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  #31  
Old Apr 20, 2017, 01:30 PM
KTB KTB is offline
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Does anyone have any ideas about a composer breakdown for Super Castlevania IV? I want to take a closer look and analyze the styles myself, but it's tricky when the only other OST Taro Kudo is credited for is Axelay (and Masanori Adachi doesn't have a whole lot to go off of either).
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  #32  
Old Apr 20, 2017, 02:34 PM
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If you want to get the Masanori Adachi Experience, you might want to check out the soundtrack to Aliens arcade if you haven't already: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...dgzEo-iQWLr482. It's his only known solo soundtrack, so it might be the best insight into whatever his musical tendencies are. He's also known to have written this song from Tingle's Balloon Trip (it was his recommended song in a sound team interview).

"Waterfall" is the SCIV song that sounds the most Adachi to me; the rhythmic weirdness reminds me of the Tingle track and a couple of songs from Aliens.

That's about all the info I can provide, not sure how helpful that is. I kinda feel like it's mostly/all Adachi, per Dag's post.

Last edited by CHz; Apr 20, 2017 at 04:16 PM.
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  #33  
Old Apr 21, 2017, 04:22 AM
KTB KTB is offline
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Hm... Weirdly enough, just from that Tingle song alone (from samples used and the rhythmic style as you mentioned), I can totally see "Simon Belmont's Theme" and "The Trick Manor" (mostly the first track, but they're remixes of each other so eh) coming from the same place. The general randomness of it does KIND of remind of The Attendants' Rooms (Room of Close Associates), but I wouldn't take that guess too seriously. I think you're onto something with the stage 3 music as well.

EDIT: Going further into the Aliens soundtrack, there's a quiet low riff in the first few seconds of "stage 1" that reminds me even more of The Room of Close Associates. There's a similar thing in "Objective" as well, but that one reminds me more of the Submerged City.



Taro Kudo is credited as a music composer for this just about everywhere, surely there must have been something here he wrote. I will say though that I don't really understand the significance of Dag's link? "Akiropito" is Akira Souji, isn't it? I went through that page in Google Translate but I don't see any mention of Kudo that would have anything to do with his involvement in the game.

Last edited by KTB; Apr 21, 2017 at 04:29 AM.
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  #34  
Old Apr 21, 2017, 05:39 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KTB View Post
Taro Kudo is credited as a music composer for this just about everywhere, surely there must have been something here he wrote.
I'm quite certain that's all based on the "sound designer" credit for everyone in the game and there still isn't any info on what Kudo specifically was responsible for. We only found out what the other three did thanks to akiropito (though VGMO's interview with Adachi finally came out and he verifies there he wrote music too; he also talks about "Simon Belmont's Theme" but stops short of outright saying he wrote it).

Quote:
Originally Posted by KTB View Post
I will say though that I don't really understand the significance of Dag's link? "Akiropito" is Akira Souji, isn't it? I went through that page in Google Translate but I don't see any mention of Kudo that would have anything to do with his involvement in the game.
(akiropito = Akira Souji yes)

The post is just about the band Opus III. akiropito brings up Adachi because he introduced him to the band, and in the process he names Adachi as a composer for SCIV without mentioning Kudo. It's not strong evidence at all, just no one ever seems to mention Kudo having worked on the music, on blogs or in interviews or in the liner notes here. I absolutely would not rule him out, I just wouldn't be surprised if he didn't do much or anything.
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  #35  
Old Aug 4, 2019, 01:53 AM
BlazingAbyss BlazingAbyss is offline
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I discovered an Interesting bit of trivia recently, although "ガラスの城" would most accurately translate to "Glass Castle," all versions of the game including of the original Japanese version list this area as the "Crystal Castle."
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  #36  
Old Aug 4, 2019, 07:51 AM
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Could be crystal as in crystal glassware.
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  #37  
Old Jul 29, 2020, 04:13 PM
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LuxKiller65 LuxKiller65 is offline
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HERE a playthrough session of a supposed beta version recently leaked from Nintendo's database. Most songs are different (as in "obviously work in progress"), and there's even a completely unused song. The proto ends at the castle's entrance but you can progress further by using passwords. It really ends after the boss of the castle's treasury.

