Outside of his work for Frogman Records, Watanabe’s other job was promoting music and video game releases, and he came up with the idea of promoting the recently released Pulseman by creating a techno album of arranged music from the game. He did a lot of writing for gaming and music magazines in his spare time, and his love of electronic music eventually led to him founding the independent techno label Frogman Records in 1993 with his close friend, Kengo Watanabe. He’s a famous scriptwriter for well-known video games and anime, but before he was penning scripts for the likes of Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Samurai Champloo and Resident Evil Revelations, Sato worked for Game Freak. And as most Pokémon fans will know, fight themes are Masuda’s bread and better, and you’ll recognise some of the most iconic ones from Pokémon in Pulseman.
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Junichi Masuda managed to cram 34 tracks into Pulseman – a hilariously unnecessary amount of music for a Sega Mega Drive game – but you’d expect nothing less from a man who could pull together unique melodies for every fight theme in a Steven Seagal film in a single day. Pulseman is fucking excellent, and it’s a shame that so many people – especially Pokémon fans – aren’t aware of it, especially when it’s got one of the best soundtracks on the Sega Mega Drive. If you’re nodding your head because of how great that sounds, that’s because it is. If you’re wondering how Pulseman plays, it takes the pace and platforming prowess of Mega Man and Sonic The Hedgehog and wraps it up in a Pokémon skin, courtesy of legendary Pokémon artist, Ken Sugimori. It was first released in Japan and arrived in the US a year later, but only through Sega Channel, Sega’s cable-based and short-lived subscription service that cost $15 per month (and people say PlayStation Plus is expensive!) The game was only made available to the rest of us in Europe when it was re-released through the Wii’s Virtual Shop in 2009. You’ll be forgiven if you haven’t heard of Pulseman. Pokémon’s musical DNA can be traced back to Masuda’s seminal score for Pulseman, Game Freak’s quirky action platformer for the Sega Mega Drive. The music that you know and love as having that quintessentially ‘ Pokémon sound’ – the frantic flailing of falling arpeggios, charming counter melodies and Wailord-sized octave leaps – isn’t so much Pokémon music as it is a reflection of Masuda’s compositional style. I mean, Lavender Town hits so hard that $UICIDEBOY$ built an entire track around it.īut here’s where things get interesting. If you’ve grown up with the original games, melodies for the likes of Lavender Town, Pallet Town, or the series’ various battle themes are now permanently hardwired into your brain. Regardless of which Pokémon generation marked your entry into the games, that overwhelming sense of nostalgia you feel when someone mentions Pokémon wouldn’t be the same without the musical touch of Game Freak’s co-founder and long-time series composer, Junichi Masuda.
![music composer pokemon anime music composer pokemon anime](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71ZGmBrWJtL._SX522_.jpg)
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