Gradius Tribute (SCDC-00530)
 

http://www.gmronline.com/info.asp?CatNumber=SCDC-00530

To be released on December 20.

Play-Asia and Neowing have short little blurbs in Japanese that don't really reveal a whole lot of information when run through Google Translate beyond the fact that it's obviously a Gradius arrange album.

The GMR link in the first line of this post has a list of arrangers found from who knows where. It's actually really interesting, though:

• Motoaki Furukawa
  The Man
• Takayuki Aihara
  Namco and SuperSweep stuff; has arranged a bunch of stuff, but never Gradius before as far as I know, so that's kinda nifty
• Shinichi Sakamoto
  HOLY CRAP WHERE DID THEY DIG HIM UP FROM; composed the four SMS Wonder Boy games (<3) and Panic Bomber (Virtual Boy, represent), but disappeared from Earth after 1995
• Kimitaka Matsumae
  Tamamayu Monogatari 1-2 (Jade Cocoon), arrangements on the Mother 1+2 "Soundtrack," S.S.T. Band member
• Yukio Nakajima
  Energy Breaker and Chaos Seed
• dj wat
  who is this i dont even know

So, who knows, well, anything more about this album?

Don't just say it's a Gradius arrange album, or I'll slap you. :(

Shinichi Sakamoto discussion goes here:
http://www.gamingforce.com/forums/ge...s-tribute.html

We have tracklisting!

1. MORNING MUSIC ~LARGO mix~
2. GRADIUS MEDLEY ~MS-20 MIX~
3. CHALLENGER 1985
4. FINAL ATTACK
5. BURNING HEAT
6. lpdrv/SYNTHETIC LIFE(lpdrv flashback remix)
7. GRADIUS 2 FINAL-STAGE MEDLEY
8. AQUA ILLUSION
9. GRADIUS 3 MEDLEY

So that's four tracks from Gradius I (1-4), three from Gradius II (5-7), and two from Gradius III (8-9). Still no word on who remixed each track, unfortunately.

The GMR entry has been updated with additional info.

As for who remixed what tracks:

Takayuki Aihara (1.8)
Kimitake Matsumae (2)
Shinichi Sakamoto (3)
Motoaki Furukawa (4.5)
lpdrv (Wataru Kobayashi) (6)
Ryo Sakai (7)
Yukio Nakajima (9)

oh, and if you want to give this album a listen you can find a direct link right here.

Heard this first two remixes so far.

Quality stuff that's plain good !

Will edit this post once I'm done.

Also : Worthy purchase for me :)

Will be in my first VGM World order next year :D

Edit: Got to hear it all now. On the first impression, there was only one stinker in the set. The one by Kobayashi. It was needlessly repetitive... took almost 2 minutes to get moving and it didn't change all that much in the end. 8 great tracks out of 9. Good ratio for one. I'll still buy the album despite that shitty techno track.

My general consensus with this album is that it's kinda okay, but nowhere near as good as it should have been. Hearing the lousy 1:21 of Sakamoto's lone contribution (Challenger 1985) really gave me the impression this album was a quick cash-in. Surely if RPG filler music like Dark Chronicle can muster up a 12 track "premium" arrange, the famous Gradius series is worthy of more than a nine track album that has 3 medleys, a really bad techno track (same one DG mentioned), 2 tracks of Furukawa on autopilot, and 1:21 of the series' most famous theme included.

About half of it's kinda okay and might grow on me, but it really feels like everyone involved just approached it with a "git'R'done" attitude.

2.5/5 for now...Very disappointing.

Yeah I might listen to this some more, but my current impression is that this is a bit of a weak album. Track 6 was fucking horrible. Track 7 might be my favorite. There were some other pretty good tracks, but nothing that blew my mind.

The first impression this album has shown me was a good one, overall. Like everyone else said, the synthetic life mix wasn't all too good. Even as a trance track it was just boring... and track 3, what happened? Why was it so short? ;_; Everthing else was excellent I think. Enough for me to go ahead and buy this album! Personal favorites would have to be Gradius MS-20 Mix (I'm honestly not sure why I like it so much) and Gradius II final stage medley.

Well as a "Tribute to all things Gradius" album I gotta agree, it felt lacking or perhaps rushed. Still this album does have some nice gems.

That said, I'd give it a 3/5.