So Many Soundtracks...

[Ujitsuna]

Is there a particular reason that there are so many variations of the Suikoden soundtracks? I'm not complaining because I love them, but it just seems odd that a game with only a small cult following has so much attention in regards to it's music. Theres a Vocal, Celtic, Asian, Piano, Orgel not to mention the original versions...

[Falcon Critical]

Profit. Its a lot easier to get money out of rabid fans by re-releasing soundtracks than making entire games. I have the two disc Suikoden 3 soundtrack with all the tracks from the towns and stuff... there are vocal versions of the songs? Where would I find such music?

I know that Lineage ][ recently changed composers and the new guy has lots of singing in the songs which is awesome, a good voice can add heaps of atmosphere and mood to songs.
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[Ujitsuna]

[kuwaizair]

but there are more final fantasy ones! Count your lucky stars we have those other soundtracks, if not we'd need to relay on shoody remixes by people who don't really do real remixes.

Unless anyone of us here has a hord of friends or famaily or such who are musicaly inclined...then we could snatch some sheet music and do our own special recordings.

[Shad]

I think two factors come in to play here. Where most games have one or two composers, Suikoden has had a ton. Sure Miki Higashino and Norikazu Miura composed the bulk of it, but there are a bunch of others who've made lesser contributions to the main game soundtrack. It's not like Final Fantasy where every spin-off cd comes direct from Nobuo. If each person involved in the main Suikoden soundtrack made one spin-off album, I imagine you'd have about how many are out there right now.

The second factor is the style of music Miki wrote, which sort of carried on through the series after she stopped composing them. A lot of newer games are very symphonic or ambient and don't render themselves well to translation. The Suikodens are more melody-based - more 'traditional videogame' in the vein of SNES-era Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. They're a lot easier to work with - they aren't finalized works but rather themes that a range of variations could exist on. Not too many games that I've seen have soundtracks like that these days, so they're one of the few modern series that really lend themselves to spin-off cds in the first place.

[Leb]

That list is missing Genso Suikoden IV Music Collection ~Another World~. Strangely, that soundtrack is seldom talked about.

[Shad]

Come to think of it, I don't know the slightest thing about Suikoden IV's soundtrack. Miki was gone and Miura hadn't picked up the project yet, so III and IV lacked that sort of single direction you get from one mind running it. At least, as far as I know they were composed by a mix of different people. Since not too many people were impressed with Suikoden III's soundtrack Suikoden IV's had no hype going in to it and didn't earn much of its own accord.

[Ujitsuna]

IV's is all over the place, but it does have some great tracks, like Orange-Colored Scenery, Ajito's Theme and Crossing the Waves.

[Elzamine]

The celtic ones are really pretty, you should check those out if you can.
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