Uncharted Waters Soundtrack
	2025 June 28
	Current Mood:	I need to write more posts
	Now Playing:	"大航海時代" by K-Project, Yoko Kanno

Last evening I've been passively watching the latest Jeff Gerstmann's 8-bit Science video, and at some point I heard a track that plays in Uncharted Waters (NES), the game he was playing. I liked it so much that I instantly paused the video and started searching for the soundtrack on youtube. The first thing I saw in the search results though was this soundtrack album that didn't sound like a soundtrack to video games of that era at all. Moreover, that's how I learned that Yoko Kanno, of the Cowboy Bebop and GiTS: Stand Alone Complex fame, was the composer for this game. Then I found this great article on FOND/SOUND that gave me more context for the album.

Koei had floated the idea of “Soundware,” soundtrack releases of their games where the game’s composers could flesh out their music as originally intended.

Sounds like a really amazing opportunity for game composers! I didn't spend enough time to listen to that album though, because I wanted to find the NES version of the track that I got so hooked on. I found it on the Niko's 8BitStereo YouTube channel, but at the moment I thought that I preferred the mono version better, so I started digging deeper — and that's how I learned that there were three versions of the game: NES, Sega Mega Drive, and SNES.

I thought to myself: I need to hear all these versions and maybe compile them in one blog post! So here are the two tracks from the soundtrack that I really liked, each in four versions, ripped using emulators. I will use the track titles as they appeared on the aforementioned Soundware album.

Yoko Kanno - The Card Master ザ・カード・マスター

Yoko Kanno - Olive Wind オリーブの風

Olive Wind was the track that initially got my attention, and I honestly think that it's out there with the DuckTales Moon Theme [youtube] and some of the Pokémon Diamond & Pearl music melody-wise. It's also a rare case when I like the NES version the most out of all three console versions...

I've almost started making a "perfect" mashup of all three versions for both of these tracks to see how it would sound, but my executive disfunction has been too strong lately, so maybe some other day т__т

Anyway, go read the FOND/SOUND article!