Enter your email Address

ENTROPY
  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Birds: Rare Birds

      February 22, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Wheel Maker: How My Daughter Learned to See Like a Colonizer in the Classroom

      February 22, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Literacy Narrative: On Air Quoting Artistic Labor

      February 21, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      WOVEN: on spilling open

      February 20, 2019

      Introspection

      A Review of My New Yorker Subscription

      October 10, 2018

      Introspection

      Mausoleum

      July 24, 2018

      Introspection

      On Weather: Creeping Cedar

      July 1, 2018

      Introspection

      Life Writing: A Visit From My Nancy

      June 1, 2018

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Clap Hands

      February 22, 2019

      Fiction

      THE GREENING

      February 20, 2019

      Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Serious Inquiries Only, Please!

      February 15, 2019

      Fiction

      Mourning Morning

      February 13, 2019

      Fiction

      The Birds: Baby Bird

      February 13, 2019

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: After the Death of Shostakovich Père by Maya Sonenberg

      February 21, 2019

      Review

      Review: Born Again by Ivy Johnson

      February 18, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Meanness Tints the World Inhuman

      February 15, 2019

      Review

      What Mishima Teaches Us About Love

      February 14, 2019

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      MOUTH: EATS COLOR and the Devoration of Languages

      January 12, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      Stubborn Mule Press

      February 12, 2019

      Small Press

      Thirty West Publishing House

      January 29, 2019

      Small Press

      Arte Público Press

      January 15, 2019

      Small Press

      FutureCycle Press

      January 3, 2019

      Small Press

      Green Linden Press

      December 17, 2018

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Featured

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 11 (Karma Police)

        November 3, 2018

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 11 (Karma Police)

        November 3, 2018

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 10 (Pretty Vacant)

        October 27, 2018

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 9 (Savoy Truffle)

        October 20, 2018

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

        Video Games

        Silent Hill Shattered Memories: Biography of a Place

        September 3, 2018

        Video Games

        Silent Hill Downpour: Biography of a Place

        August 3, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch

ENTROPY

  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Birds: Rare Birds

      February 22, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Wheel Maker: How My Daughter Learned to See Like a Colonizer in the Classroom

      February 22, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Literacy Narrative: On Air Quoting Artistic Labor

      February 21, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      WOVEN: on spilling open

      February 20, 2019

      Introspection

      A Review of My New Yorker Subscription

      October 10, 2018

      Introspection

      Mausoleum

      July 24, 2018

      Introspection

      On Weather: Creeping Cedar

      July 1, 2018

      Introspection

      Life Writing: A Visit From My Nancy

      June 1, 2018

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Clap Hands

      February 22, 2019

      Fiction

      THE GREENING

      February 20, 2019

      Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Serious Inquiries Only, Please!

      February 15, 2019

      Fiction

      Mourning Morning

      February 13, 2019

      Fiction

      The Birds: Baby Bird

      February 13, 2019

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: After the Death of Shostakovich Père by Maya Sonenberg

      February 21, 2019

      Review

      Review: Born Again by Ivy Johnson

      February 18, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Meanness Tints the World Inhuman

      February 15, 2019

      Review

      What Mishima Teaches Us About Love

      February 14, 2019

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      MOUTH: EATS COLOR and the Devoration of Languages

      January 12, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      Stubborn Mule Press

      February 12, 2019

      Small Press

      Thirty West Publishing House

      January 29, 2019

      Small Press

      Arte Público Press

      January 15, 2019

      Small Press

      FutureCycle Press

      January 3, 2019

      Small Press

      Green Linden Press

      December 17, 2018

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Featured

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 11 (Karma Police)

        November 3, 2018

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 11 (Karma Police)

        November 3, 2018

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 10 (Pretty Vacant)

        October 27, 2018

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 9 (Savoy Truffle)

        October 20, 2018

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

        Video Games

        Silent Hill Shattered Memories: Biography of a Place

        September 3, 2018

        Video Games

        Silent Hill Downpour: Biography of a Place

        August 3, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch
GamesMusicReviewVideo Games

Ninja Gaiden Definitive Soundtrack: Nostalgia or Preservation?

written by Salvatore Pane May 20, 2017

Nostalgia is a powerful manipulator. Whether it’s the latest Star Wars or superhero retread or yet another video game sequel, nostalgia is big business. But who exactly wants to go back? Who yearns for some imagined time devoid of anxiety or 21st-century fears? Although anyone could experience nostalgia for just about anything, this phenomenon casts its widest net at people of privilege, or, more accurately, people of privilege who fear their station has been diminished, that only the allure of childhood—Super Mario Bros., X-Men, Power Rangers—could reconjure a sense of being at home in the world, a bright future all but guaranteed. This year, we’ve seen this morbid desire play out on the political stage and all the hate and chaos that goes along with it.

