Mystic Ark OST Shinji Imada and Akihiko Mori Liner Notes Translation


I want to create a strange, clear world, I thought  -  and the first idea 
that came into my head was a lone little imaginary island with nary a soul 
around.  And within the alabaster shrine there lie a clock coldly ticking 
away and a music box, through which you can enter a variety of unique 
worlds...wouldn't that be interesting? 
And so the provisional title initially given to the game was "Mystic 
World."  It didn't become the actual official title, but in the winter of 
'94, I asked Mr. Mori to compose the music for a game with this unique 
worldview.  Eventually, he delivered a demo tape, and when I listened to 
it, it was clearly quite different from what I had envisioned for "Mystic 
World."  We therefore began to have weekly meetings, where I forced Mr. 
Mori to entertain my wild ideas.
And so, right before the creation of the masters in the spring of '95, I 
was supervising the production of the ending, and I felt unsatisfied with 
its brevity and lack of content  -  but the music, I found, more than made 
up for it.  It was then that I realized that all the tracks perfectly 
depicted "Mystic World" and became part of the greater whole.  These CDs 
contain the compositions that put the finishing touches on "Mystic Ark" -  
and they represent two discs of memories that I want to own myself.

Shinji Imada, Producer


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"I sure composed a lot of tracks for this game..."

Now that the composing for the game is almost finished and I'm practically 
done with the arrangements for the CDs, it's only natural for me to utter 
those words.  For this project, Mystic Ark, a whole 51 tracks were actually
used in the game, but when you count all the compositions that didn't fit 
the desired image and were scrapped or where the first half was good but 
the second half wasn't...where they had to be remade, I think the total 
number of compositions I created stands at over 100.  Composing all those 
tracks, getting the data ready, and even creating sound effects while I was
at it...no one's going to say that Akihiko Mori is a superman, but knocking 
out that volume of content in less than half a year is becoming a matter 
of course for me.  (Actually, I was doing work on other games in between, 
too.)  On the contrary: recently, it's like I've been afraid of having 
downtime in my schedule between jobs. 

Akihiko Mori, composer 


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Translation by R. Capowski, RACapowski@sceneryrecalled.com, 6/8/17.  This
translation is unofficial and has not been sanctioned by the creators or
licenseholders.
Tip of the Alkaloid Bucket to game-ost.com for the liner note scans.