Pokemon Red & Blue's 20 Year Old Soundtrack Still Rocks

Pokemon Red and Green were released in Japan on February 27, 1996 and September 28, 1998 in the US. Pokemon is a Role-Playing Game (RPG) in which a player will capture Pokemon and use them to fight to earn gym badges and become the region champion. The game was published by Nintendo and was available on the Game Boy. These games in 2004 would under go a remake for the Game Boy Advanced and as of today is available for the 3DS Virtual Console in its original form. I will be taking about the soundtrack from the original game not the remake.

The man responsible for the soundtrack of this game and all of the other Pokemon games is Junichi Masuda. Masuda has also directed 10 out of the 25 main series Pokemon games. He has been working for the Pokemon's game developer Game Freak since the beginning.  Throughout the companies rise he also has moved up to now be on Game Freak's board of director and is one of few employees that approves or rejects Pokemon designs. Masuda said with an interview with Game Radar that most of his Pokemon music was inspired by classical musicians like Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich and Gustav Holst. You can hear in the soundtrack the small classical sound to big orchestration pieces. I will be talking about some of the most memorable songs in this game, but because of its RPG nature the songs are short because when they play in game they will repeat because that is how the song is designed.

The first thing you notice when you turn on your Game Boy is Game Freak's logo and then the music starts and you see two Pokemon battling on the screen and its "The Opening Theme." The Pokemon, Gengar and Nidorino or Jigglypuff depending on the game version Red or Blue, are trading blows and the music builds as Nidorino or Jigglypuff goes in for a damaging attack. Right as the music finishes swelling and goes into the main theme the screen changes into the title screen. The music that plays before the title screen during the battle is intense and changes to triumphant on the title screen.

The next themes that I will talking about are all the different battle themes that exist in the game. The reason these songs are all together is because these songs all start the same. The battle theme that you will hear the most will be the "Vs Wild Pokemon Theme." This song will be play every time you run into a wild Pokemon in the tall grass. The next theme will play when you run into a fellow Pokemon trainer, 'Vs Trainer Theme." The last two battle themes I will mention are "Vs Gym Leader" and "Vs Last Battle Rival." These themes as I listed them go from least intense music to the extremely intense music of the final rival battle in the game, which is the toughest battle available in the game. All of these themes also share similar music ideas through them as well as how they start.

The last theme that I will be talking about is second most theme that you will hear throughout the game, the "Pokemon Center Theme." A Pokemon Center for those you who haven't played are places throughout the game that can heal your Pokemon to full health and revive them if they have fainted. The song is very sweet and almost nursery like music. This theme is the most memorable for me because I would constantly be here in the game because this healing was free.

Masuda has not repeated any of the battle themes throughout all of the Pokemon games and he wants to make them all feel special and distinct. This was one of the first series that I really feel in love with when I was younger and I still have affection for it today and with the next generation of Pokemon announced we can be sure that Masuda has a soundtrack ready to amaze. The original soundtrack is hard to buy but you can listen to it on YouTube or buy the remake version of it on iTunes. Thanks for ready everyone and keep rocking.