Yesterday on YouTube, the Sonic the Hedgehog channel released a brand-new video that takes a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the Sonic Frontiers soundtrack with sound director Tomoya Ohtani. Ohtani has played a part in creating memorable music for the Sonic franchise since 2001 when he was a composer on the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.
At the beginning of the video, Ohtani touches on his first work in the Sonic franchise. He doesn’t remember exactly which track he wrote for Sonic Adventure 2 first, but he narrowed it down between the Chao Challenge Race and the much more popular song for the Pumpkin Hill stage. Ohtani even mentioned that he used an AKAI MPC2000 sampler to make the Pumpkin Hill track.
In a follow-up question, Ohtani mentioned his favorite music track in Sonic Adventure 2. Again, he couldn’t pick just one. Metal Harbor was his favorite track from all of the Sonic stages. He also said that all of Rouge’s stages are good. As far as music that he was involved with creating, Ohtani said that Aquatic Mine was his favorite.
Next up, Ohtani was asked what his favorite game was to compose for and what his favorite track was on any of the games he worked on. Interestingly enough, the game he mentioned here was the mobile game Sonic Runners. Ohtani cited the short turnaround between creating the music and it being in the game as the main reason why he enjoyed the work on Runners. As for his favorite Sonic song, he mentioned a few like Endless Possibility, Super Sonic Racing, and Escape From the City.
While Ohtani talked about how much he enjoyed writing music for Sonic Runners because of its short time between writing and being released, he also mentioned that the soundtrack for Frontiers has been in the works for nearly four years.
When asked how he approached the music style for Sonic Frontiers, Ohtani said that the first thing he focused on was the Open Zone. Starting with the music on Kronos island, he wanted to capture the state that Sonic is in, so he focused on making the music sound sad, mysterious, and desolate.
In reference to Ohtani’s collaboration with ONE OK ROCK on the Sonic Frontiers soundtrack, he was asked who he would like to work with on a future Sonic project. Ohtani didn’t end up actually answering the question, but he mentioned that after this latest collaboration he has ideas for possible collaborations in the future.
You can check out the full video up above. Sonic Frontiers launches next week on Nov. 8 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam.
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