How Chrono Trigger’s Composer Yasunori Mitsuda Came To Work On Sea Of Stars

YasunoriMitsuda is credited with many of the games he worked on since the late 1990s. However, his best-known work was on ChronoTrigger. He is very straightforward in telling the story about how he got to work on this game.[Sea of Stars creative director Thierry Boulanger] was like, ‘We have a contact that is in touch with all these people. Then he reached out and kinda did. [Mitsuda]He liked the things he had seen. And so he’s like, ‘Yeah, I would, I would love to be a part of this’,” Sea of Stars lead composer Eric W. Brown says. “There’s no words to describe this. Like, it’s… we literally got the guy.” Mitsuda committed to creating about 10 tracks for the game, and the process has been smooth.

“We would just kind of say, ‘Here’s the stuff we’re looking for,’ and he and I sat down, and we discussed that we definitely want a town theme from him, we definitely want a battle theme, a boss theme – we kind of went through all the stuff that we for sure wanted to get,” Brown says. “The whole story has been planned out for a while, and then we’re just sort of fleshing out all the beats. So we had a high-level view of all the music that we would need.” There were some discussions of going bigger and having orchestration for some tracks, but it was decided to keep things retro and consistent with the throwback intention of the game.

Boulanger, who was also impressed by Mitsuda’s involvement in the project, described an interaction when he inquired through a translator whether they would like him to channel Chrono Trigger’s style of composition. “It’s the one time in this career that we got to answer an e-mail with just, ‘Yes!’,” Boulanger says.

Mitsuda spoke to us by e-mail and we discussed making music with Sea of Stars. Below is the conversation.

Game InformerYou shared some details regarding your involvement in Sea of Stars, and stated that the music was specifically made for Super Nintendo. Is that true? How do you explain it?

Yasunori Mitsuda: On the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), sampled tones were configured within the system’s limited memory and played back in 8-voice polyphony. Additionally, although very cheap by today’s standards, the “echo” effect can also be considered as a characteristic of SNES-style sound. The music I created for Sea of Stars was written with modern technology and kept the feeling of the time. Usually, synthesizer audio can be used as is, but this time I deliberately resampled the audio in 32 kHz and applied an effect with the same settings as the SNES “echo”. The sound is more gorgeous than that of the past, but I think you’ll somehow be able to feel that SNES feeling.

Do you long to return to your Super Nintendo musical roots

It was incredibly nostalgic. While I was working, I thought back to how it felt in the past when I used these techniques. You can’t experience the joy of creating music one at a time without using a game console.

What would your personal description of Sea of Stars be?

That’s a difficult question. If I described the game in a single word, I think I would choose “fantasy”. There is the nostalgia of the pixel art and other elements, but for this game I would go with “fantasy”.

Is there a step-by-step guide for creating a YasunoriMitsuda piece? Where do you start, and what’s the final step?

From a long time ago, my composition process hasn’t changed at all. I try to fully understand the game’s world and atmosphere, reread the scenario many times over, and imagine the kind of music that it needs. If necessary, I create a chart that shows the relationships between characters. The music the game wants to hear naturally comes out of this process.

You can find out more about Sea of Stars’ music by clicking here. Sea of Stars will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 4, as well as PC, Xbox One, Xbox One, Switc and PlayStation 4. You can read more about this game in the latest issue of Game Informer magazine.

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