New releases you're looking forward to...

With lots of new releases coming our way over the next few months, which are you most looking forward to? Have you pre-ordered anything already?

There are two main ones for me, these being the FFXII OST and Baten Kaitos II OST. While the majority of people will probably dislike Sakimoto on FFXII, Symphonic Poem "Hope" and certain new samples have given me a lot of hope for how I will receive it. Sakimoto rarely, if ever, lets me down, and, if he can integrate a sufficient number of darker tracks and at least demonstrate some of his diversity (I'm expecting no industrial rock "Vega Stage", though...), I'll probably be satisfied. As for Baten Kaitos II, I have little doubt that Sakuraba will succeed here. Baten Kaitos is my favourite of his soundtracks, a refined mix of everything, and the samples I've heard are incredibly promising.

I'll probably check out King of Fighters XI Sound Collection. While I'm only familiar with the series' more recent arranged albums, I've always been impressed. The new Ace Combat, Chaos Seed, Genso Suikoden, and Wild Arms albums will also intrigue me, though I probably won't purchase them. Same applies to the Legend of Game Music -Consumer Box-. As for THE SHOOTING LOVE XIISTAG & TRIZEAL (Insanity DVD Series), that is probably worth my attention, given my love for the Hyper Street Fighter II Insanity set, though I can't afford anything like that right now. I'm a little clueless on a fair few of the upcoming releases listed at GMROnline, though hope some others will educate me about them with their own wishlists!

As for pre-orders, FFXII OST is already pre-ordered from the SquareSound Music Store, as is Baten Kaitos II from VGM World. If the SS store administrator stocks the FFT OST re-release, I'll definitely get that too, as I never got the chance first time round and am not a big spender on eBay.

How ya doing, buddy?

It's not a new release by any means, but I'm actually looking forward to the "Wild Arms Complete Tracks". For those who own the original Wild Arms OST, they'll immediately know why.

When the OST was originally released eons ago, it was incomplete (around half the tracks in the game were missing from the CD), so this will be the first time the complete OST will be made available on a compact disc and outside of gamerips.

Oh and I've already pre-ordered Final Fantasy XII as well, being a large fan of Sakimoto's work in other games.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Nothing pre-ordered yet, but I'm really looking forward to FFXII OST and Genso Suikoden V OST. Sakimoto can't do anything wrong in my book and I'm really looking forward to what he does with the FF-series.

I'm in the process of listening to the Genso Suikoden V-rip at this moment and it's very, very good. Music from the series is almost always great and 5 seems to be very close to the music used in the first two games.

I'll probably end up pre-ordering both of em.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Hearty agreement on FFXII. It's about time someone with actual talent took up the baton in the series. Naoshi Mizuta's had the lion's share of recent compositional work, and his material is snooze-inducing.

I'm also looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of SUN, the Korean MMORPG scored by Howard Shore. Here's hoping that one gets an international release.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

FFXII is no brainer for me. I have been a great admirer of Sakimoto for years now! Top priority there and it's Final Fantasy...

Ace Combat Zero The Belkan War is the second obligatory purchase for me. I'm a fan of this series and especially of the Namco Sound Team. Every Ace Combat OST is worth... twice!

Then there are the OSTs I will take a look:

Baten Kaitos II: I have the first one, I really like it. The battle is awesome and the rest of the soundtrack is really good too. Of course I'm looking forward the second installment, despite the fact I have been a little disappointed by the new battle theme heard in some videos... though there are some good samples there.

Wild Arms The Complete thing: I cant believe they are going to release the complete NOW! So yeah Wild Arms is one of my favourite RPG soundtrack and still easily the best of the series (by far). I will closely look at the composition of each disc though. If I find out there are too many tracks on each disc, I won't buy it.

Finally I need one reprint:

Vagrant Story: I have the CD-R burned from my former original copy, but I want the original one, period!

I was speaking idiomatically.

So far, 2006 is shaping up to be another great year for game music. Some of the albums I'm looking forward to include:

Shin Sangokumusou Complete Sound Box *pre-ordered*
Anytime I can add more MASA to my collection there is no hesitation. This box set will combine the Shin Sangokumusou Kyukyoku ongen (Sangokumusou, Shin Sangokumusou and Shin Sangokumusou 2), Shin Sangokumusou 3 OST and Shin Sangokumusou 4 OST. And if 6 discs weren't enough, there will be a 7th disc as well that will feature music from the Xtreme Legends and Empires games of the series, which have never been released on CD before. I'm gonna eat this up

Tales of the Abyss Original Soundtrack
After purchasing the disappointment that was Tales of Rebith, I was very hesitant to order this one. However, I've heard some of the music by listening to the ADX rip that's been floating around, and I must say that I'm enjoying what I've heard thus far. Still haven't pre-ordered but I'm getting close.

