Sonic the Hedgehog 1 & 2 Soundtrack!!

I spied this on amazon.co.jp while looking for ltd edition Sonic Generations and was quite surprised.  What is it?  Well, it happens to be the music from Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and 2 compiled on a CD.  Being a mad Sonic fan (especially his Megadrive outings) I had to nab this.

 

 

So, what do you get?  Well a nice simple cover for a start with classic Sonic look from Sonic 1, I really like that piece of artwork.

 

 

Considering how this is a Japanese release CD, there is a surprising amount of English on it.

 

The set comprises of 3 CDs.

 

 

CD1 consists of the music from the games.  I was looking through it and discovered all the music is from the 16 bit version (Megadrive/Genesis) but not the 8 bit.  That’s fine with me, as although the Master System Sonic 1’s music was ok, the rest I don’t really like that much.  Definitely not enough to want to purchase on CD that’s for sure.

 

The second CD has the demo versions of the music, which are interesting to listen to, although not all that fantastic, it’s pretty awesome from a fan’s perspective to hear the ‘beta’ music in a way.  Similar, but slightly different and not as refined.

 

CD 3 has a vocal version of what I think is the ending music from Sonic 2, called ‘Sweet, Sweet, Sweet’ and another version called ‘Sweet Dream’ and a couple of remixed versions of both of them.  So far I haven’t really listened to them and from what I quickly listened to, they sounded fairly similar.

 

You also get a little booklet with a foreword of sorts from Yuji Naka the producer of Sonic in his early days and an interview with Masato Nakamura, who is the main guy doing the composing.  Naka’s section is interesting and the interview with Nakamura has a couple of interesting bits, but like many Japanese interviews, they usually ask the same question about 4 times.  Personally I find it interesting that when Nakamura started composing, all he had to work from were concept pictures.  That fact is covered in the first question, and yet it gets covered again and again.

 

 

The cover, track list, Yuji Naka’s interview and the first 2 pages of Nakamura’s interview.

 

Plus what looks like the concept images Nakamura was presented with for the initial idea.

 

Quite incredible if you think about it really.  Is it possible that from these pictures alone Nakamura managed to whip out such appropriate music?  If so, Good work old chap!

 

Finally the last page plugs the latest game, Sonic Generations (New demo available now for download boys n girls) which doesn’t have that much longer to go before I get my grubby hands on it.  And a credits page.

 

What’s that?  What’s the music like?  Well, I am going to assume that if you have read this far, then you probably already know, it’s exactly the ame as the music from the humble Megadrive.  As catchy and hummy as it was before and the CD features such chart toppers such as:

• Green Hill Zone
• Continue
• Mystic Cave Zone

And who can forget the ever popular:

• Boss
• Chemical Plant Zone
• Game over   
  • and
• Unused Song.

 

Oh yeh, that’s what I am talking about.

 

 

All this for a low 2,870 odd yen.  Not too shabby at all if you ask me!

 

Now I am curious to see if they plan on doing the same for Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles, especially since also up for pre-order on Amazon Japan is the Sonic CD soundtrack.  AND a 3DS version of Generations with the 3DS version of the soundtrack.

 

All available from amazon Japan and in an interesting turn of events, they will post CDs overseas, but not for the 3DS game.  Hmmmmm.