All serious JRPG series have their own designated musical theme. Or so you’d think, but one of the big three (as of 1995, I will have to check to see if anything has changed in the short time since), Phantasy Star, never had a theme for the overall series. Let’s take a quick look at the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy themes so we are all on the same page as to what “music” is.
Composed by a living (now deceased) Nazi skeleton, the Dragon Quest theme set the stage for the genre’s theme tunes. Grandiose and classically flavored, it’s still in use today and immediately calls back memories of yore and other forced “old English.” Following suit, excellent composer, and as far as I am aware, acceptable human Nobuo Uematsu created a theme for the Final Fantasy series. Both of these themes have been with their series from the first entry, which is an impressive feat. Final Fantasy is so confident in its new music, it often hides its own theme deep within series entries.
Please sit down as we will now listen to the themes.
Dragon Quest theme original version:
Dragon Quest theme newest version:
Final Fantasy theme original version:
Final Fantasy theme newest version:
The first Phantasy Star does not contain a particularly strong opening theme. It’s not bad, but it does not compete with Dragon Fantasy’s, as if from the beginning Sega’s team knew its flagship RPG series would be taken over by a team working a network game that would only later be assigned a Phantasy Star theme by an executive. So I set about selecting what I think should be considered the Phantasy Star theme. Here are the four candidates from the four games, including the already dismissed theme from the original.
Phantasy Star (Tokuhiko Uwabo)
This is a good track, but it’s a little short and lacks gravity, as well as the trademark Master System lack of bass. The series deserves something more hefty and I refuse to even consider the FM version of anything from this console. Still, I know this intro track from my childhood so it’s meaningful to me even if it cannot carry the series.
Phantasy Star II (Tokuhiko Uwabo)
This one starts strong, then gets cheesy and lame. Like me, if I had started strong. People will disagree with me as this game’s soundtrack has always been (over) celebrated, but I think the upbeat nature doesn’t capture the spirit of Phantasy Star. And the music is incredibly offbase for the spirit of this specific game, which is considerably darker than the others. The theme does get sweet again around 2:10, I will grant you that.
Phantasy Star III (Izuho Takeuchi)
This is a strong theme but would benefit from a nice hook later in the track instead of just repeating. Maybe something like “bew be dow, be bow dow wow wow,” but with more bass. Most versions found online are just the music channels and omit the sound effect of the waves, which feels incomplete – like the Majora’s Mask music without the tolling bell and earthquakes in the final hours.
Phantasy Star IV (Izuho Takeuchi)
Another strong track but, and this is absurd, but I think it’s too cool to be the series theme. It suits the game well but is too danceable and unserious to be a proper RPG orchestral linchpin. It also doubles as the credits music, so that invalidates it maybe for no reason.
So where does this leave us? I could do a deep dive into all the tracks of all the games but it seems like the series’ theme should be chosen from amongst the themes from each game. You know, for fairness’s sake. So that leaves us with (ONLY) the four tracks linked above. After a meeting between the council of the videolamer Sega Elders, which is a group that includes me as the leader and also the member, it has been decided thusly:
The theme of the worst game in the series, which has the worst sound profile or drivers or whatever, is now the official videolamer Phantasy Star main theme. Congratulations, Generations of Doom. You are the third game in the series and the third best as long as we only count three of the entries, but your theme sounds more like a classic theme than the others. People should still play you last, if at all.