well, from our wiki, Nakamura certainly treated it as a bit grand: Not even including also the completely separate CD stuff above of course meanwhile, the people of Sega of America did literally hire toy marketers. IMO that basically sums up the separation between the "vibes" right there.
Man, reading all those dev quotes makes me feel really about all the meddling their work got by SoA, and this one's disregard for their vision and wishes.
Shmuplations has their own alternate translation of these same liner notes from the soundtrack's Japanese CD release. The tone/content is a little different, and places even more emphasis on creative vision: http://shmuplations.com/soniccd/
Good to see these quotes surface, I've never dug too deeply because I could just 'feel' that was the intention and had no need to question it. They obviously nailed it, as my first exposure to CD's soundtrack was round a friends house after school, his older brother was a DJ and had a cassette of CD's tunes that I pinched, nestled beside a tape called 'Hit The Decks Vol 3', which is well worth a listen if you are interested in that era of UK dance. If you listen carefully you can even hear some of the same samples used. If I remember correctly these where often lifted from popular sample CD company 'Time & Space', they where one of the only companies at the time putting out sample packs for producers, aimed squarely at dance music production.
After reading that, the existence of the U.S. soundtrack is just plain disrespectful. However, it had to be done to justify those SoA jobs....I guess. It can all go into the trash except Sonic Boom as far as I’m concerned. The only other U.S. track that makes any sense in the game is Palmtree Panic Present.
Agree 100%. Not that I'm against anyone enjoying it. It's just clear to me that the US team just didn't get what the guys over in Japan where trying to achieve. Which is kind of understandable from a corporate perspective, dance music didn't really hit the wider audience in the US until more 'alternative/big beat' dance acts that appealed to the more traditional US rock/guitar based crowd like The Chemical Brothers & Fatboy slim came over in the mid 90s (sitting in nicely with Grunge), and even then it was still relatively underground. Obviously you had more leftfield genres like Detroit Techno & Chicago House in early 90s US but a full on European style renaissance wouldn't happen in the US until late 00's, when EDM started to take shape with the influence of French label Ed Banger, and acts such as Justice & Boys Noize (and quite obviously Daft Punk's Cochella 2006 performance). Still, they should have trusted the developers and gone with the JP/EU soundtrack. It's these wild ideas that make their mark in the world. Instead they took something that was finely tuned stylistically, and turned it depressingly generic (maybe generic is not the term, more like corporate 'safe'). That's why I was so strong in my words a few pages back about it (US soundtrack) being disrespectful. It was quite clearly an uninformed decision that paid no respect to the Japanese developers. The US soundtrack itself and whether it's any good or not is kind of irrelevant in this discussion.
It comes from an exhibition held at Joypolis a few years ago. Those concept-arts have never been released anywhere else, thus no possible scan.
Minor gripe: I really like Stardust Speedway Good Future (US). Moreso than the Bad Future version, honestly. The original version of Sonic CD on Mega-CD was programmed to play the Bad Future track during the race with Metal Sonic no matter what future you were in. The American version didn't bother with this, since both the Good and Bad Future tracks fit the race well enough. Taxman's version restores the Japanese function, but makes it true for the American soundtrack as well - meaning if you put the US soundtrack on, you still get Stardust Speedway Bad Future no matter what. Good Future deserves more love!
I think the US soundtrack could have been used for another SEGA CD Sonic game at least, instead of replacing the original Sonic CD OST, because I genuinely think the US soundtrack is good. Of course, not as good the JP one, but still good honestly.
I feel like both region versions of SSZ's Good Future Mix are way underrated. I don't think there's a version of Stardust Speedway music that I DON'T like but both Good Future mixes just give me goosebumps! Let me tell you, I remember 20 years ago when I first bought the Japanese version of Sonic CD, I could —not— WAIT to get a Mega CD specifically so I could hear the Good Future music during the Metal Sonic race! Needless to say, I'd hyped myself up so much that by the time I DID get to play it and realized it was the Bad Future mix regardless, I was highly disappointed — after realizing my game wasn't broken or glitching. A 13-year old's first world problems, huh? lol Anyway yeah, neither of the Good Future mixes of Stardust Speedway Zone gets enough credit.
I think the Good Future music plays in the Japanese version of Sonic Gems Collection, since it's based on the PC version of Sonic CD.
Trash, all of it. I don’t appreciate how Present and Futures sound nothing like each other. Honestly, for the longest didn’t know what was good and bad future. The JP/EU version makes it obvious. They couldn’t even follow the pattern of following variations on a single them for each level. I think only Collision Chaos and Metallic Madness followed this method (still trash, but better). Sonic 4 gave me nightmares of this too honestly.
Yeah, one of my biggest gripes with the US soundtrack is that many of the good futures' tracks could pass off for bad futures. It really ruins the mood in them. In fact, many of the present tracks sound more like good futures than the actual GF tracks. And the final boss music sounds nigh unrecognizable from the regular boss theme -- a far cry from the final boss in the JP/EU soundtrack (and every other Sonic game). Like I said, the US soundtrack is a rushjob and it shows. The fact it still uses the Japanese past tracks that sound nothing like the Nilsen tracks only adds to its halfassed-ness. There were a few tracks that grew on me to some extent, but I don't think it has many (if any) tracks that are on par with your typical Sonic soundtrack.
To be perfectly fair, it's far easier to replace streamed audio than it is to program new music. Past music ran off of the Sega CD's audio chip rather than CD audio.
And that's the biggest indicator that they didn't have the cooperation of the developers when they changed the music.
I think this particular quirk may have to do with the 2011 release not initially being confirmed to have the US soundtrack until shortly before release. Sounds about right. Last-minute implementation in 1993, last-minute implementation in 2011.
I've always thought the Special Stage theme offers a good sampling of each soundtrack in a nutshell. Japanese is eclectic, weird and catchy. US has some solid ground work to build on, but ultimately goes for atmosphere that blends into the game as opposed to being its own distinct element of the game. I love listening to it separately, more as conceptual pieces, while in-game I've grown used to the Japanese soundtrack just 'cause it clearly fits the overall aesthetic.
