PCCB-00016: Sweet Home

[Chris]

Were the arrangers ever explicitly credited for this album even though similar albums (Marusa no Onna, Red Arremer Makaimura Gaiden) credited the arrangers as simply Alph Lyla. Or did someone (maybe Squaremusic) simply list the arrangers based on the members of Alph Lyla at the time and VGMdb copied the information? Thanks.

[Zanasea]

To tell you the truth (again), I don't remember where I found the credits I added on Squaremusic. What is certain is that Yoko Shimomura arranged 2 tracks on the album (she says it on her website, the first entry in "discography"), and I can certify I didn't simply 'suppose' who the arrangers were. I can't find any Japanese source for this anymore, which is puzzling.

[Chris]

It seems like it's reliable based on this. I didn't know that Yoko Shimomura was so thorough crediting her albums. Thanks for this!

[mushgloom]

I've never heard any of the GSM 1500 series cd's. What is the quality of the arrangements on this album? Is it worth tracking down?

[Jodo Kast]

Originally Posted by mushgloom

I've never heard any of the GSM 1500 series cd's. What is the quality of the arrangements on this album? Is it worth tracking down?

In February of 2004, I wrote:

"Just what the hell is this!? Sweet Home? Sounds like a game for little kids..." That was my initial reaction to discovering a CD called "Sweet Home" at some Japanese database of Capcom music albums. There is a story behind every discovery...

Mustin at oneupstudios.com asked me to compile a list of every cd containing music from Capcom video games. I said "OK". With 5 different browsers opened up, I began research and soon had a fine list. There was one extreme peculiarity - a CD with the title "Sweet Home". Nothing more, nothing less. I assumed it was an error or maybe some really pitiful game with happy bouncy things and bright colors. I thought nothing of it for at least 6 months. One day while browsing Yahoo Japan auctions, I found an expensive CD with a cool cover. Since I couldn't read the text, I plugged the catalog number into gmronline.com and found the text "Sweet Home" staring at me. Fascinating. How wrong I was.

I then proceeded to gamefaqs.com to read about Sweet Home. People had written reviews and apparently, this was the first survival horror game and was similar to Resident Evil. It was never released in America because of the content. I was stupified. At this point, I greatly desired the Sweet Home arrange album.

A stroke of luck occurred....

The seller champ_des_pins on ebay occasionally lists 150+ game albums at one shot. Shortly after I read the reviews for Sweet Home, I find its arranged soundtrack safely nestled in the midst of a deluge of game music listings, by the omnipotent champ_des_pins. The starting bid is $40, which is a good thing - a good $30 to $40 less than on Yahoo Japan. I place a bid and NO ONE bids against me. I was nearly sweating at the close of the auction. Not a soul messed with me. Awesome. Actually, it's likely no one knew what they were missing.

After listening to this CD, I have this comment:

If you like music that makes you feel that dead things are looking for you, then this album will deliver those feelings.

As you can tell, I was rather pleased with this CD. I enjoy scary and horrifying things. There's more to this than just hair raising music. Some of this music sounds like classical 18th century stuff. You could play this on a classical radio station and the fat, arrogant "well-learned" people would never suspect they were listening to video game music. (Not all people that listen to classical music are fat and arrogant, but I'll bet some of them are.) There are only 8 tracks, but back in the ancient days of gaming, many games only had a handful of songs. I should also point out that there is no original 8 bit music - everything on this is arranged.

[mushgloom]

Excellent. The hunt begins for me on this one then.

I loved the game and the 8-bit itself does a great job of setting the mood. It's battle theme is among my favorite vg songs of all time.

That was a great story and your description of this arrangement has me thinking it's right up my alley. Thanks for the feedback!

[Jodo Kast]

Originally Posted by mushgloom

That was a great story and your description of this arrangement has me thinking it's right up my alley. Thanks for the feedback!

You're welcome. My follow-up thoughts, 7 years after having found Sweet Home, have not changed. This is still amazing music, despite the fact I've been listening to it for years.

[kyubihanyou]

According to midiplex (http://www.midiplex.com/works.html), Shimomura arranged 2 of these tracks.

スウィートホーム (ポニーキャニオン)
　　※アレンジ２曲参加

Mind helping with better scans of the contents, suicider?

[suicider]

Unfortunately it's not my copy that is shown on the contents pic. The last one I saw on YAJ went for about 150€, expensive stuff

[suicider]

Bump, scans are up. Finally managed to obtain a complete copy of this mighty rare CD at a reasonable price.
Unfortunately it's no revelation music-wise Guess it's more of a collector's thing...

All 3 early Capcom arrangements alltogether now

[Dag]

From the liner notes:

GON: did all music

Arrangers (though only Pii in tr.2 explicitly says so)
1. GON
2. Pii
3. Pii
4. Hifumi
5. GON
6. Chanchakorin
7. Fujita
8. Chanchakorin

[Jodo Kast]

Originally Posted by suicider

Bump, scans are up. Finally managed to obtain a complete copy of this mighty rare CD at a reasonable price.
Unfortunately it's no revelation music-wise Guess it's more of a collector's thing...

