12/18/2023 0 Comments Ultima iii hitomi no knife![]() ![]() It's a peculiar, but well-planned and -executed clash of elements that is undeniably cheesy, but also entertainingly unpredictable: “The Underground Labyrinth” and other tracks on Ultima Mix play like a synth-laden horror movie soundtrack with stadium rock ambitions on other occasions, these cues are slightly eccentric Goth rock takes on 80s dance beats. Meanwhile, the music constantly veers back and forth between the arpeggio figure – which is now used to actually build tension – and staccato interruptions derived from the danger motif. A wall of clanging, wild sound effects backs a stomping, catchy 80s synth drum kit rhythm that dominates the track. On “The Underground Labyrinth”, Goto manages to maintain the eerieness of the original composition, while cleverly elaborating upon it and turning the piece into a curious exercise in genre-bending. Originally a simple, constant arpeggio run finished off with a brief danger motif, Goto does his best to overcompensate and goes all out when he arranges layers and layers of synthetic instrumental flourishes around the source material. Stretching a brief soundtrack like Exodus into a full-length album is no easy feat, but interestingly enough, Goto's best arrangements are those have to work with the flimsiest original material, such as “The Underground Labyrinth”. Arnold for Ultima Mix, his material features neither on the arrange album nor on Goto's original NES score – otherwise, this album could probably make a valid claim for being one of the first commercial Western game music albums. On a sidenote: while some websites credit Kenneth W. Ultima Mix hit the shelves in mid-1987 on CD, vinyl and cassette, while the album's two songs were also released separately on a 7-inch EP called Ultima -Hitomi no Knife. Two tracks on the album turned the source material into fully-fledged pop songs sung by Noriko Hidaka, who's best known for her voice acting in numerous high-profile anime features and series. This artistic background put Goto in a strong position when it came to re-shaping Exodus' music for an arrange album called Ultima Mix that would expand the game's original 10 minutes of music across a 40-minute album. While Exodus was Goto's first video game score, he had already gathered more than 15 years of experience as a professional musician in the Japanese rock and pop music scene, having played in several bands and composing and arranging songs for a variety of artists. For the NES port, Tsugutoshi Goto was brought in to compose a new score that clocked in at about 10 minutes and represented a significant update in quality over the original score, turning out to be the best soundtrack of the three NES Ultima ports (the later ports were Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar and Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny, which infamously played the same short and grating tune throughout pretty much the whole game). Arnold had written just over 5 minutes of music for Ultima III: Exodus – the first Ultima game to actually contain music in its original release on home computers. Another area in which Exodus improved upon its original release was its soundtrack. The passing of time and the arrival of improved hardware allowed for several technical updates, including better graphics. From Ultima III: Exodus onwards, the Ultima series itself would go from strength to strength to culminate in Ultima VII: The Black Gate.įollowing its success, Ultima III: Exodus was ported to numerous game systems, including the NES – four years after the game's original release and simply titled Exodus. More mature and developed than previous Ultima games, Exodus' features like its overhead view, separate battlefield screen and explorable overworld made it a direct inspiration for games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, which of course in turn became hugely influential in themselves. However, the series hit its stride again with Ultima III: Exodus, released in 1983. While the Ultima series of computer games is one of the founding stones of the computer RPG genre and among the most influential game franchises in history, its second part Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress was an uneven outing.
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