April 5, 1996The Gensosuikoden Original Game Soundtrack (幻想水滸伝 オリジナル・ゲーム・サントラ, Gensōsuikoden Orijinaru Gēmu Santora) is the official soundtrack release for Suikoden.
Development
The music for Suikoden was led and directed by Higashino Miki, with TAPPY, Taniguchi Hirofumi, Kageshita Mayuko, and Tamawari Hiroshi all also composing for the soundtrack.
Early into the project, Higashino Miki realized that the game could not be depicted using a single genre of music. A deliberate attempt was made to compose something completely different from the music in other RPG titles like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, due to the increased scale and diverse setting of Suikoden as compared to those titles.
The development team had originally hope for theme music for every character, but the sheer size of the game's cast quickly rendered this impossible. In the end, only a handful of character-specific themes would be composed.
On a technical level, music for the first Suikoden allowed streaming and direct playback of the waveform data that was recorded on the CD-ROM. Although much of the game’s music was streamed, some music, such as the world map theme, had to be played back through the internal sound fonts, as they required having the map data read from the CD-ROM’s contents.
However, as most of the composer team had been working on Sega Mega Drive titles up until the development of Suikoden, there were very few who could work with the PlayStation’s internal sound fonts. Tamawari Hiroshi ended up bringing his expertise and Suikoden ended up being one the first games to use the PlayStation’s internal sound fonts for music creation (partly due to its development taking place early in the console's lifetime).
Releases
This soundtrack is the first soundtrack release and first album release of any kind for the series. It was released on April 5, 1996. The soundtrack was due to be included in the eventually cancelled Gensosuikoden Original Soundtrack Complete Box, originally due for a March 2011 release.
In August 2017, a complete digital re-release was made available to download in individual MP4 track format from Konami's Chakushin Uta online store for 1389 points (approximately 1222 JPY through Chakushin Uta's point-buy service).
Track List
Disc 1
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Disc 2
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Gallery
Case and discs
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Front of the soundtrack case.
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Disc 1 of the soundtrack.
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Disc 2 of the soundtrack.
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Back of the soundtrack case.
Insert
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Front cover of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 2 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 3 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 4 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 5 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 6 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 7 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 8 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 9 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 10 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 11 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 12 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 13 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 14 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 15 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 16 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 17 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 18 of the soundtrack insert.
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Page 19 of the soundtrack insert.
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Back cover of the soundtrack insert.