Thanks for making the scans. I recently bought one and was planning on making the scans, but now I can do a different album. It really takes about an hour to get it right. I have a micro-fiber cloth and I can never seem to get all the dust, especially when scanning discs. I would love to make scans in a clean room...

I found Sweet Home to be quite the revelation, music-wise. I'd rank those old Capcom albums like this:

#1 Sweet Home
#2 Marusa no Onna
#3 Gargoyle's Quest

I can't use the nostalgia card, either. I never played Sweet Home until this year and I first heard it in 2003 or 2004.

[suicider]

In my oppinion it's the other way around

#1 Gargoyle's Quest
#2 Marusa no Onna
#3 Sweet Home

But I got Sweet Home just a couple of days ago, so I'll give it some more time.

[universalgenius12]

I like that they even admitted the equipment used to execute the sound. Other publisher's should be willing to do that.

[spark_2503]

Although this might be a little old a topic to discuss, due to certain similarities to the Resident Evil series (probably just because both deal with horror themes, I haven't play the game), it should not be considered either a prequel or a Capcom original. I'm not sure if a lot of people know this already, but this game is actually based in a Japanese horror movie of the same name released early in 1989, nearly a year before said game was released.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Is there anywhere I can sample this music?

I don't want to commit to putting down over $200 for a soundtrack when I haven't even listened to it.

[dissident93]

Is it not on YouTube?

[Jedi QuestMaster]

I can only find game rips, not the album arrangements.

[CHz]

I have no idea what ン・ロランドラ is supposed to mean, but it's certainly not "The loran gong" lmao. Maybe it's a code in the game, or an anagram or shift cipher or something.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Could it be the veranda?

It'd help if I could listen to it. Anybody?

[CHz]

The song apparently plays on the second floor, so I doubt it.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

The second floor? Okay, that helps.

The second floor could also be considered the northern part of the home, so ン could stand for North? But are abbreviations ever written this way? And Rorandora?

The veranda is on the second floor, but I don't think the title has anything to do with that anymore.

Do the liner notes help? From what I can decipher, it starts off with 'I only made rock songs' so is it more about the composition that ぴぃ wrote?

Even if we could ask Yoko Shimomura, she probably doesn't even remember, assuming she came up with the title.

I typed in ロランドラ into Google, but only came up with pages involving this soundtrack.

[CHz]

Originally Posted by Jedi QuestMaster

The second floor could also be considered the northern part of the home, so ン could stand for North? But are abbreviations ever written this way? And Rorandora?

I don't want to rule anything out because anything is possible, but "north" wouldn't usually be abbreviated ン, no. And that still leaves the ロランドラ part, which is vaguely name-like but doesn't seem to actually refer to anything in the game.

FWIW, I found an old 2ch thread with a couple of posts about the title and those Japanese folks don't seem to know what it means either. Again, I wouldn't be surprised if the thing doesn't have a literal meaning and is just an anagram or cipher of some sort.

Originally Posted by Jedi QuestMaster

Do the liner notes help? From what I can decipher, it starts off with 'I only made rock songs' so is it more about the composition that ぴぃ wrote?

Nah, they don't help. They're about writing the arranged song, not the title.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Bummer. Oh well.

By the way, I found the music on Nicovideo.jp.

It sounds beautiful! However, it irks me that my favorite track (The Lake) only completely loops once (15 sec) before it starts to merge into the next theme, while the short, boring ass BGM2 gets to loop 20 times for an entire minute.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Did no one notice the Arabic-looking text under the katakana on the front cover? What's the meaning of this?

[CHz]

Discussed here => https://vgmdb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1220

Short version: it's "Alfh Lyra wa Lyra" in Arabic, which is the original title of One Thousand and One Nights and what the Capcom sound team took their name from. It's on several albums.

[zierts]

Following up on 「ン・ロランドラ」 with some more comments. Here's the liner notes which have already been said to be useless, but whatever:

Originally Posted by Hifumi

I'd only ever composed rock music, so I thought I'd do something along the lines of classic... Then the time it took me taught me patience and ???. Oh, Lord, thank you, this is Jun Hamamura. (People from the Kansai region will probably be the only ones to get that reference...)

"Arigatô, Hamamura Jun desu" is a morning show broadcast on radio in and around Osaka. Apparently, the host frequently refers to kamisama (God) in his show, though not obnoxiously so. As you said, useless. And cryptic.

There is a plant Rolandra that was named after Daniel Rolander. One would have to check a Japanese botanical lexicon but from my experience Japanese sources rarely ever have a Japanese transcription for foreign words. They would be more likely to list the Japanese name and write "Rolandra" in Roman letters.

I'm not too familiar with the film and the game but I suspect there's no connection and it's actually just a made-up title, as CHz already assumed. Writing the "n" in katakana could tie into the ghost theme of the game, so it could be a ghostly "Yeeees, Rolandra" or "Mmmh, Rolandra" if the game's script has ghosts talking in katakana to emphasize their otherworldly nature. Again, I don't know the game well enough to say.