HERE the beta soundtrack.
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  #38  
Old Aug 31, 2020, 11:49 AM
InsertDankMemeHere InsertDankMemeHere is offline
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So, any guesses as to a composer breakdown for Super Castlevania IV? I've always wanted to know which tracks Kudo and Adachi did, respectively.
Ditto for Castlevania: The Adventure. "Kill! Kill! Kill!" is the only track, other than "Evil Devil" that doesn't really sound like Funauchi's style to my ears. I'm not very familiar with Hanzawa's work, does it sound like him, or could we attribute it to Shigeru Fukutake?
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  #39  
Old Aug 31, 2020, 06:39 PM
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I only recently got into the score to Axelay, and without knowing anything about the composer I thought "Wow, this sounds a lot like Super Castlevania." I know they're from the same era of Konami and use a lot of the same samples, but due to some stylistic similarities I'd be surprised if Kudo wasn't involved with composition here. The way "The Trick Manor" changes in the second half isn't unlike what he did for the boss themes in Axelay.

Last edited by Aifread; Sep 1, 2020 at 02:25 AM.
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  #40  
Old Sep 8, 2020, 07:21 PM
KTB KTB is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by InsertDankMemeHere View Post
So, any guesses as to a composer breakdown for Super Castlevania IV? I've always wanted to know which tracks Kudo and Adachi did, respectively.
It's very hard to say since a lot of songs in the soundtrack contain elements that are common to both composers (but then again, Taro Kudo only has Axelay under his belt aside from this so we can't be certain of his composition style anyway); the melodies and rhythmic styles of most of the tracks sound very similar to Adachi, while the heavy basslines and driving melodies are very similar to the sort of thing you hear a lot from Kudo in Axelay.

This is a complete shot in the dark, but personally I kind of suspect that Masanori Adachi composed most (or all?) of the tracks while Taro Kudo did some sort of "arrangement" for the soundtrack after the fact; as in, perhaps Adachi composed the bulk of the soundtrack as some early version, and then Kudo reworked the soundtrack in his own style to improve it? This would explain the stylistic mash-ups, and it would also explain why the people involved with Konami at the time never seem to mention Kudo in regards to SCV4 (as per CHz's most recent post here).



... Actually, this theory is sort of supported by the beta soundtrack that came out in the leaks a month or so ago; all the songs still sound pretty recognizable, and still sound very much Adachi-like, but they're missing most of their basslines, have slightly less coherent melodies, and lack pretty much everything that made the final soundtrack sound so similar to Axelay. The more I think about it, the more confident I am in my idea, though of course it would still be lovely to hear some confirmation from either of the composers themselves.


EDIT: Come to think of it, if my theory is right/close then it could also mean that the tracks included in the aforementioned beta soundtrack consists of everything Adachi did, and that the "rest" of the soundtrack missing from the beta OST is what Kudo did. It would explain why the "remixes" (Beginning, Bloody Tears, Vampire Killer) aren't in the beta OST, since Kudo would have arranged tracks from scratch that had already been composed prior to all of this (as in, Adachi did nothing for those tracks). "The Submerged City" never got a bassline or a Kudo-feel to it in the final version, and the final version sounds almost identical to the beta version here, so that fits in with the theory too. Granted, now I'm just making assumption upon assumption, but it's certainly plausible.

Last edited by KTB; Sep 9, 2020 at 03:36 AM.
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  #41  
Old Sep 15, 2020, 12:40 PM
InsertDankMemeHere InsertDankMemeHere is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KTB View Post
It's very hard to say since a lot of songs in the soundtrack contain elements that are common to both composers (but then again, Taro Kudo only has Axelay under his belt aside from this so we can't be certain of his composition style anyway); the melodies and rhythmic styles of most of the tracks sound very similar to Adachi, while the heavy basslines and driving melodies are very similar to the sort of thing you hear a lot from Kudo in Axelay.

