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Ninja Gaiden's NES (Keiji Yamagishi) composer is back!

ReyVGM

ReyVGM

Member
Article and soundtrack sample at the USGamer link.

The name Keiji Yamagishi doesn't command quite as much nostalgic reverence among game music enthusiasts as, say, Koji Kondo or Nobuo Uematsu. But if you owned an NES, you probably rocked out to Yamagishi's tunes all the same.

Yamagishi worked on some big-name 8-bit hits, including the old Ninja Gaiden games (not the Team Ninja series) and Tecmo Super Bowl. Part of Yamagishi's relative obscurity comes from the fact that, unlike the other composers I mentioned, he dropped out of the business a few years ago. Not just out of making game music, but out of composing altogether, discouraged by the fact that the advent of better audio technology and the rush to a more Hollywood-like sound in games made his skill set [...] — obsolete.
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http://www.usgamer.net/articles/listen-8-bit-ninja-gaiden-composer-keiji-yamagishis-new-album
 
While the AAA industry has shied away from it, we've had a market for chiptunes-y music for ages now. I hope this guy gets back into games as opposed to standalone albums.
 
epmode said:
While the AAA industry has shied away from it, we've had a market for chiptunes-y music for ages now. I this guys gets back into games as opposed to standalone albums.
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Ages, but not in Japan. There's barely an indie scene over there.
 
Been working on this album for the past two years; glad it's finally out in a few days. Please enjoy! And thanks for the write up, OP.

By the way, Yamagishi-san composed 4 tracks for last year's Adventure Time, and is currently composing Marvelous' Exile's End.
 
Interesting that the mastering was done by the guy from the hard trance act Flutlicht.

This stuff is pretty cool and I'd love to hear it in an indie action game.
 
I heard one of his new tracks in Polygon's recent special about Japanese game development. It is pretty sweet!
 
Echoes said:
Been working on this album for the past two years; glad it's finally out in a few days. Please enjoy! And thanks for the write up, OP.

By the way, Yamagishi-san composed 4 tracks for last year's Adventure Time, and is currently composing Marvelous' Exile's End.
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Woah didn't know this. How is Adventure Time by the way?
 
I misread the thread title as "Ninja Gaiden's NES (Keiji Yamagishi) composer is black!", and wondered why that was thread-worthy.
 
This is something that needs to happen a lot more. I listened to Ninja Gaiden and the NES Batman (Naoki Kodaka?) soundtracks so often that I wired them through the home stereo to make tapes of them (same with a ton of Telenet games).

I'd happily drop $10-15 for a new chiptune album from some of these more "obscure" composers.
 
ReyVGM said:
There's a soundtest :P
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LOL I know, but I enjoyed the game a little too much back in the day.

It's a part of my muscle memory now.
My skills are a bit rusty but still good enough to get thru the torturous levels [to most gamers] with relative ease on the Wii-U VC.
 
Oh man, the music in the NES Ninja Gaiden's was one of the series main highlights. Especially NG1 but they all have good tracks.
 
Ohh yes, this sounds great. It's sad that people like Yamagishi-san were left behind instead of being seen as an asset by companies like Konami and given time/money to continue education to bring forward their skillsets. It's also sad that his talent ever ceased to be seen as a valuable asset, as I'd rather play a game with a soundtrack like this any day over your standard western orchestral score.

That first track First Contact made me feel like I should be playing some turbo-speed version of Bionic Commando.

Kaleidoscope also vaguely has a Guile's Theme vibe to it.
 
FlashbladeGAF said:
How did you manage to listen to that track?

It's grayed out.
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Hm, wasn't for me? I just skipped through all the tracks with the arrow; didn't listen to the whole track of anything.
edit: Oh, I see, you were listening on the Bandcamp page. There is a player on the usgamer page and you can listen to the whole album there.
 
Respawn said:
Woah didn't know this. How is Adventure Time by the way?
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I didn't play it but it's a Link to the Past-ish kind of game. The entire OST is really awesome and I'm still trying to get Cartoon Network on board so we can publish it. It was composed by Eirik Suhrke (Spelunky, Hotline Miami), Yamagishi, Chipzel (Super Hexagon), Ian Stocker (Escape Goat) and Marco Guardia (of Flutlicht). Yamagishi composed the main theme, the overworld theme, and the dark overworld theme. Someday...

RickGhastly said:
This is something that needs to happen a lot more. I listened to Ninja Gaiden and the NES Batman (Naoki Kodaka?) soundtracks so often that I wired them through the home stereo to make tapes of them (same with a ton of Telenet games).

I'd happily drop $10-15 for a new chiptune album from some of these more "obscure" composers.
Click to expand...
That's the plan. Currently working on Retro-Active Pt. 2 by Yamagishi, as well as the albums of Saori Kobayashi (composer of Panzer Dragoon series), Masashi Kageyama (composer of Gimmick!), Takahiro Izutani (co-composer of Bayonetta 1 & 2), and a mega-collab album featuring the composers of Mega Man 1/2/3/5/9/10, Street Fighter 2 & more. Music labels often give artists less than 25% of sales, while we range from 50~70% and don't take the rights away from them. Hopefully people will see the goodness in this and we'll be able to support more musicians.

eyeball_kid said:
Kaleidoscope also vaguely has a Guile's Theme vibe to it.
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This one is composed in collaboration with Mega Man/Shovel Knight's Manami Matsumae!
 
