Sound Dissection #1 Part 2: Sweet Home (NES) By Decon

And here we are, with the second of our debut two parter on old horror videogame soundtracks, and we have a very different beast here, in more ways then one. Todays beast that needs tackling? Sweet Home.

Sweet Home genuinely doesn't need an introduction, as it has been previously covered in-depth by Dio (and with lovely illustrations she penned to boot!). As for where I stand on it? I'm very much in the same camp as Dio; Sweet Home is a fantastic labor of love on Capcom's part, and though a very challenging game that only the baddest of the badasses of gaming may see through to the end (even with a walkthrough), it's fun as all hell and lays the atmosphere on thick. Scares and disturbing imagery are aplenty, structured around the simple story of five people- Kazuo, documentary director; Emi, Kazuo's daughter; Taro/Taguchi, the cameraman; Asuka, an art restorer; and Akiko, a nurse- that take a trip up to the house of famed artist Ichirou Mamiya to film a documentary around the mans live and to rediscover some of his lost Frescos. Things quickly go the way of shit creak- practically right as the gang steps through the door, in fact- as Lady Mamiya, the ghost of Ichirou's wife, seals off the entrance to the house and kindly informs our heroes that they be done fucked for tracking mud in her lovely dilapidated period manor

like the uncouth interlopers that they are. The gang has no other option to but to do whatever they can to survive the horrors of the house and find a way to escape the nightmare, and in the process discover the sad truth behind the current state of the house, and Lady Mamiya's tragic lapse into insanity and depravity.Very cheery and upbeat, certainly, but we're not here to deconstruct the written word or craft a thesis about the true metaphysical meanings behind the text and how it's a commentary on social issues/THE MAN/etc.; you want to know the skinny on the bleeps and bloops that accompany the grisly tale of woe.As is gleamed from the title of the article, this is an NES game, so don't expect any name dropping of soundchips here; the NES is the badboy on the black that has five channels built into the main CPU board itself. That, and a lot of 8bit soundfonts are, by self admission, blind spots for me technically. It's an area where I need to brush up on my reading. Either way, it's pretty much a given that you're not going to go into this expecting your NES to squeeze out FLAC recordings of a Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. But we here at Random Lunacy love our bleeps and bloops as much as we do our wubs and um-ts-um-ts-um-ts-um-ts so that's certainly not a problem.The compositions on display here are very, very different in tone and style from those of Splatterhouse; if Splatterhouse's score can be likened to an egg and bacon cheeseburger from a burger van, then Sweet Home's is a seafood platter filled with prime swordfish filets, beer battered calamari, king prawn paella, white wine oysters, and lemon butter lobster presented in it's full, unshelled glory. It's a high quality, no-nonsense, presentation-is-everythingscore, and it's damn obvious that the intention of the composer, Junko Tamiya, was to give the score an orchestral resonance and the stylings of a big budget movie score, 8bit sounds be damned. Nowhere is this more evident then the imposing central lobby theme, which begins with a boisterous swell that leads into the song's driving bassline, which carries on throughout underneath the minor chords and trills. The east garden theme, as well, with it's pounding drums and slightly melancholy overtones, ramps up the drama even further, but stopping shy of melodrama or becoming overblown and outright pompous without due cause. The haunted quarters theme, though short, is an unsettling melody built around the same basic tune/'rhythm' played by all of the instruments with different keys, that damn well keeps you on edge. Perhaps my favorites, and maybe even the prime examples of the message I'm trying to get across, are the regular battle theme and the final battle theme: these absolutely fantastic pieces of sheer 8bit mastery are so obviously structured like pieces of an orchestral suite that the low tech sound does nothing to hinder the spirit (hurr hurr) of the pieces, the two parts fear and sorrow that are evident in both songs and that fit the overall atmosphere and tone of the game's story like a glove. To say nothing of the beautifully tragic and extremely memorable ending theme, which the arranged album titles The Time To Come, which much like Sento Nel Core, could very easily stand up there with the most memorable horror movie themes, and never has an ending theme so perfectly 'described' a character as tragic and broken as Lady Mamiya.This game, in my humble opinion, boasts one of the greatest scores on the NES. You're damn right there's a lot of hyperbole in this article, and I cop to that, but I think Sweet Home earns it. For all of the faults I can level at Capcom, there are plenty of games of theirs that have the same polish and finish I expect from companies like Namco and Konami, and Sweet Home is one of those games. In my mind, if I can't see a soundtrack fitting any other game then the game it was made for, because it's that damned fitting, then it's an excellent soundtrack, and Sweet Home's score is one of those soundtracks. Get this shit on your iPod and get it on there fastlike.There was a short 8 track arrange album released on the Pony Canyon's Scitron label in 1989, with music arranged by the original composer, Harumi Fujita, Manami Goto, Hiromitsu Takaoka, and even Yoko Shimomura. There is a lot of heavy rearrangement done to the works to cram the full original soundtrack into the 8 tracks on the arranged album, but the tunes are all still recognizable, especially the central lobby theme, which captures the same sense of dread as the original. The arrangements of the battle themes and The Time To Come are also especially fantastic, benefiting from the sound upgrade and becoming much more haunting in the process. It's pretty clear that these are keyboard/synth samples of orchestral instruments, certainly, but they are very high quality, especially for the time, and are so close to the authentic articles that it's practically a moot point, and it doesn't hinder the compositions at all.I think I've summed up how much I enjoy this score pretty well. The arranged album is sadly no longer in print and downloads are scarce, but you can pick up the original soundtrack here. You owe it to yourself, really.By Decon

Images collected from Miketopus' Sweet Home Screenshot LP.