2 out of 5

Label: Data Discs

Produced by: Shawn Hatfield (vinyl remaster)

I’m sure I’m crazy for not feeling this.  There must have been a reason it was chosen to highlight as one of data-discs first releases, right?  …But if i had to guess, just as the low-key game has a cult appeal for the very reasons that might not’ve made it a huge seller, so can we suppose that the soundtrack – dull to my ears – has its vocal fans.  And listening to it from a 16-bit era perspective – Shenmue being one of the first big games of the 32-bit era – I can perhaps further suppose why: It doesn’t sound like a video game soundtrack at all.  It’s very cinematic.  So if you were swept away in the world of the game, I can imagine the swelling, culturally-tinged score – absolutely the type of music we associate with the Japanese setting – to be particularly memorable.

But to those of us without such affection, while it still doesn’t sound like a video game soundtrack, that doesn’t flip-flop to it being a great score.  It’s a pretty generic score, to what is probably like a mundane movie.  Amongst the four composers featured here, it is nice that elements of a theme repeat, bit the tracks carry that theme without being particularly thematic.  The tracks that open each side – ‘Shenmue – Sedge Tree (Original Version)’ by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi on side A, ‘Tears of Separation’ by Ryuji Iuchi on side B – are highlights, both displaying an instrumental range that probably showed off the Dreamcast’s abilities.  Track two on side A (Iuchi’s ‘Shenhua – Sedge Flower (Original Version)’ ) modernizes the theme ever so slightly but cuts off before it can build up enough steam; some fairly cookie cutter melodrama follows, though ‘Christmas On Dobuita Street‘ (also Iuchi) has a nice Final Fantasy-era twinkle going on, and a minimalist piano track – ‘Cherry Blossom Wind Dance‘ by Osamu Murata – is effective in its simplicity.  On side B, Murata’s ‘Departure For Hope‘ is probably the album’s best track, with some well effects percussion giving a tad more oomph to things, but the side otherwise tends to blend together.

I’ll cop to the recent trend of vinyl video game scores relying on a healthy amount of nostalgia in general, but data-discs has selected some prime material that I feel can mostly stand on its own.  That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be some fan service, though (beyond the existence of the label itself, heh), and Shenmue seems to very much fill that slot.  The compositions are definitely unique for a game of its era, but that doesn’t make it all that interesting if you’re not one of those targeted fans.