Will wait and eagerly dive into this as Chronicles of the Radia War and Ninja Gaiden were fantastic stuff and obviously I'm huge on this sort of music getting proper due at last.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of tech level they leverage...from potential VRC-6/7 NES stylings to maybe some sort of stronger FM Synth outright...?
 
ReyVGM said:
Ages, but not in Japan. There's barely an indie scene over there.
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Wrong, the problem is many of them don't have money/simply ain't that kind of "making a livin'" outfit for that kind of talent, and others (ZUN and Takumi Naramura), do their own stuff.

The fact there's so many chiptuners worldwide also makes it a crowded field and a great thing he's getting such accolades for his new stuff.
 
I really miss the melodic sound of that era. It's crazy how much they did with limited hardware.

It seems the place you hear that kid of music is in indie games. VVVVV being a great example of this style. Shovel Knight being another one more recently.
 
Echoes said:
I didn't play it but it's a Link to the Past-ish kind of game. The entire OST is really awesome and I'm still trying to get Cartoon Network on board so we can publish it. It was composed by Eirik Suhrke (Spelunky, Hotline Miami), Yamagishi, Chipzel (Super Hexagon), Ian Stocker (Escape Goat) and Marco Guardia (of Flutlicht). Yamagishi composed the main theme, the overworld theme, and the dark overworld theme. Someday...


That's the plan. Currently working on Retro-Active Pt. 2 by Yamagishi, as well as the albums of Saori Kobayashi (composer of Panzer Dragoon series), Masashi Kageyama (composer of Gimmick!), Takahiro Izutani (co-composer of Bayonetta 1 & 2), and a mega-collab album featuring the composers of Mega Man 1/2/3/5/9/10, Street Fighter 2 & more. Music labels often give artists less than 25% of sales, while we range from 50~70% and don't take the rights away from them. Hopefully people will see the goodness in this and we'll be able to support more musicians.



This one is composed in collaboration with Mega Man/Shovel Knight's Manami Matsumae!
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Keep up the awesome work! Hope you are able to work with Yuzo Koshiro and release a solo album like this.
 
sixteen-bit said:
The samples sound really good.

I do prefer the melodic sound of old games to the film score sounding stuff in newer games.
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This! I actually think there's room for both styles. Some people say you just can't do that anymore with modern styles of games, but I like to think that status quo of thinking should be challenged. When people start getting into a comfort zone of thinking there is only ONE way to do things, that's the time rebel against such stagnant ideas. If people only accepted that there was only one way of thought, mankind would never have produced the sheer variety of culture(historical and pop) our kind is known for. When someone tells you there's only one suitable way of doing something, it's time to prove them wrong!
 
Sweet, thanks for the heads up on this! I loved the soundtrack on Ninja Gaiden as a kid and will be buying this to support him. Hopefully the part 1 in the title is implying that there will be another release after this one.
 
If you GAFers have not played it yet (be it for being in Japanese, or being a Soccer RPG), Captain Tsubasa 2 has some of the greatest tunes ever played from a Famicom (and it is an awesome game, too):

Captain Tsubasa 2 OST
 
FYI, Yama-san just signed up on US Gamer and replied, saying he's reading all the comments. I'm also going to send him this NeoGAF page. <3

daCuk said:
If you GAFers have not played it yet (be it for being in Japanese, or being a Soccer RPG), Captain Tsubasa 2 has some of the greatest tunes ever played from a Famicom (and it is an awesome game, too):

Captain Tsubasa 2 OST
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You will love this rock-orchestra (real rock band, real orchestra) medley we made:
http://store.bravewave.net/track/victory-captain-tsubasa-2

It's a medley of Opening, Toho/Hyuga, Nankatsu/Misaki, Germany, Brazil, and Credits. One of my absolute favorite things I ever directed.
 
Hmm, a pretty solid start to this whole endeavor I'd say---turned out very differently than I was somehow expecting in terms of mood and intensity alongside seemingly far more "future sound" than classic chip work at the forefront, but still clearly an assortment of tracks that had some thought and work put into them.
 
Echoes said:
I didn't play it but it's a Link to the Past-ish kind of game. The entire OST is really awesome and I'm still trying to get Cartoon Network on board so we can publish it. It was composed by Eirik Suhrke (Spelunky, Hotline Miami), Yamagishi, Chipzel (Super Hexagon), Ian Stocker (Escape Goat) and Marco Guardia (of Flutlicht). Yamagishi composed the main theme, the overworld theme, and the dark overworld theme. Someday...


That's the plan. Currently working on Retro-Active Pt. 2 by Yamagishi, as well as the albums of Saori Kobayashi (composer of Panzer Dragoon series), Masashi Kageyama (composer of Gimmick!), Takahiro Izutani (co-composer of Bayonetta 1 & 2), and a mega-collab album featuring the composers of Mega Man 1/2/3/5/9/10, Street Fighter 2 & more. Music labels often give artists less than 25% of sales, while we range from 50~70% and don't take the rights away from them. Hopefully people will see the goodness in this and we'll be able to support more musicians.



This one is composed in collaboration with Mega Man/Shovel Knight's Manami Matsumae!
Click to expand...

The Kageyama album just shot up to one of my most anticipated...
 
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