This is a complete shot in the dark, but personally I kind of suspect that Masanori Adachi composed most (or all?) of the tracks while Taro Kudo did some sort of "arrangement" for the soundtrack after the fact; as in, perhaps Adachi composed the bulk of the soundtrack as some early version, and then Kudo reworked the soundtrack in his own style to improve it? This would explain the stylistic mash-ups, and it would also explain why the people involved with Konami at the time never seem to mention Kudo in regards to SCV4 (as per CHz's most recent post here).



... Actually, this theory is sort of supported by the beta soundtrack that came out in the leaks a month or so ago; all the songs still sound pretty recognizable, and still sound very much Adachi-like, but they're missing most of their basslines, have slightly less coherent melodies, and lack pretty much everything that made the final soundtrack sound so similar to Axelay. The more I think about it, the more confident I am in my idea, though of course it would still be lovely to hear some confirmation from either of the composers themselves.


EDIT: Come to think of it, if my theory is right/close then it could also mean that the tracks included in the aforementioned beta soundtrack consists of everything Adachi did, and that the "rest" of the soundtrack missing from the beta OST is what Kudo did. It would explain why the "remixes" (Beginning, Bloody Tears, Vampire Killer) aren't in the beta OST, since Kudo would have arranged tracks from scratch that had already been composed prior to all of this (as in, Adachi did nothing for those tracks). "The Submerged City" never got a bassline or a Kudo-feel to it in the final version, and the final version sounds almost identical to the beta version here, so that fits in with the theory too. Granted, now I'm just making assumption upon assumption, but it's certainly plausible.
Thanks a lot for your insight! To clarify, we do know that Kudo did actually write 2 tracks for Moon: Remix RPG Adventure: "Entry Song" (with Adachi), and "Adder Electro".
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  #42  
Old Oct 14, 2021, 09:36 PM
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Jedi QuestMaster Jedi QuestMaster is offline
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I noticed a couple tracks are swapped on disc 2:

05 Darkness (Stage 2 BGM)
06 Death Fair (Stage 3 BGM)

Track 05 plays on stage 3, while track 06 plays on stage 2:
https://youtu.be/1oj7AdERJHc?t=290

I checked Dracula Densetsu to see if there was a regional difference, but no: https://youtu.be/L7gcrvai9rw?t=321

Other than that, tracks 8 and 9 seem to be in the wrong order, but they're still titled appropriately.
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  #43  
Old Oct 14, 2021, 10:58 PM
BlazingAbyss BlazingAbyss is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jedi QuestMaster View Post
I noticed a couple tracks are swapped on disc 2:

05 Darkness (Stage 2 BGM)
06 Death Fair (Stage 3 BGM)

Track 05 plays on stage 3, while track 06 plays on stage 2:
https://youtu.be/1oj7AdERJHc?t=290

I checked Dracula Densetsu to see if there was a regional difference, but no: https://youtu.be/L7gcrvai9rw?t=321

Other than that, tracks 8 and 9 seem to be in the wrong order, but they're still titled appropriately.
I never noticed that before. However, it looks like this may have been fixed on the upcoming Black CD Box as it lists them as "Death Fair (Stage 2 BGM)" & "Darkness (Stage 3 BGM)" instead of the other way around.
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  #44  
Old Feb 7, 2023, 01:38 PM
zierts zierts is offline
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Some have already posted their thoughts on the composers for the Game Boy games, so I might as well join in.

"Battle of the Holy", "Death Fair" and "Revenge" from Castlevania Adventure all sound like Funauchi to me. They are similar in style to his music used in the four beginning stages of Belmont's Revenge.

Sort of had this epiphany when Carl mentioned the Contra Operation C ending music: that one reminds me a lot of "Praying Hands" from Belmont's Revenge.
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