Ys Strategy Original Soundtrack *would like to order*
Right now, there is no way to pre-order this. I'm not even sure who is composing this, but if Ys is in the title, I wouldn't mind checking it out. I'm hoping Kahori will stock this at some point.

Capture Chronicle Series "Gain Ground & Crack Down" *plan to pre-order*
Having never had a chance to buy the original print of this album, seeing a re-print is very welcome. The added DVD is cool too. Yuzo ftw!

LOST CHILD ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK FROM S.S.H THE FINAL SIDE-Z *would like to order*
::sigh:: Yet ANOTHER album I'm hoping VGMWorld stocks. The Lost Child games have great music and I really want to add this to my collection.

Baten Kaitos II ~The First Wings and the Heirs of God~ Original Soundtrack *plan to pre-order*
The original Baten Kaitos had a marvelous score. I'm expecting even bigger things from Sakuraba with the sequel.

Genso Suikoden V Original Soundtrack
After the greatness that was Suikoden II, neither Suikoden III or IV were able to surpass or even equal that level. Rhapsodia, however, has really grown on me so I trust that Suikoden V will keep the progression moving forward.

Wild Arms Complete Tracks
Any Wild Arms music fan will tell you that the original Wild Arms soundtrack was hella incomplete. Well, that complaining can come to a screeching halt. This album will add a 2nd disc of music in what wil be a must-have for any Wild Arms fan.

Devil Summoner: Kuzunoha Raidou Original Soundtrack *pre-ordered*
The Devil Summoner series has always had excellent music. If Shoji Meguro is involved, that streak will definitely continue. There's just no other way around that.

Final Fantasy XII Original Soundtrack *will pre-order once Amazon JP stocks it*
Hitoshi Sakimoto is already one of the top 5 game composers in the business. With a great score here, he could move into that pantheon of excellence that few composers ever reach. Judging by the samples and trailers, he seems to be well on his way.

THE SHOOTING LOVE XIISTAG & TRIZEAL (Insanity DVD Series) *plan to pre-order*
Dragon God sent me game rips from both of these games awhile back, and MAN, was I ever impressed. Shortly thereafter, this album set was announced. Yep, you guessed it, I'm waiting on VGMWorld to pick this one as well.

Chaos Seed Soundtrack ~ Game Sound Legend Series *will pre-order once Amazon JP stocks it*
It saddens me that Yasunori Shiono never composed more music His Estpolis/Lufia scores were magnificent and some of the best of the SNES era. Chaos Seed is one of the only other game I know of that's he has worked on. So, as soon as Amazon offers this up, I'll be there for the taking.

Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War Original Soundtrack *pre-ordered*
Ace Combat music, specifically 4 and 5, has never let me down. Team Namco always brings their A-game when it comes to this series. I'm sure Nakatsuru, Kobayashi and crew will have even better things in store for The Belkan War.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

There are tons that I'm looking forward to, beginning with March 24th

Xbox the Best: This might contain a lot of music never released on CD before. It's also a Japanese CD, so there might be a lot of great game music that never made it out of Japan

Baten Kaitos II: Yeah, the first Baten Kaitos had great music, it's one of my favourite Sakuraba soundtracks. I hope he wasn't too busy with composing Tales of the Abyss, Valkyrie Profile II and re-arranging Lenneth at around the same time, so Baten Kaitos will still turn out to be an original (that's gonna be at least 11 discs of music he brings out this year)

Final Fantasy XII: I really hope the whole soundtrack will turn out as excellent as the two samples on the official website. Everything else i've heard didn't amaze me that much, but as long as the important themes (like Field Theme, Game Over Theme >_>...) are great, I will not be disappointed.

Chaos Seed Soundtrack: Scitron really has some great plans with all those games that contain music by Yukio Nakajima and Yasunori Shiono. First a 4disc Lufia OST, now a 3 disc Chaos Seed soundtrack. Perhaps next time they will release a 3disc Energy Breaker soundtrack, would be awesome.

At first I was also looking forward to that Wizardry Box that was postponed, but it seems to just be a compilation of all Wizardry music and drama cds yet, so they can postpone it to whenever they want.

Ys Strategy will be interesting, but I bet they just re-arrange the music, so it's nothing spectacular.

How ya doing, buddy?

Final Fantasy XII Original Soundtrack
THE SHOOTING LOVE XIISTAG & TRIZEAL (Insanity DVD Series)

Those two are truly no-brainers for me.

Some releases I expect later this year, but haven't been announced as of yet...

ESP Galuda II

Can't say no to Namiki, he's proven himself time & time again that he knows how to write shmup muisc.

