N25D-020: Final Fantasy USA: Mystic Quest Sound Collections

[GoldfishX]

Originally Posted by Jormungand

I personally think a remake using the Trials of Mana engine would actually be a really good game right out of the gate. All five characters become permanent, party system, each has their own combat style.

Not sure if you planned it this way, but hours after you posted this comment, Square Enix unveiled Visions of Mana, which looks a lot like Trials (in a good way!) Small world, ain't it.

I can definitely see them using the original Mysic Quest/FF USA as a guideline, then kind of crafting something around it, be it a roguelike or just a more advanced version of the original. If nothing else, the original game had the aesthetics down perfectly. And the soundtrack has aged remarkably well!

[okayynot]

There are a few cases where the English translated tracklist here gives a location name where the Japanese tracklist does not:

Track 22: The area Mount Gale (かぜのさんみゃく)... 疾風の山脈 is romanised here as "Shippuu no Sanmyaku" but it's more likely it's just meant to be read as "Kaze no Sanmyaku". (edit: the old JP guide book used 風の山脈... but "gale" must have come from somewhere???)

Track 12: The area Focus Tower (フォーカスタワー) is not 中央の塔. I could imagine it being rubied though.

Track 17: The area Falls Basin (こおったたきつぼ, 凍った滝つぼ) is not 洞窟と滝. In this case it's not named after an area name. It also plays in the waterfall part of Spencer's Place and Abandoned Mine.

[zierts]

Our track list seems to come from SoundtrackCentral. We originally had these as "Mountain Range of Whirlwinds", "Focus Tower" and "Dungeon and Waterfall" before Fearin swapped two of these for English area names in 2011 (Focus Tower was an area name to begin with).

I'd posit none of these are meant to be area names in Japanese, or rubied for that matter. You gave the actual kana area names correctly in brackets. Like FF4, the game probably didn't use any kanji at all. It's not unusual for Japanese track titles to be descriptive rather than using actual area names, I think. That would make these something like "Mountain Range of Gales", "The Central Tower" and "Cave and Waterfalls". I think I've seen Ted Woolsey credited on the game as a co-writer with some Japanese staff members. He probably had at least some input on the Japanese area names and did all of the English ones himself. The collaboration may have been similar to Jeremy Blaustein's role on the Silent Hill series.

Your changes are well researched!

PS: We all know it's actually 風邪の山脈! ...This joke will be lost on anyone who doesn't know Japanese.