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A Tribute to Yoko Kanno: All the OGCs and more!

Today's update features all of Yoko Kanno's best, including all five OGCs (even though she didn't have any work in OGC5), as well as the Napple Tale OSTs and Uncharted Waters II Special Edition!

We are very lucky, because today's update doesn't feature the standard Ramza and reader Chudah reviews...well, it does, but that's not ALL of it! Good ol' Rudo (editor-in-chief of RPGFan) did the reviews for Orchestral Game Concert 3 and Orchestral Game Concert 4!

For those of you who don't know what the Orchestral Game Concerts are all about, here's an excerpt from a review of OGC1 to explain:

Orchestral Game Concert: a 5-CD series that made groundbreaking efforts in videogame music, and is now considered to be five of the rarest CDs in the VGM market. What is there to learn of this CD? Plenty.

The Orchestral Game Concert series started with this one, and one after that the next year, and then one the next year, and two more those two years to follow. On the third one, the publisher changed from Warner Music Japan to Sony Records. The Orchestral Game Concert CDs are, in essence, orchestrated tracks (some new, some found on other CDs such as every Dragon Quest track) from many games released on Nintendo Systems such as Famicom (NES), Super Famicom (SNES), and GameBoy, as the CDs were produced with Nintendo as well. The main symphonic arrangers to all of these CDs were Yoko Kanno (most of Koei's games) and Koichi Sugiyama (of Dragon Quest).

Our faithful reader-reviewer Chudah reviewed both of the Napple Tale OSTs...And MAN are these soundtracks impressive! Be sure to check out these reviews!

And then, we also have a review of Kanno's other RPG soundtrack, Uncharted Waters II Special Edition. Actually a combination of two very obscure Uncharted Waters soundtracks, this collection has it all (well, it's missing a few tracks from the first game, but it has everything from the 2nd's soundtrack...we do plan on getting a review of the first Uncharted Waters CD).

Yoko Kanno is a great composer all-around. She can write amazingly complex music for just about any style. Not only that, but she doesn't just compose for videogames. MANY anime series (such as Escaflowne and Macross) have music composed by Yoko Kanno. That's why we've included a link to Anime Dream's soundtracks section, to see what music Kanno's done over in anime.

The next soundtrack update will definitely be our third (and possibly final) TRIBUTE TO MOTOI SAKURABA! This update will feature the Tales of Eternia OST and Opening Single, Tales of Phantasia opening single, Valkyrie Profile voice mix, Star Ocean: The Second Story Arrange Album & Space Fantasy Megamix, Shining: The Holy Ark OST, and Star Ocean: Perfect Sound Collection (an arranged album, and the only album, for the first Star Ocean). Expect it to be big.

Date Updated:
April 1st, 2001

Time Updated:
9:29 PM


Ramza

Related Links:
  •   RPGFan Soundtracks
  •   Anime Dream Soundtracks


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