Ibara II ~Pink Sweets~

Namiki or Hosoe, you tell me... Judging from Location Test videos, I'd say Namiki, but... Anyways, it's Cave for crying out loud :P

Senko no Ronde Rev. X

I expect Yack. to have arranged his score and composed some additional tracks for this release. We'll know this summer for sure

Edit : While I've yet to confirm this, the Dreamcast version of Under Defeat has an arranged soundtrack apparently. The Limited Edition comes with a soundtrack CD. I can imagine how good the arranges would be tho, because the source material is fantastic !

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Chaos Seed Soundtrack ~ Game Sound Legend Series-Holy shit, I can't believe this is actually coming out. Like Teioh, I'm also waiting for Energy Breaker as well, but this is still a great SPC set-listen. There had better be looped tracks on this one though, unlike what the Lufia remake got.

King of Fighters XI-Never heard of the guy this is being credited to (Koji Takata), but they are kind enough to package the arranged album with OST. As long as it's nothing like King of Fighters Neowave *cringe*.

Baten Kaitos 2-Baten 1's music was quality (though not as even as I'd like). Hoping for more of the same, but better here.

Ys Strategy-WTF!? Hell yeah I want it, but what the hell is it?

Tales of Abyss-Hopefully, it's more TO Symphonia and nothing like TO Rebirth.

Shikigami no Shiro 3-Heh, a shmup OST Dragon God missed. Part 2 was some quality techno, with a handful of tracks that oozed into the pool of greatness, so I'll be looking into this.

Wild Arms Complete-About. Fucking. Time. Hopefully, a 4-disc WA2 OST with looped tracks is in the works after this.

Legend of Heroes VI Second Chapter-The samples on Falcom's site don't lie...This is going to be a monster when it comes out. Easily my most anticipated upcoming soundtrack right now.

THE SHOOTING LOVE XIISTAG & TRIZEAL-I notice Gou Sato's name in the credits and I can only hope this is the same quality as last year's Viper Phase 1 OST.

Waiting on announcements for:

King of Fighters Maximum Impact 2
Valkyrie Profile Silmeria (I'm expecting nothing less than greatness for this one).
Tokimeki Memorial Online
Rockman Rockman


Overall, I'm happy with what's coming out, though I expect this line-up to be expanded considerably in the coming months.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Shin Sangokumusou 3 has some great tunes. I haven't heard the soundtracks from any of the other games in the series, so I don't know if I'd pick up the box set when I know only one of the soundtracks involved, but it's under consideration.

I assume the "PC Sound of Game Arts" part of the title of the Silpheed album means it's the soundtrack of the PC-8801 version? The two tracks from that version at the end of Silpheed Official Game Music Sound (TYCY-5338) are both excellent, so that could be worth checking out too.

Double Post:

Originally Posted by GoldfishX

Shikigami no Shiro 3-Heh, a shmup OST Dragon God missed.

Silpheed's a shmup too!

I need to replay that game.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by CHz

Shin Sangokumusou 3 has some great tunes. I haven't heard the soundtracks from any of the other games in the series, so I don't know if I'd pick up the box set when I know only one of the soundtracks involved, but it's under consideration.

If you liked Shin Sangokumusou 3, you'll love Sangokumusou, Shin Sangokumusou and Shin Sangokumusou 2. Each of them rock out as well as Shin Sangokumusou 3. Shin Sangokumusou 4, on the other, is a great disappointment mostly because MASA's role was greatly deminished. I'm quite sure you'll enjoy at least 4 of the 7 discs. I'm not sure about the Xtreme Legends/Empires disc though because I've never played any of those games.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I already preordered the Shin Sangokumusou 7-disc box. Will soon preorder Baten Kaitos II. And that's it for me. Nothing else is very appealing to me.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War Original Soundtrack
Kobayashi did a great job with AC5, and from what I've heard of this, he's primed to come back in full force. Furthermore, this is only 2 discs as opposed to AC5's 4. While this may not be as epic of a soundtrack in effect, it has a chance for less filler tracks. Here's to hoping Namco Sound Team can pull this off.

Final Fantasy XII Original Soundtrack
Because I'm really curious to see if Sakimoto can handle composing a 4-disc Final Fantasy soundtrack like Uematsu was able to. I've listened to several tracks already; some great, some not so special. However, there's a lot more to hear.

Other than those two, I'm not anticipating any specifically. I'll just go with the flow and I know I'll be hearing most of this year's major releases in due time.

And somebody needs to send me the XIISTAG & TRIZEAL gamerips so I can see what all the fuss is about.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Kaleb.G

Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War Original Soundtrack
Kobayashi did a great job with AC5, and from what I've heard of this, he's primed to come back in full force. Furthermore, this is only 2 discs as opposed to AC5's 4. While this may not be as epic of a soundtrack in effect, it has a chance for less filler tracks. Here's to hoping Namco Sound Team can pull this off.

