One of the coolest projects that I've done recently was a Sony Playstation game that was only released in Japan called "Gundam 0079-The War for Earth". For non anime fans, Gundam is an animated tradition in Japan with generations of fans. Very similar to Star Wars in America, the Japanese revere Gundam highly and it is very much a cultural icon. It was a great honor for me to do the score to this game because it was the first time that the Japanese allowed an American company to touch the Gundam name. In fact, rumor has it that George Lucas tried to do a live action movie of Gundam several years ago, but was turned down.
The game is made up of mostly 3D animated action sequences, and that allowed for a very dramatic 35 minute orchestral score. Unfortunately, I came into the project late in the production schedule, and ended up having to write the whole score, create the sound effects, process the V/O, localize for Japanese distribution (the video was recorded in English) and create the final master in about 2 months. I worked 14-18 hours a day for 2 months straight, and although I know where the weakness are, I came up with a production that I'm very proud of. Here are some examples from that project.
This is the actual intro to the game. It gives the background to the plot and sets up the mood of the game.
This is my favorite fighting sequence of the game. This is where you're in the hanger of the Thor Cannon that you're supposed to blow up, but you get intercepted by a Dop Warrior (a large robot looking beast), who is guarding the cannon. He attacks you with an electric whip as you're on a freight elevator and jumps down to throw you into the impending pit of flames. Instead, if you do all of the steps correctly, you slash him with your beam saber and throw him into the pit and launch up and out to safety as the explosion from the pit wells up and destroys the cannon. The music at the end is Gundam's theme resolving into another plot twist.
This is a scene right after you have your first space battle with the villain of the story, Char Aznibul. If you survive the battle, you're badly damaged and Char flees, leaving Gundam to fall to earth and burn up in the atmosphere. The scene then cuts to earth where the enemy fires a blast into space from the Thor Cannon and damages the ship that Gundam is supposed to dock on, leaving the controller of Gundam no alternatives than to calibrate the cooling engines in order to fall safely to earth and not disintegrate in the atmosphere. The next shot is taken from Gundam's cockpit (which is actually the player's interface). A woman monitor chimes in to warn the player of the pending danger. Then the scene ends with the game interface sound effects.
