Wednesday, July 6, 2016

MIDI Week Singles: "Ladutorm Castle" - Dragon Warrior I (GBC)


"Ladutorm Castle" from Dragon Warrior I & II on the GameBoy Color (2000)
Composer: Koichi Sugiyama
Album: No Official Soundtrack Release (Kind of, see below).
Developer: Enix



A little bit of information before we get fully underway.

First off, the starting castle in the Japanese and US release of Dragon Warrior/Quest are different, with the Japanese castle being called "Ladutorm Castle" and US castle titled "Tantegel Castle."  Second off (??), the game that I am pulling music from is specifically the Game Boy Color remake, which was released back in 2000 and had updated graphics and a revamped score by the original composer, Koichi Sugiyama.  The Super Famicom arrangement can be found on Dragon Quest Super Game Music Collection Vol. 2 and uses the music chip found in the Super Famicom/SNES as opposed to the one used for the Game Boy Color, so that particular arrangement is going to sound a little easier on the ears if you're not one for the often tinniness of GBC music.  After much searching, I was unable to find an official release of the music composed for the GBC release, although you can find almost any other Dragon Quest album since they first started to be released back in 1986.

So now that that's out of the way.

I love how Koichi Sugiyama has added to the theme of Landutorm.  The first time I heard the song go beyond what I had previously known from the original Dragon Warrior (which loops at the 0:34), so everything from 0:34.01 until 1:55 is all new material that was originally composed for the Super Famicom remake of Dragon Quest I & II that was only released in Japan.  But back in 2000, I had no knowledge of this arrangement and was completely blown away.  There would be times I would boot up the game just to listen to this track in particular, I just think it's that damn good.

And it is.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

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