Yutaka Minobe and Tatsuyuki Maeda -- Skies of Arcadia Original Soundtrack

Another release that generally pops up near the end when my music collection is alphabetized by artist: Yutaka Minobe and Tatsuyuki Maeda's outstanding soundtrack for the outstanding Sega Dreamcast RPG, 2000's Skies of Arcadia. Again, I'm not necessarily reviewing a specific version of the soundtrack here, as this has been released several different ways. It's out on Spotify and even vinyl now. I just want to talk about Minobe and Maeda's excellent work for this game, overall. 

Skies of Arcadia takes place in a world of discovery analogous to 15th-18th century Earth, where explorers travel the globe in sail-driven ships, with the aid of the wind. In this world, though, all land comes in the form of floating islands, far up in the sky above a hovering and dangerous mist. The player takes the role of a young pirate looking to make his name in the world, along with several other youngsters. While there's an engrossing storyline involving an evil empire, the main draw of Skies of Arcadia is its sublime sense of exploration, as the player travels to heretofore undiscovered (by his people) or lost parts of the world, filling in the map and discovering new cultures and ways of life. For the game's stunning soundtrack, Minobe and Maeda use a combination of fully orchestrated pieces, along with synth ones, to score Skies of Arcadia's unique, far-ranging, but overall tightly cohesive vibe.
Minobe and Maeda have to do some heavy lifting here, as they must provide upbeat swashbuckling themes for the games young pirates, adventurous pieces to back their acts of derring-do, but also distinct pieces for each of the game's diverse regions--and they do so masterfully. All the while, they also have to provide apt music for the RPG staple elements of the game, like rousing battle music, which in this game comes in the form of not only hand-to-hand combat, but ship-to-ship--they nail that too.

My favorite element, though, is the sense of mystery they're able to conjure when the party dives deep into an ancient island dungeon in search of treasure and discovery. In these cases, Minobe and Maeda employ a variety of electronic techniques that generally work brilliantly. It's those moments that are my favorite, along with the string-based pieces the duo employ at perfect moments, like the main theme, an elegant, blissful piece that conjures the light billowing of wind as a sun rises and sets across a limitless sky. There's a certain character to this score that is uniquely Dreamcast, turn of the millennium, pre-9/11. It's fitting that when the game was ported to GameCube, a system I also like, but which has a different character and feel than Dreamcast, the soundtrack was compressed and lost some of its luster. It belongs on Sega's swan song.

Skies of Arcadia is magical, my favorite of the sunny, boundlessly optimistic Dreamcast's many great games, and a nostalgia portal for me back to the spring of 2001. That is in no small part due to the hard work of Minobe and Maeda.