Hey y'all... it's the member formerly known as Logic7 I've been on an old video game kick, particularly old vertical shooters like Twin Cobra, Raiden, and the many bullet hell shooters from companies like Cave. While getting my fix I ran across a game called Battle Garegga by Raizing/Eighting. I'm playing for the first time a couple of nights ago in all of it's early bullet hell goodness when I get through the first level. The second level starts and the music changes and a melody of of stab chords starts playing... And I recognize it almost immediately. I played for less than a minute more and had to figure this out 'cause it sounded like a direct rip of something I've heard before. I paused MAME and hit Youtube for old Mills and UR, and I find the track: Jupiter Jazz by Underground Resistance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQv3dCkY2Tk More Google-fu turns up the music from Battle Garegga; a double-CD composed by Manabu Namiki, released last December. Among the track listing was the name of the track for the second level of the game: Underwater Rampart (an obvious nod to UR) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYbINBnYeFA ^^^ That's the original version from the arcade game. The game wold be released for the Sega Saturn with a re-recorded version with different instruments instead of the Yamaha YM2151 4-op, 8 part FM chip used in the arcade game's system board (as well as the Yamaha DX100). With the composer's name, I ran across an interview with him where he states this: http://squareenixmusic.com/features/interviews/manabunamiki.shtml "... I held a great admiration for techno music, and I had a good deal of respect for the Detroit techno artists in particular: Derrick May, Underground Resistance, and Carl Craig. The main programmer of *Battle Garegga* was also a fan of their music. Inspired by their music, I almost felt that I had something of a mission to take that energy and breathe life into the game's music. *Battle Garegga* used FM synth and ADPCM synth for its hardware. This equipment was obsolete compared to the standards of other arcade games in 1995, so I needed to make full use of it to design the sound for this radical new shooting game. I made use of all the skill I had accumulated with this hardware at NMK, and I also studied Hitoshi Sakimoto's use of FM synth carefully. The sound of *Battle Garegga* was influenced by my friends at Raizing, by Detroit techno, by *Summer Carnival '92 Recca*, by FM and ADPCM (YM2151 and MSM6295), and by the game music of Hitoshi Sakimoto and Shinji Hosoe, all of these people and things I respect..." Since he's also done music for Cave (creators of my favorite bullet hell shooters), I'm now on a mission to find anything else he's slipped into his games that have a very Detroit-inspired sound.
