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Comment by phlakaton | Hacker News Reader

Seeing the callout to Xenoblade's music drew me back to listening to that soundtrack again... whence I stumbled upon 8-bit Music Theory's channel, and analysis of Chrono Trigger's and FFVI's music... and that's to say nothing of Secret of Mana or a half-dozen other incredible JRPG soundtracks.

I'm probably weird, but the music, more than just about anything, is what brings me back to these JRPG games again and again. The mechanics may be clunky, the sound systems primitive, but those peculiar fusions of Western and Japanese musical sensibilities, played out over fantasy after fantasy, are timeless.

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Google "City Pop"

I stumbled on to it a year or so ago, and it's pretty obvious how hard most classic video game music cribbed from it.

Reminds me a bit of how when I was a teen, Amiga demoscene and game music sounded like nothing else and contributed to my sense that the "computer world" was something apart. Then years later I found out about Italo Disco and Tangerine Dream.

I’m finding a lot of disco- and funk-influenced easy listening pop; am I listening to the wrong thing? Is there a particular song that would help me see the connection?

Most Castlevania games since playstation era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ljSD1rZzUE

Pieces of Sonic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0g79mTyjE0

Bits of Xenoblade Chronicles (esp gaur plains): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8xfT4l2Gnw

UMN / cities in various Xenosaga installments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cj8yrPSo_Q

That helps! I’ll keep listening, too. Thank you; I love finding out about something new like this.

If you're weird, than I am too. There's something truly mesmerizing about the best JRPG soundtracks...

Agreed. I have had weeks where I've just listened to the Chrono Trigger OST. It's not only great for working to, it's just great in general. Same with almost anything Nobuo Uematsu has composed.

FFIV, VI, VII, Chrono Trigger, and Zelda (not JRPG I know) music routinely gets stuck in my head. EVERY DAY.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsj5xjoLXtE

> and that's to say nothing of Secret of Mana or a half-dozen other incredible JRPG soundtracks.

Secret of Mana had one of the weirdest soundtracks from the SNES era! So many interesting southeastern Asian influences. The sequels definitely took the music in a more generic direction, unfortunately :(

I share the sentiment about the amazing scores that many JRPGs come with. They really do help with the immersion.

Of somewhat recent JRPGs, I found NieR:Automata to be a superb masterpiece, both in the musical compositions led by Keichii Okabe and the underlying themes explored within the game itself.

Dragon Seeds' OST is also one masterpiece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSbGaLxNjdM&list=PLEDB3E00B9...

As a child, I would often play the FFVI OST on loudspeakers, adjust it to a medium-low volume, and go to sleep on it. It happened so many times that I would know what is the next track of the whole OST.

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