Well, I was being emotional more than anything else, and I'm old enough to remember those times, so that was more like a "gramps and his rants" moment. In any case, I was talking in a broader range: synths were used for a lot of styles, rock from those times would have fitted better in Sonic games, jazz and funk sounds were sometimes included in other styles, and there was some techno fun going on, plus later eurobeat. This comes from a guy that loves the music in Green Forest (I'm mostly a metal guy), but if you ask me what's in Sonic Adventure 2 that reminds me of classic games and has high quality in every sense, I'd choose Rouge's music, both theme and levels.
Ohtani gets all the blame for the modern horrible synth but it's not just him. Senoue also went for an awful synth sound in Sonic 4. Hataya was the Classic Sonic sound director for Sonic Forces. All three are excellent composers who seem to think that genesis style music just sounds like that awful synth. It's really a Sonic Team problem.
None of Ohtani's music are "Genesis-style." In Frontiers' case, it's pretty clear he's going for electronic / EDM to fit the Cyber Space aesthetic. Only Senoue really has this problem. Hataya is hit and miss.
Wasn't Senoue told by Dimps to use those synths for Sonic 4? Pretty sure I recall him saying something along these lines
I haven’t heard this before but it would be very on point considering Dimps’ handling of the rest of that game.
Yeah, that’d be a bit odd. Dimps usually works under the direction of Sonic Team and typically has an actual Sega employee directing the titles. In Sonic 4 Ep 1, the director was Toshiyuki Nagahara who was a Sega employee at the time. It still could have happened, but I would imagine Senoue has a bit more sway on sound direction than a contractor.
I could get that direction if "Sonic The Portable" was going to have the sequenced music on mobile devices just like the Wii version did to save space. I still don't see the reason why they went all-in with the faux megadrive music for Forces. Personally I'm really liking the music so far, especially the Asura music. Ones like the Green Hill cyberspace music we haven't really heard before in a Sonic game which is cool. I do hope we so get music that calls back to previous tracks in the series. So far it's all been original stuff, but I wouldn't mind them chucking in some older melodies. I know I keep mentioning Phantasy Star, but for Phantasy Star Online 1 and 2 they did reference older games by using their melodies. Tricktrack Part 2 references several melodies from PS 1 and 2, as well as Nostalgia in solitude Part 2 with PS III. PSO2 has various older melodies from PSO and PSUniverse dotted amongst its original tracks, as well as outright remixing them. I don't know how viable this would be with Sonic music, but it would be great for those that care for the music so much.
Remember the good old days from SA1 and SA2 (but mostly SA1) when the soundtracks featured a variety of styles instead of just 1 or 2? You of course had rock, but there was also a great deal of jazz, techno, and other styles. Frontiers looks like it’s going for somber in the open zone and synthy EDM in the cyberspace levels. Don’t like those 2 styles? Well I guess you’re shit out of luck then.
Adventure, sure, but Adventure 2 was extremely rock and guitar heavy. Colors had more styles, even Forces had synth metal, EDM, and Genesis-style, along with orchestral.
I will say I do miss the extreme variety in music Adventure 1 had. (Only Adventure 1 tho, 2 prob has one of the most samey soundtrack in the entire series imo) Team Sonic Racing brought the variety back to an extent, as mentioned earlier. It's probably my favourite ost in the entire series along with Runners, it's a shame both had to be wasted on such "whatever" games
To this day, I don't think anything will superpass the absurd variation Sonic Unleashed had. This shit had everything. Sometimes it didn't even felt I was listering to a video-game souundtrack (that's a good thing, by the way). Tomoya Ohtani, Kenichi Tokoi and Fumie Kumatani really peaked in this game. Also yeah, Team Sonic Racing OST felt very close to the first Sonic Adventure, I just think it needed a bit more Jazz Fusion and Techno, then it would be perfect. I think Sonic Generations soundtrack is technically very eclectic as well, even tho' 90% of the soundtrack are remixes. Edit: I forgot to respond to this: I'm at least expecting to Kenichi Tokoi to return in Frontiers soundtrack, his presence have been pretty frequent in Sonic Team recently. And closing my fingers to Horita be in the soundtrack as well.
I don't recall the exact words, but he basically said "When I composed the game's music I was going to go for something more modern, but Dimps asked for the more retro compositions we ended up using"
Scouting through all the interviews ever done with Dimps Sonic games, Dimps itself is actually never mentioned, unless asked.
there's the main theme which is more alternative metal. Would be cool if we heard more like that, I think it'd be a pretty cool style for the battle music.
In SA2 each character had their own genre of music; while half of them were some form of rock, I wouldn't say they weren't varied.
Cool set of promotional standees for Frontiers. I like how Korone is featured on the right, that's cute.
I guess with all this promotional material it's safe to assume that Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are the only characters with a deep significance to the story? Amy appears absent from most of these and so does Big. I wonder if there are more secondary characters in other islands.
I think I remember something similar, but Dimps was never mentioned. He talked about the director, who was on the Sega side. Dimps are basically code monkeys, the creative side of their Sonic games were all Sonic Team members.
yeah the big thing will be how many discs the physical JP release has. For reference, the Generations release had three discs, as did Colors and Unleashed/World Adventure. I wouldn't exactly call it filler, more like "bonuses for completionists so they buy the CD release" it's actually pretty common practice for JP CD releases to have remixes exclusive to that release to sweeten the deal, even outside of Sonic, especially if the release is after the digital release. You see this with rock bands, electronic artists, etc.. I have a couple of JP-only CD releases that I imported for that reason. re: music discussion, I'm not super into orchestral stuff (it has to work harder to get my attention) but like electronic a whole lot, so I've been super fine with the latest output. I haven't listened to any of the Sonic Frontier releases except for Vandalize when it came out...I really hope it's not sedate orchestral music for the bulk of its soundtrack. The cutscene tunes for all releases post-06 have been these super generic (if professionally recorded) orchestral pieces and the idea of a whole OST like that makes me want to gag.
