Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge Original Soundtrack
Released by Viz Communications
Genre: Rock
Grade: C-
First it was an arcade game, then a Playstation and Saturn game, then an anime. While I was never really that big on the anime (admittedly, I never watched more than one episode… nor did I want to), the game itself always had a certain charm to it. Maybe it was the cute character design, maybe it was the gothic action, or maybe it was just the traditional Capcom 2D fighter charm. ^_^
Well, if nothing else, the Night Warriors soundtrack, although from the anime, DOES sound exactly like video game music. The songs, written and performed by Koh Ohtani (Gundam Wing) don’t exactly go out on a limb creativity-wise, but they do get the job done.
The first two tracks sound almost startlingly like a video game character select screen. In all fairness, “Invitation to the Charm of Darkness” IS the opening theme, but it still comes off as a bit clich�, drenched in saxophone and almost 70′s funk. “Cool Love” is a bit better, having a melody made up of guitar and synth “bursts,” but it still comes off as anticlimactic background music.
Then we get to the darker stuff. “Mad Rhythm” is a bizarre cross between Geinoh Yamashirogumi (Akira) and Giorgio Moroder’s quieter themes stuck in a monotonous minor key. The end result is not unlike Jo Hisaishi’s theme song for the 1987 Robot Carnival Short “Franken’s Gear.” It’s an interesting segueway into Night Battle Party, a fast-paced generic battle tune comprised almost entirely of guitar.
“Chaos Flare” is an interesting piece with a very cataclysmic melody, but that doesn’t make it a good listen… It relies too much on guitar to make its destructive point, as does the next piece, “Endless Battle Game,” which is almost identical, with the exception of having some saxophone.
With the seventh track, “Pure Yet Alone” the album takes a distinct turn towards the dark and inventive. Although the track itself, featuring a bizarre percussion section, is not a very good listen, it’s an interesting turning point, especially when it begets the next theme song, “Bluffman,” a dark, moody dance rhythm with heavy gothic organ serving as the melody in a minor key. Easily one of the disc’s best offerings, “Bluffman” seems like one of the excellent background songs to a Rare-produced game, somewhere in between the first Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct.
Which makes for an interesting segue to “Oriental Sisters,” which is as far from an Oriental melody as you can get: light and catchy, the song has a distinct Muzak feel while still clinging onto a happy “end theme” approach. “Artman” goes back to the album’s darker undertones, this time embracing the theme with a piano melody, giving it a more human feel.
Back to the mediocrity. “Murder Pentagram” is more generic action-themed guitar, while “Space Symphonic” tries to be slightly retrospective but comes off as hollow and trite instead. “Memories” projects a worried, adrenaline-flushing mood, almost as if it were “boss level” music. “A Sad Destiny” takes on the same mood with slightly different instruments.
“Precious Spirit” is more of the same sterile, guitar-heavy fighting themes that are really too slow for any other purpose, as is “Dark Diamond,” which is even slower. “Planet Burning” is a bit better in that it has a slight techno feel to it, while more accurately being action and apocalypse oriented. “Destruction of God,” meanwhile, jumps right back to the same crap as “Precious Spirit.”
The only track that really stands out there is a piano-heavy love theme (“The Final Kiss”), which seems totally lost among a pile of testosterone-pumping guitar rifts. Melancholy and actually conducive to emotion, this song at least has a purpose. It’s not excellent, but compared to some of the other material, it is.
Since we’re so close to the end, it’d be a shame to go back to the same horrid melodies, so a dark, mysterious “Disappearing Light” theme and “Escape From the Labyrinth,” an upbeat “happy action end” theme, is what we get, both of which are nothing special, but at the same time aren’t too bad either.
Overall, Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge is a very odd mixture of the incredibly stereotyped and the almost inventive, all of which culminating somewhere in between “barely listenable” and “enjoyable”… where, exactly, it lies probably depends on how big a Night Warriors anime fan you are.
