So I decided to give Sonic CD's US OST another shot and...

...it's not nearly as bad as I used to think it was. A couple nights ago a newish Sonic CD runner, chronoon (which, by the way, you should totally follow @ https://www.twitch.tv/chronoon/ , he's pretty damn chill, he also runs Dynamite Headdy (hey look another game that I need to play someday)) and I were talking about the soundtracks, one thing that he said stuck in my mind when I went on my usual complaining about the US soundtrack.

	He didn't think the soundtrack was bad, the issue though is, well, it doesn't fit the game. And honestly after listening through this, I totally agree with him. The music is definitely late 80's-early 90's personified, and while Sonic himself is 90's personified that doesn't necessarily mean they mix. Sonic music on a whole has always been more upbeat, which the EU/JP Soundtrack NAILS, even the Bad Future tracks have upbeat traces within it. The US version however is mellow funkish music you'd expect out of something like Toejam and Earl or some other early 90's icon, hell, I'd go far as to say some of it would fit in one of the TMNT movies back then, or another superhero movie from that era. It's 90's music, but not the type of 90's music Sonic is known for.

	So that leaves me to wonder what I even hated about it anyways. I think there's a bunch of factors. One of them being the type of music the US ost made just simply depressed me when I first played it. I didn't play the game until I got it on the Gems Collection in 2005, which was one of the worst years of my life, between late 2004 and early 2006 were extremely depressing years for me for reasons I don't care to get into. But I remember that I would get depressed if I heard music with a particular soundfont that the US OST had. Mega Man 7's music kind of depressed me too, along with a lot of Capcom's SNES music. Can't really describe it too well but just something about that music used to always bring me down back then.

It's funny because I remember always wishing I could play the game since I was super young. I never had a Sega CD, but I did have a Genesis, and I was super big on Sonic games. There's this one time I remember one of my uncles, who used to have all this Genesis stuff, playing a bit of Sonic CD. Ever since then I wanted to play it so badly you have no idea, and no, I didn't want to just play it at my Uncle's house, I wanted to own it. To me, Sonic CD, R, and Fighters (which at the time, was known as Sonic Championship in the US, yay pointless trivia!) were lost unobtainable relics of the Sonic CD to my young preteen-early teen self, as I had no way to get any of those games on my own.

(before anyone says “why didn't you get the PC version” I thought playing PC games were dumb aside from simulation games such as Roller Coaster Tycoon and The Sims all the way up until Team Fortress 2 became free back in... 2012? Besides it's not like this stuff was as easily accessible to me as it is now, I couldn't shop online and by the time I was able to decide what I want on my own and CD + R weren't exactly common in store. Also I did look into getting emulators, also I was pretty sure Sega CD + Saturn Emulators either didn't exist and if they did they were shit)

Imagine my delight when I found out all of them would be on a pack together. It was perfection to me. The games I've been wanting to get for years are finally all about to be in the palm of my hands. When I finally got my hands on it I'm almost positive the first game I played on the pack was Sonic CD, and if it wasn't well shut the fuck up it works better for my narrative anyways so fuck you I'm re-writing the stage of history anyways. Yea so I popped that in and guess what type of music I hear after a few stages. Yeah, it didn't sit well with me. I didn't even finish the game on Gems Collection, I think I just quit after Wacky Workbench (which, to be fair, is also a stupid as fuck stage in general). If the remake didn't have JP OST I probably never would have finished the game.

Oh, also I remember being pissed when I found out the US soundtrack was different then the JP and EU OST, because this was also the time I found out what a truly horrible company 4Kids is and how much stuff not just from them but from a lot of companies is changed when being brought to the US, so I'm pretty sure some hate arose from that too.

I'd write more but I got sick of writing this shit 10+ minutes after I started writing it and it's probably been 2 hours and I've been putting off just getting this shit done so to conclude: I still think the EU/JP soundtrack is better, but the US soundtrack is not nearly as bad as I made it out to be.