Music of the Front Mission series

''Front Mission Original Sound Version'' is a soundtrack album which contains music from ''Front Mission'', the first game in the series. The tracks were composed by Yoko Shimomura and Noriko Matsueda; Shimomura penned the action themes while Matsueda handled the calmer tracks. The game was the first soundtrack that Matsueda had composed. Shimomura, a veteran of over a dozen games, was already at the time busy composing the soundtrack for ''Super Mario RPG'' but found herself unable to refuse to work on ''Front Mission'' after being asked by Sakaguchi to co-compose the music. Shimomura feels that the soundtrack turned out to be very "passionate" due to the two composers' motivation. The album has been described as containing a mix of techno and smooth jazz. The album was published by NTT Publishing on February 25, 1995 with the catalog number PSCN-5019, and was reprinted on October 1, 2004 with the catalog number NTCP-5019. The album contains 42 tracks and covers a duration of 1:08:17.

The album was well received by critics such as Daniel Kalabakov of RPGFan, who claimed that it was his favorite Super Nintendo Entertainment System-era Square soundtrack, primarily due to the mixture of techno and jazz. He preferred Shimomura's techno tracks, but enjoyed the way the two styles mixed together. Kero Hazel of Square Enix Music Online similarly praised the mix of the two styles, though he criticized the sound quality of the album and stated that the album would have been improved by using real instruments rather than synthesized ones.

In 2003, ''Front Mission'' was re-released for the PlayStation as ''Front Mission 1st'', and a corresponding promotional sound track album was released as ''Front Mission 1st Special BGM Selection''. The nine-track album contains eight tracks by Shimomura and Matsueda, arranged by Hidenori Iwasaki, and one new track by Iwasaki out of the five he composed for the remake. It was published by Square Enix on October 23, 2003 with the catalog number FM1-DA, and has a total length of 18:25. Patrick Gann of RPGFan described the album as a good sampler for the full soundtrack, and claimed that it had slightly better sound quality. He also felt that the new track was a good addition to the rest. Dave of Square Enix Music Online agreed with these praises, though he felt that the large amount of overlap between the promotional disc and the full soundtrack made its purchase not worthwhile.

Track list

Provided by Wikipedia