Tecmo Presents 1989 (is the name of my new band)
March 12, 2015 5:11 PM   Subscribe

Although he's been out of the games industry for years, Keiji Yamagishi (known as the original composer for Ninja Gaiden[YT] and Tecmo Bowl[YT] among other soundtracks) has kept busy with work on ringtones and other music compositions. After contributing to a compilation put out by the game music label Brave Wave, he decided to put out a full album with label founder Mohammed Taher. You can listen to the first track on Soundcloud. (warning, may melt speakers/face) posted by selfnoise (12 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
Man, that Ninja Gaiden track. People always talk about scent memories, but I find sound so much more transporting. I am twelve years old again.

And that new track, it's like the soundtrack to the Mega Man game of my dreams.
posted by 256 at 5:34 PM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


I remember trying to teach myself guitar to many of the tracks from the original Ninja Gaiden. 13:10 on the first YT link - It sounded AMAZING to high school me with a good amp and a ton of gain.

A quick YT search for Ninja Gaiden 4-2 shows that I was not alone in this experiment.

If you are the sort of person who like that sort of guitar work, you may be surprised how many video game tracks of that era seem to me MADE for it.
posted by MysticMCJ at 5:54 PM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


You can actually stream the whole album on the album page.
posted by rodlymight at 6:37 PM on March 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


I completely love this album (especially "Starfish Cluster"), and am looking forward to future Brave Wave releases. A lot of great musicians have slipped out of the industry either from disenchantment or not "sounding modern," and I'd love to get back to a place where these sounds can mingle happily with modern technology.
posted by byanyothername at 6:44 PM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


AAAAAAA These are my bros! I can't believe this made it here!

Mohammed and Brave Wave are responsible for Manami Matsumae (the composer of Mega Man 1) working with me on Shovel Knight. The entire development team literally wept when we first listened to her track delivery. She's still got it, as amazing as ever, and Brave Wave is tirelessly working to bring these legendary Japanese composers closer to the western fans who grew up admiring them. I'm gonna do everything in my limited power to help them succeed, even if it means having a different idol from my childhood featured on every soundtrack from here on out.

Did you guys know that Hip Tanaka (Metroid, Kid Icarus, Dr. Mario, etc) is still out there performing live and getting back into the chiptune scene? I KNOW RIGHT?????? UGH I WANT TO WORK WITH HIM SO BAD.
posted by jake at 7:19 PM on March 12, 2015 [7 favorites]


Hip Tanaka is also responsible for the Super Mario Land score, which is brilliant. I've always found a curious melancholy in the Muda Kingdom theme.
posted by lumensimus at 7:24 PM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


It reminded me of the theme song of Beverly Hills Teens, a cartoon which I had somehow forgotten until now.
posted by dances with hamsters at 4:32 AM on March 13, 2015


Mohammed and Brave Wave are responsible for Manami Matsumae (the composer of Mega Man 1) working with me on Shovel Knight.

Wow, that's really cool! I wasn't aware Shovel Knight had that kind of collaberation; I'll have to check it out.

There's this thing going on with older Japanese devs/composers right now where periodically someone tracks one of them down and they are invariably surprised that people remember them fondly. It's both really awesome and kind of depressing. Hopefully people keep making these kind of connections (and huge props to them for doing so!)

I made this post basically to say "look at this cool thing!" and I myself didn't know this existed until this morning when I heard an ad for the album on the Idle Thumbs podcast. So hey, podcast advertising works.
posted by selfnoise at 6:21 AM on March 13, 2015


Did you guys know that Hip Tanaka (Metroid, Kid Icarus, Dr. Mario, etc) is still out there performing live and getting back into the chiptune scene? I KNOW RIGHT?????? UGH I WANT TO WORK WITH HIM SO BAD.

Metroid might actually have the best Nintendo soundtrack (tied with Zelda:ALTTP in my book).
posted by ersatz at 1:16 PM on March 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Metroid might actually have the best Nintendo soundtrack (tied with Zelda:ALTTP in my book).

The riff that plays when you get a powerup in Metroid is up there with the level screen sting in Ninja Gaiden as a seminal childhood music memory for me.
posted by selfnoise at 1:23 PM on March 13, 2015


Hi, this is Mohammed! Thanks for posting about the album. Really happy to see folks enjoying it. Been working on the album with Yama-san for the past two years but it feels like forever. And it's still not done! I'm flying to Japan next month and we'll sit down and talk more about Part 2. We're thinking of hiring an orchestra and fuse it with Yama-san's chiptune. Should be interesting. It's expensive as hell but I want to do it.

Will also be meeting others like Junko Tamiya (Strider, Bionic Commando, Little Nemo), Masashi Kageyama (Gimmick!), Takashi Tateishi (Mega Man 2), Ryuichi Nitta (Ninja Gaiden 2), and more. I'll meet some of them for non-Brave Wave meetings, but I'm also interested in bringing all my favorite NES composers back. I already bought a MacBook Pro for Kageyama-san so he could finally make music again. Gonna be a long, long road but I hope to bring a lot of the people who quit back. It's not quite feasible (albums cost so much to make, to sound as good as you're hearing) but it's worth everything to me.

Oh and of course, you can stream the entire album on Bandcamp. No strings attached. Do it, then give me your money?
posted by robokick at 5:09 PM on March 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


Thanks for stopping by, and thanks for making a great album! Hopefully the details in the FPP are broadly correct.

Really exciting to hear that you are meeting with other composers. The Bionic Commando soundtrack is another one I have burned into my brain.
posted by selfnoise at 11:18 AM on March 14, 2015


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