Kingdom Hearts

[SharonKurland]

There are SEVERAL soundtracks to the Kingdom Heart game on eBay...I'm interested in buying it but does anyone know if these are official releases or not, where else I can find the CD's (I'll admit I haven't done my homework at all, but I'm closing on a house in a week and a day so I've been preoccupied ), and is there anyone out there who has heard the soundtrack and is willing to give a opinion on it?

Thanks!

-Sharon-

 

[Richard P.]

Hi, Sharon! I've played and completed the game (took 50 hours and I loved every minute of it!) and own the 2-cd soundtrack.

I love the music, but if you're interested in the discs purely as a Disney music fan, be aware that there are only 4 familiar Disney tunes, with the rest of the tracks all new compositions. The classic tunes are:

Mickey Mouse Club March
Winnie the Pooh
Under the Sea
This is Halloween

The arrangements of Winnie the Pooh and This is Halloween are wonderful. In fact, the moment the Pooh theme starts playing is one of the most emotional and heart-breaking moments in the game. I don't want to give the plot away, but Kingdom Hearts is a rather *dark* game with much heartache and sadness before the eventual triumph of good. (There's also a lot of humor along the way to lighten things up a bit).

Anyway, back to the soundtrack: The original score by Yoko Shimomura is terrific, ranging from a funny, bouncy theme for Wonderland to a cool jazz piece for the village called Traverse Town. There are a lot of dark themes for the villains and battles. Keep in mind that most of the pieces play as background music in the game, and so are designed to loop untill the player moves to the next scene. On the CDs, a typical piece will loop twice before fading out.

There are two standout, beautiful themes written for the game: Hikari and Dearly Beloved. Both themes appear several times in different forms. Hikari is presented at the beginning as the overture to the game, and it's incredible. It's also performed twice as a song, sung by Hikaru Utada. For the American release of the game, the song was re-written, re-arranged and renamed "Simple and Clean." I prefer the original Japanese version that appears on the soundtrack cds, but the American version has the very cool lyric, "Regardless of warnings, the future doesn't scare me at all."

The official soundtrack can be ordered through several online stores, including Animenation. (Their price for the set is $32.95).

Actually, since all the new music and characters are Disney property, I guess every new piece in Kingdom Hearts is now officially "Disney Music!"

Hope this helps, Sharon! (Just as an added 2 cents, the game is so amazing, I'd actually recommend buying a Playstation 2 to experience it!)

- Richard

 

[SharonKurland]

Hi Richard-

Thanks for the reply! My husband was VERY interested in buying the Kingdom Hearts game, but it's only available on PS2 and we don't have one...so besides the game, we'd have to plunk down money for the hardware. While we're in the midst of buying a house. When we BOTH know that he'll play it nonstop for the first week and then never look at it again, bcause that's what he does with ALL new games that he "has to have" . Then *I* got interested in buying the CD because I collect Disney CD's...and your description helped a LOT in my final decision. So THANK-YOU so much!

-Sharon-

 

[Dr. Know]

I'm intrigued by this too... when you say that most of the music is "instrumental," do you mean "orchestral," or is this a synth. score??

Thanks!

 

[SpectroPluto]

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[Richard P.]

Dr. Know -

The overture and the closing credits march are full real orchestra (awesome arrangements). Most of the looping background tracks are orchestral-sounding synth. There are a lot of story-progression tracks that combine real piano, harp and woodwind with some synth in the background. Overall, it combines many, many different styles that reflect the world-hopping theme of the story. The synth stuff is fun, but the overture and closing are, by far, the tracks I listen to the most!

Hope this helps!

- Richard

 

[Richard P.]

Oops, I forgot - some of the best looping tracks use non-synth instruments such as saxophone and acoustic guitar.

- Richard

 

[Shawn]

Enclude me on the list of people that bought a PS2 just to play Kingdom Hearts

?o?

 

[Dirk]

OK ... another late post ...

Kingdom Hearts has just been released in Europe (or at least Germany, but I assume all of Europe) in time for Christmas. They even have huge (!) trailers playing for it in the movie theaters (but not before Treasure Island, as this could increase the number of games they sell, but before Lord of the Rings II).

At the same time the 2-CD-soundtrack has been released in Europe too. It is labeled "Toshiba-Emi Limited, Virgin, Eastworld, Squaresoft, Walt Disney Records". Order Number is 7243 5 80453 21 and it is available in basically all major CD-shops for a price around 16.99 Euro (which is roughly 17 $).

Regarding the music: I think if you have played the game the music might speak to you but ebsides the main themes and some few tracks most of the new stuff is just ... well ... it just sounds pretty much like your usual dark pseudo-orchestral synth-score most major video games feature today. Personally I think this is due to the fact that they really just took the background music from the game which is looping during the scenes play it twice and then fade out before the next background music starts, plays twice and fades out again. This never gives the listener a decent feeling of a musical flow in which the score would e.g. build up while the player moves toward an important scene, just ebcause you first hear the a "normal" theme, then there is a break, you hear a bit more exited theme, there is another break and then suddenly there is a "big" musical moment.

Personally I think the producers took the easy way by just putting all the music as heared in the game on the two CDs (both of which play longer than 70 minutes!), but what they should have done is similar to what Chris H?lsbeck did when he released the music from the game-classics "R-Type", "Apidya", "Battle Isle" and other games on CD: take the musical material and create a kind of "suite" out of it. In my mind similar to the ride-throughs Randy creates for the attractions the music from the game should somehow give the listeners the impression of following the playerr through the game without the breakes between the different tracks.

Regarding the Disney songs on the two CDs: they are wonderful, I love their arrangements, but again if you are jsut looking for those the CDs migtn not be worth buying.



Yours
Dirk