
||||
|
||||
Is it possible that AS and SB refer to musicians who worked for Falcom at one point but no longer did at the the time the game was released? Considering that they/Hudson had no problem putting in music from an earlier game, I think they might also be inclined to use similarly old music that had not yet been in a game. They probably have heaps of music that never got put into anything.
|
#4
|
||||
|
||||
Ooh! Someone finally bumped this thread up! lol
Quote:
Quote:
Then there something I noticed recently: AYS_4, so who knows if this is really Shirakawa or someone else. Or maybe he's actually AS and only did Promalock and Battle #58? So many questions... I think our best bet would be ask to former members of the sound team. Actually, we can contact with a few of them! Atsushi Shirakawa (known as Tenmon, famous anime composer) - https://twitter.com/tenmon2010 Naoki Kaneda (aka my new legendary FM hero ) - https://twitter.com/KIMsSOUNDROOM Hirofumi Matsuoka - https://twitter.com/hiro_st21net Masaaki Kawai - https://twitter.com/mklasta Last edited by 《J》; Sep 24, 2014 at 02:29 AM. |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Am actually looking for the cheat to activate this Debug Mode right now. I can't remember if I ever did so or just am thinking of the Developer's Room... All I wanted for the moment was to access the PSG menu, and looking at my script translation that was inserted for the Developer's Room, somewhere there is a character or should be (in the Sound Room) that should let you access it, much like you can access the portraits and cinemas in the final room... Try as I might, I can't find the character known as Takimoto. Here are the lines he says before letting you access it:
Quote:
http://site.douban.com/120173/widget...ote/298028528/ Last edited by NightWolve; Mar 17, 2015 at 03:30 PM. |
#6
|
||||
|
||||
The mystery "seems" to be over - a friend of mine asked Tenmon through Twitter (on my behalf, so to speak). He got a reply: https://twitter.com/tenmon2010/statu...60329022431232
Quote:
Quote:
Then my friend asked him about "Eldeel" (the ADPCM track, i.e. the one without code), since I forgot to include it to the YouTube playlist. "Eldeel" was indeed composed composed by Shirakawa: https://twitter.com/tenmon2010/statu...56668045537281 *COMPLETE YS IV COMPOSER BREAKDOWN*: Spoiler:
This will requre some editin' to all the Ys IV albums. On a separate note, Shirakawa also confirms to be the composer of Brandish 4's Opening! https://twitter.com/tenmon2010/statu...60885975670784 Last edited by 《J》; Apr 10, 2015 at 02:31 PM. |
#7
|
||||
|
||||
Good job on all the research!
I am wondering now: two of Masaru Nakajima's four tracks are known cases of plagiarism. What are the chances he ripped off the other two as well? |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
I come to the VGMdb forums for stuff like this. I haven't even listened to Ys 4 very often and wasn't looking for a composer breakdown. But reading research like this is way more interesting than most else on the net.
I once thought about creating a website for VGM composer breakdowns meant for analyses like these. After solving several mysteries and gaining credibilty, composers and game companies might realize that we fans care about who composed what. Maybe some would even find the site themselves and help out, and not just respond to inquiries (if even that). Too bad I'm a lousy programmer and can never create my ideas for various VGM sites |
#9
|
||||
|
||||
Glad to see people bumping this thread up - I thought I was the only one I cared about stuff like this for Falcom soundtracks.
I also posted a composer breakdown for Nayuta no Kiseki here, and edited the album notes for VM Japan with full composer breakdowns (and yes - both *are* confirmed!). All the credit goes to kotorain and his excellent articles on http://falcombob.blogbus.com and http://site.douban.com/120173/, which gave me a better knowledge about Falcom; especially about Sound Team jdk and the current sound lead Hayato Sonoda. Last edited by 《J》; Apr 28, 2015 at 01:41 PM. |
#10
|
||||
|
||||
Great work. Hopefully someday something like this will be done for Sonic 3 & Knuckles. :P
|
#11
|
||||
|
||||
While these discoveries are cool indeed, I hope you could add a link to the sources in each album's thread, it's hard to keep up sometimes (ex. VM Japan).
|
#12
|
||||
|
||||
Quote:
Should I specify anything for Nayuta no Kiseki, though? Now that I look at it again, my original reply is kind of vague, lol. |
#13
|
||||
|
||||
Well some quick clarification wouldn't hurt.
I understand Nayuta info comes from leftover files in the ISO (Ys Seven had some too but I don't think they had credits), but other people will see that and think "wut" :3 |
#14
|
|||
|
|||
I've been meaning to reply to this thread. This is probably one of my top favorite posts on this website. I've always been curious about composer credits regarding the falcom sound team composers from Ys IV, as well as Hirofumi Matsuoka, Mieko Ishikawa and Satoshi Arai. I've thoroughly dug into their discographies with their works at Falcom and have enjoyed the soundtracks to all the games they've composed for. To find a groundbreaking composer breakdown like this is gold.
After going through this and editing the artist information, It's given me a pretty good lead on what the Ys IV composers may have done throughout The Legend of Xanadu, Brandish, Ys, Legend of Heroes and other series. I hope more discoveries regarding these composers can be found out soon. The only thing making me wonder right now is if these composers always composed individually, or sometimes with different pairings of each other. On the last three with no composer credits, I would also agree with who might had done Temple and Tower. Prison House sounds much different than most of the soundtrack, but I would also narrow it down to Takahiro Tsunashima. Thanks for researching this game's soundtrack. |
#15
|
|||
|
|||
I asked Kaneda on Twitter, and he says that he did Tower, Tsunashima did Temple, and Nakajima probably did Prison House.
|
#16
|
|||
|
|||
FYI to anyone interested. Mednafen, the emulator author, fully uncovered how to activate the "Ys IV: Dawn of Ys" Debug menu some time ago and I demonstrate how to reveal the sound test!
Details here: https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/i...?topic=18808.0 And she later made a Cutting Room Floor entry all about it: https://tcrf.net/Ys_IV:_The_Dawn_of_Ys I was able to use the Easter Egg to activate the PSG sound test by talking to a certain character in the Developer's Room as well. I detailed the attempt here: https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/i...0129#msg400129 You have to make Music Supervisor Takimoto (The Invisible Man) unhide himself basically by equipping the Black Potion, standing where he's hiding and then he'll give you access to the sound test. Anyway, this was a bit of a tangent but there you go! EDIT: My video [finally] shows you how to fully unhide Takimoto to access the sound test, full demonstration. https://youtu.be/45VV2_D2kgw Last edited by NightWolve; Jan 16, 2022 at 08:09 PM. |
#18
|
||||
|
||||
It's the same under Spotify and I guess any other online music service Falcom uploads to as well.
Last edited by dissident93; Oct 15, 2020 at 10:25 AM. |
#19
|
||||
|
||||
Not on iTunes though, which I believe is where it was first added digitally.
|
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Kirby composer breakdown discussion | ChunkyLover130 | Video Game Music Discussion | 15 | Jun 9, 2020 09:04 PM |
legend of zelda composer breakdown discussion | ChunkyLover130 | Video Game Music Discussion | 7 | Dec 17, 2015 05:00 PM |
Rockman & Forte composer breakdown discussion | Jormungand | Video Game Music Discussion | 17 | Jan 29, 2015 02:01 PM |
Breath of Fire III composer breakdown discussion | Jormungand | Video Game Music Discussion | 48 | May 31, 2014 02:47 PM |
Mega Man Network Transmission: composer breakdown | Blitz Lunar | Video Game Music Discussion | 7 | Oct 17, 2012 03:51 PM |