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| Patrick Gann |
Celebrate the decade with a decade's worth of SMT music!
12.31.09 - 11:36 PM
We've reviewed nearly every Shin Megami Tensei soundtrack on the planet. If you want a good "decade in game music" featurette for yourself, just read all our soundtrack reviews for this series and a few other big names. It'll be great!
Now, as I was saying, "nearly every" is the operative phrase. Today we get much closer by cutting the backlog (as far as I can tell) from seven albums to three, barring any super-obscure promos and drama CDs.
First up, from 2008, we have the promotional soundtrack release to Devil Summoner: Kuzunoha Raidou vs. King Abaddon. For whatever reason, Atlus didn't have Aniplex, or Columbia, or anyone else do a retail soundtrack release for this album. It's a one disc set of music that was new to the game (much of the in-game soundtrack was borrowed from the previous Kuzunoha Raidou game). Thanks to our newest editor, Bob Richardson, for this review.
Next, from way back in 2000, we have two soundtracks for the Game Boy DemiKids games. Known as Shin Megami Tensei Devil Children in Japan, these paired games (in the same way Pokémon games are paired) had some surprisingly good music. Hence, an arranged album and an OST were released. They're long out of print now, since publisher First Smile went out of business. But it's good stuff to remember.
EDIT - to clarify, the DemiKids titles that Atlus USA localized were GBA "Light and Dark" titles, and are not the same as the games with soundtracks represented here. These are the Red and Black, original Devil Children titles for Game Boy Color. Thanks to cj_iwakura for pointing this out!
Finally, we got our hands on the promotional soundtrack for Shin Megami Tensei NINE. Likely the worst-selling game in the series, thanks to it being exclusive to both Japan and Xbox (a deadly combination), this 2002 title was originally meant to be an online game. That didn't happen. What did happen was that a bunch of music from the old Shin Megami Tensei I&II got re-arranged, and a few new tracks were tacked on, and a new CD was born. Now we have it conveniently archived for you to read about, and listen to the audio samples of course. Yes, they're still RealAudio. Maybe we'll change that in the new decade?
So that's the update. What we're still missing are two big 2009 releases: Personal 3 Portable and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey soundtracks. They'll be coming shortly. And finally, there's a "Side B" promo album from Atlus for Persona 4 which we'll review eventually.
Enjoy the SMT love and have a happy new year!
