Latest Sakurai Famitsu column focuses on the production of Smash music

Another issue of Famitsu, another column in which Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai talks about whatever’s on his mind. In this instance, he seemed to be musically inclined, because he talked about how the songs in Smash are selected and arranged. Here’s a rundown of the topics (translation courtesy of Source Gaming):

• There are limitations when it comes to licensing music from certain series — due to a tangle or rights holders and international distribution, some series only have a couple songs. (No names are named, but it seems fairly evident that Final Fantasy music is the subject of discussion here.) Sakurai and his team have spent “about a hundred times” more energy dealing with music rights for Smash than other titles.
• Sakurai emailed composers he wanted for the title directly (unless they were new to Smash, in which case the sound team did so instead) and then met those agreeable in groups of four to six to show them plans.
• Sakurai wanted to focus on “music that gets your heart pumping during battle” this time around. He recalls a Smash 4 tournament he saw whose Grand Finals had The Roost from Animal Crossing playing, which undercut the excitement. So he’s more careful with his selection of songs from now on.
• Composers picked the music they wanted to arrange from a database of thousands of songs. Some immediately chose what they wanted to do, and others slept on it. Since the tracklist is based on composers’ wants, it ended up a tad imbalanced.
• Castlevania and Mega Man both received a lot of arrangements this time around. Fire Emblem did too, but large due to “one person in particular.”
• Songs that weren’t picked by composers were put in the game without arrangement. While some of them may not fit as well as Sakurai initially thought, he believes there’s no such thing as bad music in a great game.

Check out the full translation over on Source Gaming for more info.

 

Leave a Comment