Joshua Kaufman (kaufmajs@EMAIL.UC.EDU)
Wed, 17 Nov 1999 19:24:25 -0500
X-Sender: kaufmajs@email.uc.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Message-ID: <199911172306.SAA18811@newman.bch.uc.edu> Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 19:24:25 -0500 From: Joshua Kaufman <kaufmajs@EMAIL.UC.EDU> Subject: Re: Jouki Chikuonkan, and other thingsAt 06:39 PM 11/17/99 -0500, you wrote: >I got the Jouki Chikuonkan today, so I thought I'd share my impressions of >it thus far. > >First, some info: >Catalog ID: BVCH 2601~2 >Retail price: ¥4,486 >Print run: 97.5.2 - 99.5.1 > >Disc 1: 24 tracks, CD-Extra >Disc 2: 27 tracks > > The rest of CD 1 contains mostly small clips of BGM, many of which are >only slightly different from each other; not good listening at all unless >maybe you shuffle the tracks. In my opinion, the best track on this disc >is an instrumental version of Sakura, with a wind instrument (sounds like a >recorder to me) as the melody. Good for karaoke! ^_^ On the plus side, at >least some of these pieces of BGM seem to be played by real instruments >instead of by a Saturn. > The second CD is where all the real BGM is, unaltered from the Saturn >original. I might have been disappointed if I didn't already know it would >be like this. In its own way though, it's kind of charming and quaint. It >sure brings back the memories... wandering around the Daiteikokugekijou... >"Shouri no poozu... kime!"... and so on. The shortest track is 1 minute >long and the average length is 2:46, compared to a short track of 10 >seconds and average length of 54 seconds on the first disc. I love this soundtrack, but they really did a bad job on it IMO. First, why oh why did they order the tracks this way? Especially since there are so many similar tracks (esp 2-5) why didn't they just intersperse the live stuff with the chip stuff like they did in the second one? Also, what was the point of having Sakura's song? If it was for space filler, they should have added the 7 mini-games/character themes, and the short version of the opening. One other thing is that they play a couple of the chip pieces through once (like "Friendship") but yet play the final battle twice, making a 10 minute long track (not that I don't like it -- I *love* that music). This is all tied together really -- they shouldn't have bothered with the CD extra, and simply put in ALL the music (except maybe the ending song since it's on the other CD), mix the chip and live music, and looped ALL the chip music like normal, then it would have easily taken up enough to fill a smaller sized 2 CD soundtrack (50 minutes or so on each probably). Not putting the CD Extra stuff probably would have made it cost less too. Unfortunately, what's done is done :-( > I probably couldn't do a very good job of translating the track titles >since they're mostly in kanji, but I think Ming has some or most of the >names listed on his Sakura Wars pages. > In case anybody is interested in buying it, I got mine from >Tokyopop.com. Unfortunately, it looks like they're now out of stock. :/ > If there's anything else anybody wants to know about this, I'll try my >best to answer. If I got something wrong or left something important out, >please tell. ^_^ I got mine at Animenation back in June. They are having problems with their distributor, but they should have that corrected soon, so after they update their page, if they still have it listed, I'd say they are the best way to go (and $9 cheaper than TOP as well) -Joshua AOL-IM: TerraEpon ICQ: 5404138