♫Battle Themes of Golden Sun 1 & 3, Two SNES Arrangements - NintendoComplete
88This video features arrangements of two battle themes from the Golden Sun series. Both were originally composed by Motoi Sakuraba.
The first is Isaac's battle theme from the original GBA game.
The second, beginning at 3:32, is the first boss battle theme from Golden Sun: Dark Dawn on the Nintendo DS.
I have arranged the tracks for native playback on SNES hardware, and the audio was recorded directly from a launch-model SNES console. The video clip was recorded from Dark Dawn's intro sequence.
I had an itch to do one of Sakuraba's famously dramatic battle themes, and the several that he wrote for the Golden Sun series rate up there as favorites of mine. I couldn't decide which of the two tracks I liked better, so I went ahead and did both. I thought they worked well together, and it amazes me how consistent Sakuraba's style stayed between the two games, despite their being released nearly ten years apart.
Which one do you guys prefer?
I wanted to keep to the same style of instrumentation as the originals used in putting these together, but I didn't reuse any of their instrument samples. They were too dirty and distorted sounded for my liking, so I instead used better quality instruments that I thought matched the tone and the spirit of the original tracks... or at least, I tried to do so as much as possible within the limits of the SNES hardware.
I do think the songs ended up sounding a fair bit cleaner than they originally did, but I'll leave it up to you guys judge how they compare.
If you've ever listened to my arrangements before, you've probably noticed how much I get off on screaming saw waves and synth brass. If not, it'll probably be obvious after hearing these :)
Thanks for listening!
If you'd like to check out more of my arrangements, you can find the playlist right here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gSj_kh1fHueSujqQR8xQQ84DWIjrU4F
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