Front Mission - Gun Hazard Music:

A match made in heaven.  Fresh off of their collaboration to make Chrono Trigger, Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda collaborated on another project together -- Front Mission Gun Hazard.  When you put these two together fireworks are sure to go off, and as expected, the soundtrack to this game is awesome.

This is no Chrono Trigger, despite the similarities in star power.  But Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda working together simply cannot produce a non-masterpiece.  I'm fairly certain they are the two best composers in world history.  Working together, they just added 40 songs to my hall of fame, 22 from Nobuo Uematsu and 18 from Yasunori Mitsuda.  Nobuou's new total is 648, Yasunori's new total is 271.

This is the first and most obvious pick for expanding my Yasunori Mitsuda repertoire.  Yesterday I discovered that a lot of great video game music was being ignored simply because the games weren't famous.  The same is true of Front Mission - Gun Hazard.  It's some stupid side scrolling Contra like game for the snes.  No one cares about it at all.  And yet here were these two luminaries composing for it.  Ridiculous.  It's these imbalances between music and game quality that allow soundtracks to slip through the cracks.  But now I'm rectifying that mistake.

In addition to Gun Hazard, I've downloaded the soundtracks to Soul Sacrifice, Shadow Hearts and Legaia Duel Saga.  All of these are 'whatever' games who just so happen to be composed by big name composers.

Legaia Duel Saga is a collaboration between Yasunori Mitsuda and Hitoshi Sakimoto.  That's right, #3 and #4 working together.  That's almost as awesome as Gun Hazard's #2 working with #3.

Soul Sacrifice and Shadow Hearts are less promising, but any game with Yasunori Mitsuda is going to be fruitful.

I also downloaded the soundtrack to Front Mission 1, by Yoko Shimomura (#8 on my eminent composers list) and Noriko Mitsueda (#23).  Though I didn't like Yoko Shimomura in Kingdom Hearts, I think her Xenoblade music was drop-dead gorgeous.  I'm always eager to hear more from her.  Noriko Mitsueda did a great job with Final Fantasy 10-2, so maybe she'll contribute some more good songs this time around too.

While I was at it I downloaded the soundtrack to Super Mario RPG, by Yoko Shimomura, Nobuo Uematsu and Koji Kondo.  It's hard to go wrong with these three, though the non-serious atmosphere of Mario might spoil the punch.  In any case, there's no harm in trying.

My music hall of fame still has a lot of room to grow.  Even this is just a pecking on the surface of how much music Yasunori Mitsuda has composed.  These are just the most promising entries.  If I ever need more music, I could always branch out to Mario Party, Inazuma 11, Shadow Hearts 2, Luminous Arc, etc, etc.

Due to Death March, I have plenty of reading material to cover while I'm listening to all these new soundtracks.  There's nothing like expanding two halls of fame simultaneously.