Best of PC Engine / Sega CD Music - Page 3
After Burner III
CRI was tasked with porting Sega's arcade game Strike Fighter to the FM Towns. It was a terrible port. Then they took this and ported it again to the Sega CD, under the name After Burner III. It was still terrible, but this time they used the redbook soundtrack from the FM Towns version of After Burner II. The hard rocking remixes are some of the best ever done (and Sega's SST Band did many), and are wisely based on the "melody" versions of the track, rather than the hollow-sounding renditions found in most other conversions.
Flashback
Most of the releases of Delphine's Flashback had a "cinematic" score, meaning that much of the game was played in silence, with music only accentuating certain dramatic moments. While progressive for a 16-bit title, it was also kinda dull. The Sega CD version fixes this by having a constantly running sountrack, and all of it is excellent. The expanded title screen theme is a standout, but the jungle theme manages to be heroically atmospheric while not impeding on the game's movie-like ambitions. Unfortunately none of the other ports use this soundtrack, CD or otherwise.
Android Assault
The PC Engine is (understandably) seen as the ultimate 16-bit shooter console, but a small handful of decent titles managed to sneak out exclusively for the Sega CD. Amongst them is Android Assault (known as Bari-Arm in Japan; it still shares this title screen in all territories). It may not quite be up to the level of Lords of Thunder or Thunder Force, but the first level theme has decent instrumentation, a cool bass line and some nice guitar riffs.