So I try to be hyperaware of the false promises of nostalgia, even though I surrender to them all the time. I own over 500 NES games proudly displayed on my shelves. I keep a 1988 Macintosh SE at work even though there’s no practical use for it whatsoever. I wrote an entire book about Mega Man 3 and how it’s almost impossible to critically examine beloved games from your childhood. And maybe that’s why I was both eager and anxious to review Brave Wave’s Ninja Gaiden: The Definitive Soundtrack. 1990’s Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos is one of my favorite 2D platformers of all time. I cut my gaming teeth on it as a fresh-faced six-year-old, trading the controller back and forth with my father as we battled toward Ashtar and one thrilling cutscene after another. Would I be able to objectively review its restored soundtrack?

I’m still not sure, but after a few bouts with the Definitive Soundtrack, it’s clear that Brave Wave has done a spectacular job building on the legacy of 1980s Japanese sound designers. Their website is a treasure trove of interviews and information about a diverse mix of musicians from the ’80s and ’90s—everything from the mega-popular Street Fighter II and Tecmo Bowl to the more obscure Gargoyle’s Quest and Gimmick!—and this dedication carries over to Ninja Gaiden: The Definitive Soundtrack. Brave Wave has restored the soundtracks to not just Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden II—the most famous and critically acclaimed entries in the series—but also Ninja Gaiden III and the arcade version of Ninja Gaiden, a completely different game.

The soundtracks to Ninja Gaiden and its first sequel are burned deeply into my brain, but I was surprised to discover how well they held up when I wasn’t holding a sweaty NES controller, wholly focused on charting one death-defying leap after another, eagles divebombing from all directions. In an age when chiptunes and MIDI controllers and FamiTracker are all the rage, the Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden II soundtracks pull us back to the roots of 8-bit music, and they’re as kinetic and atmospheric as ever.

The stage music is probably the highlight of the package. “Going Gets Tough” and “Thunderstorm” still amp me up so much I want to run around the room kicking and punching like a child playing ninjas. Part of this is because of the drum samples. The NES’s sound chip isn’t capable of natively producing a drum beat, and the Tecmo sound designers were one of the first development teams to figure out how to use drum samples in an NES game. Compare Koji Kondo’s melodic Super Mario Bros. themes to anything from Ninja Gaiden. The former sounds like an electronic symphony, the latter like a garage band fused with techno. It’s a dirtier, more frenetic style.

Even though the stage tracks are so memorable and unique, the genius of this definitive collection is that it also includes the cutscene music from all three NES games. The Ninja Gaiden trilogy was famous for its frequent cutscenes, a stark contrast to the brief narrative interludes of similar games like Castlevania or Contra. As the Ninja Gaiden story grew in complexity, so did the soundtracks. The Contra score, for example, is all up-tempo action music, but Ninja Gaiden’s cutscene music has to express a wider ranger of emotions and situations—despair, shock, even exposition. Because of this, the sonic landscape of Ninja Gaiden is much more complex than its platforming peers, more in line with something offbeat and strange like Maniac Mansion or Portopia than the more streamlined DuckTales or Mega Man 2. Tracks like “Determination: Father’s Melody” or “Dehumanize” communicate ominous shades of melancholy that predict so much of what we see from the chiptune community today.

The Ninja Gaiden III soundtrack is perhaps a notch below the original Ninja Gaiden or Ninja Gaiden II, but even this is balanced by the unexpectedly great arcade soundtrack. I only ever saw the arcade version of Ninja Gaiden once as a kid, and I imagine many listeners will share the experience I had listening to the soundtrack for the first time. Unlike the techno 8-bit sensibility of its NES brethren, the arcade version opts for a heavy dose of camp, culminating in the bizarre “NY Stage,” which lifts Michael Jackson’s “Bad” wholesale, or “NY Stage / Transcontinental Railroad Stage Boss,” which does the same to Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.” The arcade soundtrack is a madcap synth romp that serves as a nice contrast, and it’s also an unexpected surprise even for folks who have played the NES installments hundreds and hundreds of times.

