Takenouchi left the company after finishing work on Dark Souls 2, but Edo is still there today.The indie hip-hop producer shares the video game soundtracks that inspired his new "Armed Wing Battle Unit."
They’ve collaborated on many projects throughout their career, including FromSoftware games such as Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. You may know Edo for his music in Armored Core, but both composers are sound designers. Takenouchi is best known for his work on Metal Gear and Circadia, the latter of which has a pumping soundtrack and was Takenouchi’s first collaboration with Edo. The game audio geeks that are likely reading this might recognise these names. At the same time, Takenouchi (who also goes by TECHNOuchi), prefers the deeper, ambient cuts. Similar to how Kawashima’s music ended up being the heaviest in Streets of Rage 2 thanks to his love of intense gabber and rave music, while Koshiro’s main influences were dance and house, Eto’s got a thing for techno music. That means you’re missing out.Ĭomposed by Yuji Takenouchi and Hideyuki Eto, not only does ChainDive’s music mirror the co-writing approach that Koshiro and Kawashima adopted for Streets of Rage 2 (the best one), but also their genre preferences. A Western release was planned but eventually dropped, so unless you were one of the lucky few that got your hands on the demo disc that came bundled with Official PlayStation Magazine, it’s likely that you’ve never heard of the game. Introducing: ChainDive, a side-scrolling 2.5D action-shooter developed by Alvion, released exclusively in Japan on the PS2. While it’s unlikely I’ll ever find anything that surpasses the equal parts groove and heavy-hitting goodness in Streets of Rage, I’m confident I’ve found the next best thing.
Since then, I’ve made it somewhat of a personal mission to track down dangerously dirty game soundtracks that hit me the same way. When I watched Koshiro and Kawashima play ‘Expander’ (the lift music from Streets of Rage 2) during a DJ set in Paris back in 2018, there were moments where I thought my face was melting. Music this good should come with a warning sign.
#CHAINDIVE SOUNDTRACK HOW TO#
You can hear these inspirations throughout the music in the early Streets of Rage games: Inner City, Black Box, Technotronic, Marshall Jefferson – it’s all there, a megamix of late ‘80s and early ‘90s club music crammed into a tiny cartridge, and a lesson in how to max out the Mega Drive’s sound chip. House and techno hadn’t taken off in Japan yet, so Koshiro sought out places such as the famous Club Yellow, partying to imported Chicago house, Detroit techno, dance and soul music. With the Sega Mega Drive flying off shop shelves in the West, Streets of Rage was the first time Koshiro composed a game to appeal to an overseas audience, rather than a Japanese one. You can’t talk about club music in video games without mentioning Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima’s music in Streets of Rage.
Today’s column dives into ChainDive, a side-scrolling game with the honour of being soundtracked by Dark Souls composers Yuji Takenouchi and Hideyuki Eto. Hey! Listen is a twice-monthly column unearthing obscure video game music and trivia.
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