Deep Cuts - Purpleschala
As we all know, certain game soundtracks tend to hog the spotlight, so this series is dedicated to finding those hidden gems that often go unnoticed and unappreciated. For this article, I asked VGM pianist Purpleschala to bring some visibility to a few of her favorite soundtracks—Devilish, Terra Diver, Radiant Silvergun, Vagrant Story, and Valkyria Chronicles. Here is why these soundtracks matter in her own words.
Note: While Devilish was never released commercially, Radiant Silvergun and Vagrant Story had physical releases, and Terra Diver and Valkyria Chronicles have digital releases.
Devilish
The OST for this 1991 Mega Drive release is revered as a monumental example of Hitoshi Sakimoto’s genius as a chiptune artist. A programmer at the time, he wrote the driver himself and cleverly manipulated all nine channels of the PSG/FM chips in unorthodox ways to achieve a full, deep sound, as evidenced by the choir layering in “Prairie”, the complex percussion in “Air Passage”, and the echo/delay effects for the arpeggios in “Waterfalls” and “Seaside”. The thickly layered instrumental lines, progressive harmony, irregular time signatures, and funky grooves that serve as the hallmarks of his style are all present in this early work.
Terra Diver
With the 32-bit revolution, Sakimoto now had at his disposal a wider array of sounds to realize his vision of greater polyphonic textures. He delivered a slick, electronica-heavy score pulsating with tech trance beats for this 1996 Sega ST-V shooter, reminiscent of Yuzo Koshiro’s groundbreaking work on Streets of Rage. As with Sakimoto’s chiptune tracks, one can hear threads of the complex melodic and harmonic orchestral writing which would take center stage in Final Fantasy Tactics one year later and solidly define his 32-bit era style (“Ending/Staff Roll”, “Ignition Start”).
Radiant Silvergun
Like early, middle, and late Beethoven, Hitoshi Sakimoto’s career as a video game composer can be loosely divided into his chiptune period, his 32-bit period, and his 128-bit period. The OST for this critically acclaimed, criminally expensive 1998 shooter for the Sega Saturn is the intersection of all three. Listening to it without context sounds like an assortment of Final Fantasy Tactics outtakes—bright orchestral motives and satisfying contrapuntal interplay, intermingled with the jarring dissonance of Vagrant Story, the hard groove of Terra Diver, and his emerging 128-bit era style (“Evasion”, “Debris”).
Vagrant Story
Sakimoto has stated this 2000 PS1 release is one of his favorite projects, and from his previous body of work, it is easy to see why. Not only do we hear his love for EDM combined with his knack for multilayered symphonic writing (“Climax of the Greylands Incident”), we also hear how he goes deeper by writing extremely dissonant minimalist four-part harmony for pipe organ (“Catacombs” and “Sanctum”) or just simply going full-on acid trance (“The Great Cathedral”). The result is dark, ambient, and sexy, a very fitting sonic backdrop for a dungeon crawler with corrupt clergy, zombies, and unapologetically kinky medieval outfits.
Valkyria Chronicles
In 2008, two years after Final Fantasy XII, Sakimoto was well-seated in the style he was so highly sought after as a composer. His use of lush orchestration, sweeping strings, brass in parallel open intervals, ninth chords, chromatic mediants, crash cymbals, and Prokofiev-esque momentum made him a perfect fit for yet another tactical RPG series. The Valkyria Chronicles OST is a nice middle ground between the taut, focused ideas in Final Fantasy Tactics and the sprawling landscape of FFXII. It is economical while still creating a sense of epic scale. The edgy, groovy synth-driven beats that dominated his early chiptune and part of his 32-bit period are now at a bare minimum in 128-bit era Sakimoto, replaced by a shift towards more gentle, jazzy pop (“No Matter the Distance”).
Purpleschala
An active performer and educator, Purpleschala earned her master's degree in piano performance from the University of Michigan and B.A. in music from the University of Virginia. An avid fan of Final Fantasy and Square Enix in general, she also maintains a youtube channel dedicated to piano covers of mostly Final Fantasy themes.