Lately I listen to the Salamander X68000 soundtrack on youtube at work about 4 times a day.



Not quite sure why I find this game's music so interesting but I remember feeling really particular emotionally back when I was a child playing it. Lately at work I feel invigorated listening to it. Refreshing myself with those emotions. I've listened to a few Tony Robbins cds because my life is a wreck. Not much he talked about stuck with me except one thing: Being in a "state." Its a a clever way to mentally organize your emotions I think, most people do it instinctively. A few things line up, sights and sounds, a chat with someone, whatever.. And they affect your physical and emotional levels. When you need to feel a certain way you have to find ways to "recall your state." Tony Robbins suggests taking inventory of your physical state mostly. But listening to game music seems to be a really easy way for me to recall states. Unlike waking up a certain way and just feeling awesome all day there isn't much mystery when I put on some game music. Familiar melodies and aural textures don't change, my childhood is already past so there is no rewriting that period of time.

When I think of Lifeforce I think of sitting alone, about 8 years old. I had rented the game because of it's amazing cover art probably. Maybe beginning my associations with the Konami box art template that would make me end up renting every Konami game I could. The music is one of the first things you notice. Sinister and foreign sounding, I'd like to know what kind of notes the composer had about this stuff, mentally or otherwise. I've read a woman wrote it which is pretty interesting. I can't actually imagine what influenced this. Unlike the Castlevania music, or the music in many shooters back in that era which were all obviously influenced by 80s metal.. Lifeforce and a few other Konami games that have similar harmonic themes seem to occupy this space where Japanese composers, who I would assume had little other media composition experience were attempting to combine the discordant Hollywood Science fiction film scores with uptempo rock music. Of course also trying to do this on platforms with 3-6 channels of polyphony and filtering the whole thing through what I imagine is a lot of unique regional music, like I know japan has that interesting Okinawan enharmonic chanting.

Who knows where I was going with this. I just like this music, as a unique gem that seems to be so off in its own world aesthetically. It makes sense that its one of the stronger memories of game music I have; it is special. The only things I think I have stronger memories of are like Megaman 1-2, Castlevania and Metroid.. Maybe Mario from the shear man hours put into it.