Brave Wave grounds this material with two separate booklets containing art and interviews with the games’ many composers. And it’s this work that vaults Ninja Gaiden: The Definitive Soundtrack from nostalgia into something else entirely—preservation. Here, we learn all kinds of background information. The composers fluctuate from the hypertechnical—lovingly describing the synthesizers they adored thirty years ago—to broader development tales. Their influences range from the obvious—ninja films and anime—to the completely unexpected—U2’s The Edge and Italian prog rock. This material begs to be preserved for future generations.

Like MGM’s early preservation efforts or the Film Foundation or even the Criterion Collection, Brave Wave is focused on maintaining old media for future generations—only their area of focus is video games, not film. Over the course of four vinyl records and two booklets, they make the case in Ninja Gaiden: The Definitive Soundtrack that game music is just as deserving of preservation as the scores of Citizen Kane or Casablanca. After listening to “Irene: Overture of Dawn” or “The Amazing Ryu” again and again and again, I truly hope they succeed.

Ninja Gaiden Definitive Soundtrack: Nostalgia or Preservation? was last modified: May 19th, 2017 by Salvatore Pane
Brave WavechiptunesNinja GaidenNinja Gaiden: The Definitive Soundtracknostalgiasoundtracksvideo games
1 comment
0
Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
Salvatore Pane

Salvatore Pane is the author of the novel Last Call in the City of Bridges, and his new book, Mega Man 3, comes out from Boss Fight Books in September. His shorter work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Hobart, The Collagist, and many other venues. Pane is an assistant professor of English at the University of St. Thomas.

previous post
The Sweet Hereafter, Atom Egoyan
next post
Sunday List: The Last Book We Loved

You may also like

30 Years of Ghibli: A Retrospective

December 17, 2015

HERE ARE THE ALBUMS I LISTENED TO THIS WEEK (01/12/19)

January 12, 2019

Weyes Blood

November 6, 2016

Future Music

September 25, 2018
Facebook Twitter

Recent Comments

  • adelaidedupont Gurba's memoir of Mean is so spot-on, especially this part:
    Gurba argues that even though someone is mean they don’t deserve to be dehumanized. This is shown by the way her younger,...

    Meanness Tints the World Inhuman ·  February 17, 2019

  • Wizard Jaislin I had a really weird dream. i was taking a walk in terrace when on the moon i saw eye of horus. as i moved the eye moved . the moon was red and i was scared,but i felt like it was trying to tell me...

    GOTHIDEAS: Dream Interpretation ·  February 10, 2019

  • 4859 Heh. Snowed in and started playing shattered memories again. Surprised to see such a recent article on the game. It really was a great game. Still ranks of one of the best uses of videogames as a...

    Silent Hill Shattered Memories: Biography of a Place ·  February 8, 2019

Featured Columns & Series

  • The Birds
  • Sunday Entropy List
  • Dinnerview
  • Variations on a Theme
  • Their Days Are Numbered
  • Disarticulations
  • On Weather
  • Mini-Syllabus
  • Birdwolf
  • Session Report series
  • Literacy Narrative
  • BLACKCACKLE
  • Comics I've Been Geeking Out On
  • WOVEN
  • Small Press Releases
  • The Poetics of Spaces
  • Notes On Motherhood
  • 30 Years of Ghibli
  • Tales From the End of the Bus Line
  • YOU MAKE ME FEEL
  • Ludic Writing
  • Best of 2018
  • The Weird Interview
  • DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD
  • Pop Talks
  • The Concept World is No Longer Operational
  • Splendid Grub
  • LEAKY CULTURE
  • Jem and the Holographic Feminisms
  • Foster Care
  • The Talking Cure
  • D&D with Entropy
  • Stars to Stories

Tweets

  • Toiboi – Tape One Wav - https://t.co/5WojL0wCQb

    23-Feb-2019

    Reply Retweet Favorite
  • Pomagranite – The Treatment - https://t.co/0bQnC6C0Mq

    23-Feb-2019

    Reply Retweet Favorite
  • BLACKCACKLE: Zero Comma Zero Comma Zero - https://t.co/b1Ah4uUlS5

    23-Feb-2019

    Reply Retweet Favorite
  • Remember, we've got your news. Our own #TRUMPWATCH has daily headlines & is updated several times a day. Today, upd… https://t.co/O6kD0vPhnq

    23-Feb-2019

    Reply Retweet Favorite
  • The Birds: Rare Birds - https://t.co/qBpgEna4mU

    22-Feb-2019

    Reply Retweet Favorite

Find Us On Facebook

Entropy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

©2019 The Accomplices LLC. All Rights Reserved.


Back To Top