Interviews// CAVE: Yukihiro Masaki

The iPhone’s ability to play music is a significant feature for Masaki as he is also the manager of the company’s contents creation group, and responsible for the direction of many of CAVE super-charged and dramatic soundtracks. With the mobile port of DoDonPachi Resurrection last year, the opportunity was taken to include brand new background music specially for the iOS platform.

With a chuckle and a bit of a precautionary glance around the room, Masaki explained why he decided to introduce new music to a classic blaster. “We took a bit of an experimental approach to Espgaluda II to find out exactly how much people would appreciate CAVE games on a platform like the iPhone. At the time, I actually wanted to put a new soundtrack into the game, but couldn’t!”

It was only when the Xbox 360 update of the same game was released in Japan some months after that Masaki made his case. “The producer for the Xbox 360 version, Makoto Asada, included new BGM in some of the Arrange modes, so I argued that the iPhone versions should have new soundtracks too.”

When it came to introducing a new soundtrack to DoDonPachi Resurrection, it was decided that a completely new approach should be taken. “I felt that the soundtrack to the arcade original had a very hard image to it. Ketsui: Jigoku Tachi was also being ported to the Xbox 360 at this time, and that had a very rock edge. I wanted something 180-degrees different from that. Something that was quite bubbly and fun, that game users could listen to, and just feel good while playing it.”

This is something that Masaki says is apparent whenever a game is given a soundtrack overhaul - to give a new impression to the existing game world, and to spark some nostalgia while still providing a fresh audio-visual experience to gamers new and old. Of course, there is a more financially-focused reason behind the new arrangements as well.

“If we gave these games new soundtracks, then they’d probably sell well on the iTunes Store,” Masaki exclaims with a cheeky laugh. “And one of the greatest parts about the
the App Store is that you can get your game known by a lot of people all over the world. Within that process, that’s also a way to sell the soundtrack to people overseas.” He is clearly aware that there is a demand in the West for CAVE’s music to be sold, adding that offering to ship CDs overseas is a challenge for both the company and the buyer.

So when can we expect to buy the incredible DoDonPachi Resurrection iPhone soundtrack - composed by Kenichi Maeyamada and Shoichiro Hirata - on the iTunes Store then? Well... “We haven’t actually got our soundtracks on iTunes just yet,” Masaki giggles. “But it’s something that we’re really working hard to try and do, and those are some of the reasons why we decided to put a new soundtrack into the game.”

Masaki’s directing style is very hands-off when it comes to CAVE soundtracks. “We do most of it in one take,” he reveals. “In general, we don’t do re-takes, or even reject certain tracks. Although I have some common requests depending on the project, we basically let the composers make it as they want to. So for Deathsmiles for instance, the requests were very simple - make it orchestral, four-beat, no guitars and make it dramatic. Other than that, the musicians had total freedom.”