Falcom is one of those video games that I love for what they brought to fans, when it comes to video games, merch but also soundtracks.
There are a special group of fans that love video games from the company but there are fans who love the music equally. Sure, it’s common place to hear fans going crazy for “Final Fantasy” ala Square Enix and even “Persona” games ala Atlus but before these two became prominent, there was Falcom.
Falcom fans, I’ve met several in my lifetime who fit this category of fans who will spend crazy money not just on the video games but also the music.
But how I looked at Nihon Falcom at the time, is how people saw anime filmmaker Shinkai Makoto. A person who loved anime but did things his way at first and gained recognition for creating an animated film himself using a Power Mac and would gain attention for fans who followed and loved his work and now his animated films are well-revered internationally.
Back in the ’80s, Nihon Falcom were just a bunch of guys who loved technology and early computers and starting with Kato Masayuki, producing and selling software for PC’s and seling them at his store, Computer Land Tachikawa. Followed by Kiya Yoshio, a guy who created his own PC game software and was a regular customer at Computer Land Tachikawa before founding Falcom.
Falcom would then bring in more people including Kiya, who would create “Dragon Slayer” and in 1985, the company had their first major hit with the action RPG “Xanadu” which sold over 400,000 copies, holding the record at the time for most sales of a PC game software in Japan.
By 1986, they would introduce BGM throughout the entire game with the game “Temple of the Sun” and would gain attention for Falcom for putting a lot of effort into a game’s music. And by 1987, they would have an anime OVA for “Xanadu Dragon Slayer Legend”.
By 1988, they would collaborate with King Records who would feature the Falcom label and the company would release “Falcom Special BOX ’89”, a special box set featuring six 8cm CDs which included not only the songs but also in surround theater (ie. live drama) with music.
And by 1989, as the company would venture into mixed media, they would form the sound team known as Falcom Sound Team JDK (note: they would later change their name with the jdk in lowercase). Not to be confused with JDKBAND, a band that plays arrangement of Falcom songs at live performances and events. The jdk stands for “Japan Dynamite Kids” or “Jumping Digital Kids”, quite popular to use in Japan during the early ’90s (ie. popular boyband, SMAP – Sports Music Assemble People, TRF or trf which stood for “Tetsuya’s Rave Factory”).
Falcom had a few principles which company founder Kato Masayuki had promoted for its music.
- Once you hear it, you’ll never forget it and you can’t help but hum it
- A Composition that allows you to feel the beginning, development and conclusion.
It’s important for people to know that if you are getting into Falcom music, the company tends to feature all compositions and arrangements by Falcom Sound Team jdk. Current members are listed in the credit titles, but composers and arrangers of songs are not. A practice which many video game companies have followed and continue to use to this day. (NOTE: This is not limited to just music, but also the anime and manga industry in Japan).
It’s a contention that some fans have debated, as they wish proper credit were given to the composer and arranger. As people are familiar with names such as Uematsu Nobuo, Shimomura Yoko, people associated with bigger video game titles have shot to worldwide recognition, unfortunately many talented composers and arrangers for video game music from not huge titles unfortunately do not getting proper recognition.
Fortunately, Falcom fans are helping fix that by putting the names online of the true composers and arrangers behind the music.
With that being said, my review now returns to “Falcom Special Box ’89” by Falcom Sound Team jdk
As mentioned, this was featured as six 8cm CD’s. For those not familiar with 8cm CD’s, in Japan, during the ’80s and ’90s, CD Singles were distributed as small 8cm CD’s:
The box set was released in December 5, 1988 and cost Y7800 at the time, which may seem a lot but Japanese music albums’s were nearly 3x-6x the cost of a US CD, while a single was Y1200 (the price of a US CD). So, when you total six 8cm CD’s, it’s not that bad and to be perfectly honest, after complaining of how much Japanese CD singles were back then, you eventually start accepting that pricepoint.
Back then the six CD’s were arranged as Fusion (Fusion Meets Dave Matthews), Symphony, Vocal, Plus Mix, Disco and Sound Theater and so popular, it received two “Falcom Millenium Series” reprints.
Fortunately, you don’t have to spend all that much in today’s world because you can get the collection of these tracks via the digital release found on Amazon (split up into two parts): Album 1 and Album 2
The first volume features 14 tracks, the second volume features ten tracks.
