Yosuke Okunari on Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed Original Soundtrack:
Thank you for getting the soundtrack of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. I am Producer Okunari who was in charge of the localization of Japan version. I would like to borrow this space and briefly explain about this game and soundtrack.
This racing game of dream in which SEGA’s all-star cast gathers is actually the second title as the series, and the smartphone version of the previous title, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, is being released in Japan as well.
The one who developed the series is the development company Sumo Digital from United Kingdom. It is the company which had ported OutRun 2 for Xbox, PS2, and others in the past. The name Sumo comes from Japanese word and it is a company that loves Japan and SEGA games, and the one that they produced concentrating on the know-how of driving games and SEGA Love that is ready to overflow is this series.
The fact that the manifestation of one of the fruits of love is the music would probably be obvious if one looked at the tracklist of this CD. For the BGM of the 17 new courses (except the four courses revived from the previous title), at least two compositions were included in one course and when there are more, the remix of four themes plays. Besides, the themes of All-Star Moves (the so-called invincibility statuses) of more than 20 participating characters vary entirely for each of them, too.
The person who handled most of these music arrangements and the original music compositions like the system sections is Richard Jacques. Even if you are among the people who do not know his name, I am fairly certain that SEGA fans have listened to the music that he made. In addition to the participation of compositions like Sonic R, Jet Set Radio series, and Sonic and the Black Knight, he also dealt with a lot of arrangements in Daytona USA Circuit Edition, OutRun 2, and Sonic Generations.
The remixed ones through such hands of Richard this time are the large number of SEGA’s famous compositions from 80’s in old times all the way to the present. The music with an assortment of genres picked out from various new and old games is played in the arrangements you can expect only in racing games. It can possibly be said that this CD is a compilation of history of SEGA’s game music in some way.
There is music that changes interactively conforming with the expansion in the game as well, and the development team, including Richard, takes in these compositions making them medleys anew in the forms desired originally. Moreover, the opening theme of the previous title has also been included as a bonus track.
Finally, for the excessive music used in this game, I think that there are a few people who can talk about the origins of all the music even if you are a fan familiar with SEGA’s music. We mention the game and music titles that become the sources of the arrangements, as well as the composers of the original versions as far as possible in this CD. If you would pay attention to the original games, their soundtracks, and others as well by all means in case you had something you were interested in because of the music or games that you knew about for the first time in this game, and if SEGA’s game music would further become your life’s colorfulness even from now on, I would be happy.