PS1 Ecsaform OST Fully Remastered 2023 / エクサフォーム BGM リマスター版 Bandai Visual ECSAFORM Soundtrack
28Channel link https://www.youtube.com/@bassboostedgamemusic
Trying to keep obscure and mainstream balanced and this is an extremely obscure strategy RPG for the PS1 that is not well known even here in Japan. I have a soft spot for PS1 games that feel even a bit like 16-bit games and this is one of those outside of the cut scenes. The biggest thing that stands out is the world building aspect and how the developers were obviously proud of the world setting they created, so much so that the second disk of the game is simply a data library disk full of art sketches, data blurbs and other information summarizing the people, places and events in the game.
The musician Keiichi Yamamoto worked on a few titles in the 90s and seems to not be active in games industry afterwards - but this soundtrack has a certain charm to it for matching the dark and moody techno-scifi feel of the world with some heavy energy, some grooves and almost Soken-like vibes on certain songs.
I can't help confuse the title with Escaflowne and want to type it as "Escaform" but it is pronounced like Exaform indeed in the katakana spelling. The other trivia associated with this game (and popularized by the Hardcore Gaming 101 article about it) is the attention to detail in having a dozen different types of bathrooms/toilets, even in the first area I noticed that there are a huge number of rooms to enter but unfortunatley not many things in the environment can be interacted with. It feels like the game was ambitious and an extra layer of polish and budget would have pushed it into legendary status, but as is there are definitely a few things lacking.
Because PS1 programmed audio is not as high fidelity due to compression and other software factors I experimented with a wide variety of plugins to try to get the music to shine here, sometimes different completely from song to song. That experimentation is part of the fun for me to do this, but testing the audio is a challenge since the results are so different depending on what monitoring I check (earbuds, headphones, speakers). Especially let me know if you like a particular song in the comments so I can continue to figure out what works the best to spruce up audio from old game systems!
Art Direction / Illustrations: Seiji Tanda (Grave of the Fireflies, Wicked City, Metropolis)
Composer: Keiichi Yamamoto 山本敬一 (PC-98 Pixie Garden, Cyber City Oedo 808, MD Mamono Hunter Youko, PS Sotsugyou Cross World)
Music is roughly divided into four parts:
Part 1 - Driving feel
00:00 Song 1
3:16 Song 2
6:43 Song 3
11:08 Song 4
15:35 Song 5
19:37 Song 6
22:44 Song 7
27:06 Song 8
30:21 Song 9
35:02 Song 10
39:13 Song 11
43:22 Song 12
45:09 Song 13
47:10 Song 14
Part 2 - Ambient / slow tempo techno
48:57 Song 15
53:33 Song 16
56:27 Song 17
59:08 Song 18
1:02:55 Song 19
1:06:40 Song 20
1:10:35 Song 21
1:11:17 Song 22
1:15:12 Song 23
Part 3 - Chill
1:18:38 Song 24
1:22:01 Song 25
1:27:32 Song 26
1:30:55 Song 27
1:34:22 Song 28
1:39:40 Song 29
1:43:03 Song 30
1:45:12 Song 31
Part 4 - Epic/Orchestral/Finale
1:49:27 Song 32
1:51:37 Song 33
1:53:56 Song 34
1:58:40 Song 35
2:00:03 Song 36
2:02:42 Song 37
2:05:55 Song 38
2:09:18 Song 39
2:10:33 Song 40
2:13:13 Song 41
2:14:28 Song 42
2:16:57 Jingle 1 / Jingle 2 / Jingle 3 (Game Over?)
#ps1 #psx #ecsaform #jrpg #srpg #gamemusic #retrogames #retrogaming #ゲーム #ゲーム音楽 #ゲームBGM #プレステ #エクサフォーム #レトロゲーム