Listening to the first four tracks, this is jazz fusion and are the first four songs are from the Fusion disc and they do show its ’80s age but it’s not bad if you grew up from the era, because it’s something that you were used to hearing at the time. Including the four track “La Valse Pour Xanadu” which reminded me of the ’90s digital reggae, so far from the ’80s reggae I grew up listening to. The track missing is “Temple Del Sol” from “Temple Del Sol” (why deny fans of this track Falcom?).
The next three tracks are from the “Vocal Disc” and this is very cool because it features Moriguchi Hiroko. Her voice is so magnificent and these three songs “Josephine”, “No Fortune Teller” and “Sorcerian” were from the “Sorcerian” games.
For those who grew up in the ’90s listening to her, Moriguchi-san is a huge name, music and television (hosting or starring in dramas). But most people will remember her for the epic songs “Mizu no Hoshi e Ai wo Komete” from the “Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam” TV series and the songs “Samurai Heart” for the anime series “Yoroiden Samurai Troopers” and “Eternal Wind ~Hohoemi wa Hikaru Kaze no Naka” from the animated film “Mobile Suit Gundam F91”.
It helps that she was an artist on King Records and I think it was possibly one of the coolest things that I saw Falcom due by attracting such a well-known fan favorite to perform these songs.
The next seven tracks are all from the “PLUS MIX” disc. You’ll find songs from “Ys” (PSG Version), “Ys II” and “Sorcerian 9801” (X1 Turbo). No tracks missing from the “PLUS MIX” and that rounds out part 1. You get 14 songs, 43 minutes.
For those not familiar with PSG, the PC Engine Hardware featured PSG which provided six sound channels. And this hardware was found on the home console TurboGrafx-16 designed by Hudson Soft and sold by NEC Home Electronics. It was a popular console in Japan in 1987 meant to go against the Famicom (NES) but due to delays of its US release, it had to go against Sega’s 16-bit console, the Sega Genesis and later, the Super Famicom (Super NES). But it featured “Ys 1 & 2” and introduced many gamers to Falcom.
As Falcom was popular in the PC gaming scene, during the ‘ 80s, for Japanese PC’s, Sharp Corporation, NEC, Mitsubishi were battling for best PC makers in Japan and trying to outdo each other technology-wise. “Y’s” was actually first released for the NEC PC-8801 series and then more computers shortly after.
For Sharp Corporation, they had the X1 computer. In 1984, Sharp released the X1 turbo which featured state of the art high resolution graphics (640×400, the regular X1 had 640×200). The “Sorcerian 9801” track is from the “Sorcerian” game released on the X1 turbo. Meanwhile, ASCII Corporation would introduced a standardized home computer architecture known as MSX.
Now, things take a different direction with the second part of “Falcom Special Box ’89”. Falcom chose to feature only 10 songs but only include 32 minutes worth of tracks.
For part 2. instead of including all three tracks from the “SYMPHONY” disc, they included two “Sorcerian Symphonic Suite (Ending II)” and they included “From Ys (First Step Towards Wars (Meadows) Symphony”. For some reason, they did not include “Xanadu Scenario II – Ending Theme”. Boo! For such a short disc, this track would have increased the time. Not sure why Falcom decided to omit this song.
While “DISCO” is listed on the front of the cover graphic, the digital release does not feature the digital track. Granted it was one track, but it’s a 19 minute track that could have been added. Double boo!
But you do get ALL tracks of the awesome “Surround Theater Ys” which is a 20 minute soundscape featuring voice acting featuring the popular Y’s character, Adol. So you get voice acting, along with the music in the background. It’s actually pretty cool! For example, you can hear Adol running away and breathing heavily on the “Companile of Lane (Shrine’s Bell Tower)” surround theater track. But the story line was exciting and well acted and ended with an even better symphony version of “First Step Towards Wars (Meadows)”.
While I wish they would just release one soundtrack with both, you can get both cheaply on Amazon digitally. I would score this 5/5 if they didn’t omit any tracks. Not sure why Falcom chose to omit these tracks but it would have boostened the super short 32 minute second CD.
But as a Falcom video game and Falcom Sound Team jdk fan, both are worth owning especially if you are an “Ys” fan. Considering it’s cheap digital price on Amazon, I definitely give it a thumbs up!
Click here to purchase “Falcom Special Box ’89” Album 1 and Album 2
