By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Why do they insist on not doing it all?
For the interest of closure (or lack thereof), I want to continue to discuss the OST of No More Heroes III (alternatively referred to as No More Heroes 3) once again.
You may remember the (incomplete, twenty-song) soundtrack's approximately four-month stint as a publicly accessible video uploaded by publisher Marvelous when the game was released in 2021. Eventually, No More Heroes III was released on the PlayStation 4/5, Steam, and the Xbox One/Series this year, in both normal edition and the “No More Heroes 3 Digital Deluxe Edition” that features the game, a 70-page digital artbook, and a digital soundtrack of...twenty-two songs. (Note that no such edition or bonus existed or exists for people who purchased the original Nintendo Switch release.) As you should be able to tell, that's still way less songs than there actually are in the game! Everything is curated rather than complete.
All of a sudden this week, developer Grasshopper Manufacture said that the No More Heroes 3 Original Soundtrack is now available on your favourite music streaming platform, featuring works by (the main composer) Nobuaki Kaneko (of Japanese band RED ORCA) & Jun Fukuda! This includes... well, I'll let the tweet speak for itself. (And then I'll speak for it.)
Just released via #TuneCore:
— Grasshopper Manufacture (@Grasshopper_EN) December 26, 2022
An album of special selections & arrangements from the #NoMoreHeroes 3 OST!
Includes the original opening theme & chapter ending themes by @KanekoNobuaki and Jun Fukuda, plus several versions of the ending theme.🎶https://t.co/ZfVAgqLIBX#NMH pic.twitter.com/ZeS1ACX09l
This soundtrack of eleven songs, and note that it is described as “This is the original soundtrack from the 2021 video game No More Heroes 3, developed by Grasshopper Manufacture.”, is actually entirely composed of the game's chapter opening theme (meant to be like an anime episode opening) plus the many variations of Night in Prague, the theme that plays in-between the game's chapters that acts as an anime episode credits. These versions are of higher-quality than what is available in-game, so there is something worthwhile here. (Night in Prague is also arguably the best track in the game. Which one is up to you.) However, that still leaves out quite a bit of musical content, even if you add in the other released soundtracks, and it's difficult to see it described as “the” OST.
How many times are they going to do piecemeal things with this soundtrack instead of making it all available? I know that there are many songs contributed by guest composers and artists that maybe Marvelous doesn't have the rights to distribute outside the game (though several of those were in the 2021 soundtrack video, and some are in the 2022 digital soundtrack bonus). But why do these soundtracks at all if they won't do them right? Just to taunt us?!
And unlike some other games where the official way of distributing music (in-game) is incomplete for some reason but all the songs are available through... other means... to this day not all of the songs from No More Heroes III are publicly listenable through unofficial avenues. Well it ever all be available? Probably not, at this rate!
As of publishing this, No More Heroes 3 and its deluxe version are on sale on all of those non-Nintendo platforms. (It's full price on the Switch.) Go ahead and buy it if you're into action titles, and then let Ludwig know what you think of the minigames. (Some of the minigame music is now available via that digital soundtrack bonus.)
Didn't mega man do this too, or at least another video game? I feel like we talked about this same problem before but maybe it was just the previous No More Heros article.
ReplyDeleteMega Man actually included all of the songs in the in-game soundtrack.
DeleteThe Great Ace Attorney Chronicles only included a fraction of the songs in the in-game soundtrack.
No More Heroes III has no in-game soundtrack.
That's what I was thinking of, the great ace attorney. Shame. The AA series has kind of been out of the light for a while. Is this the longest it's been since a new mainline game? I mean, I've still got to best dual destinies but I'd at least like an announcement or tease.
DeleteIt's going to be, yeah, since Apollo Justice was in 2007 and Dual Destinies in 2013 (six years), and then Spirit of Justice (2016) to present (2022) is six years...
DeleteSo it sounds like we're about due for a game! I haven't played the last two games so I can't say exactly how much backstory we have an Athena and Apollo, but id say we know them pretty well. Obviously a new game with just phoniex would be great, but the way the Ace Attorney team thinks, I wouldn't be surprised if we got an entriely new character as our star defense attorney. Something to think about.
DeletePerhaps what's taking so long is that the writing team doesn't know where to take the series from here.
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