Actually, Kobayashi is a woman! :P

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Also, Ace Combat Zero's soundtrack stands a good chance of being better than AC5's for the same reason as AC4: It's shorter, therefore, there's more attention paid to each song to avoid skimping on each to get through the workload.

There's this one track I'd like to hear on that one, it came up towards the end of the first trailer for the game. Not exactly original though, since it's a remix of the Razgriz theme mixed with the BGM4 track on ACZ's website.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Raijin

Actually, Kobayashi is a woman! :P

Really? Where did you find this out? It's hard for me to tell from the name alone, since Japanese names can apply to both men and women.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I'm just waiting for the Ridge Racer 6 soundtrack to be announced. Techno at it's finest.

How ya doing, buddy?

The Ys one, since I'm a Falcom fan.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Raijin

FFXII is no brainer for me....

Indeed!
And I see many agree.

I'm not Sakimoto's biggest fan (Shimomura & Uematsu are my fave's), but his FFXII compositions are top notch.
His past OST's where usually a bit of generic filler (usually 3 or 4 great songs and the rest rather forgetful) to me, but so far this isn't the case with any of the tunes I've heard so far!

And I'm equally looking forward to (although they're not releases of the upcoming months):
--Zelda Twilight Princess OST (Koji Kondo and his music staff)
--Blue Dragon OST (Nobuo Uematsu)
--Lost Odyssey OST (Nobuo Uematsu)
(none have conformed releasedate's....and they might not even be released on CD, but I doubt that will be the case)


And some I'm hoping for, but are not confirmed in any way:
--new Paper Mario soundtrack (Yuka Tsujiyoko & Yoshito Hirano)
--Hopefully some uncorfirmed Rareware platform game soundtrack composed by either Grant Kirkhope or Robin Beanland.
(preferably Banjo Threeie or Conker's Bad Fur Day II )

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Wild Arms: Fucking finally. This is a series that has been RAPED by way of soundtracks. Even finding the English intro to WA3 took me the better part of a week on Direct Connect.

Devil Summoner Kuzunoha Raidou: I'm seriously beginning to wonder if Atlus is capable of putting out a bad anything. This promises to be good.

Xenosaga 3: Get. Kajiura. Again. I will order this soundtrack 5 days ago if you get her back on board.

Not officially announced, but I know they're coming-

Persona 3: I nearly jumped through the ceiling when I read the thread in the RPG forum about this game coming out. Persona 2's soundtracks were nothing short of amazing, this one's will likely be as well.

Megaten 4: Get Meguro back on board and this one's in the bag. More songs like Dante Battle and Joint Struggle, plzkthx

Silent Hill 5: This one worries me a bit, as SH has gotten progressively softer as the series has evolved. I have nothing against the rock/jazz tracks in 3 and 4, but I'd really kill to see part 5 go back to the series' roots, namely extremely fucked-up noise and ambience. Hell, keep the MEMcG vocal tracks, she's great, but bring the instrumentals back to hellish cacophony and you'll have won over the hardcore horror junkies.

Most amazing jew boots

The only future soundtrack I'm looking forward to right now is from the game Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror. Mark Snow will once again be the composer. The game will be released next week on PSP and I hope someone will be willing to do a rip of it, as I won't be able to (not a PSP owner). That is unless there is an OST release, but that'd be extremely surprising...

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Dragon God

Edit : While I've yet to confirm this, the Dreamcast version of Under Defeat has an arranged soundtrack apparently. The Limited Edition comes with a soundtrack CD. I can imagine how good the arranges would be tho, because the source material is fantastic !

There will be different soundtrack called "Extended Tracks." It contains longer versions of the five stage themes (with live guitars) and six arrangements from other composers. It's only available with limited edition Dreamcast game.

http://www.grev.co.jp/ud_ac/dreamcast.html

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by gevarn12

There will be different soundtrack called "Extended Tracks." It contains longer versions of the five stage themes (with live guitars) and six arrangements from other composers. It's only available with limited edition Dreamcast game.

http://www.grev.co.jp/ud_ac/dreamcast.html

*dies*

;________________________;

Grah..... this is awful.... I can't afford it.... I want it soooooo bad >_<

FELIPE NO

Also, I'm now very intersted in the forthcoming Okami Audio Collection. The samples I've heard, whcih are available over at Soundtrack Central, are really nice. It seems like it's going to be a very artistic album, to go along with the style of the gameplay itself. I'll probably be picking this one up when it's released on May 25th.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

There's quite a few I am looking forward to but, the reissue of Silpheed probably tops my list currently. Funny though, no one seems to have it listed for sale...

Jam it back in, in the dark.