Tawada’s Song

Pokémon as a franchise is fairly large. Not only does it have the main game series by Game Freak that churns out a game every two years at worst for a good while, it has a large number of spinoff titles to complement that list. It also has the anime series coupled with it. Given all that, one can imagine the number of staff working on the music of the series.

Among the bunch, there has been one music composer which has popped up on the credits list for a few spinoff games for Pokemon. He is Tsukasa Tawada. He’s been in the music business for the video game industry for many years, but a curiosity of his work that has only cropped up in Pokémon titles is a short tune that appears time and time again.

Previous Works

Tawada has had a range of employees. Pokémon has been probably the biggest in terms of name from the bunch, but he has done work as Sound Design for a few Dragon Quest games too, a series that is huge in Japan, and the Famicom version of the cult classic Maniac Mansion. He’s been involved in a lot of small projects (such as a poker game for the Game Boy, in which at least most of the work is just re-compositions of classical tunes), but he has also been noticed for his work in niche titles (such as ‘Ihatovo Monogatari’, a Japan only game that is unlikely to be known about by many, yet was remade by an orchestra in an event!)

Yes, that Slime.

His contributions in the Pokémon field span across four games, all for the same company in Genius Sonority. He composed all the music in the games Pokémon Colosseum, Pokémon XD and Pokémon PBR for the GCN/Wii, as well as Pokémon Trozei! for the DS. This stint may continue too – Genius Sonority are still active after all and may be called yet again to make another Pokémon game. He has over 100 unique tunes across all four games, and a number of ear worms are among them (although to be fair, it’s hard to beat out both of the Miror B themes he created among them!).

His music in the series can be best described as varied. He tackles a wide range of genres – he has for instance created techno, western, orchestrated, disco and salsa music, and often uses a mix of piano, strings and harmonica as instruments in his arrangements. Overall it’s a rather rich contribution, and rarely a dull moment in tune. But there’s one short motif that appears every now and again.

Tawada’s Song

It could be said to be akin to Totaka’s Song, which is not a bad comparison to make. Totaka is another famous music composer of various video games, having being credited for titles in the Mario, Legend of Zelda, Pikmin and of course, the Animal Crossing series – the latter even granting him a character named after him. He’s also been the voice of Yoshi and Professor E. Gadd, from the Luigi’s Mansion series.

Egads, it’s E. Gadd!

His tune is admittedly a bit more interesting than Tawada’s in that it has appeared in nearly every game he is known to have worked on, and only once per time. In fact, most of the times his song was deliberately hidden. Examples include waiting on a certain status screen or in a specific room for a specified amount of time (say a few minutes) before the tune will play. It’s quite possible a lot of his fellow developers may not have even known about it in some of the games!

Tawada by contrast has not had any hidden tunes in games (at least to our knowledge), but he does have his own reappearing motif. If anything, he has two; sometimes only one part of the motif can be noticed, while in other songs the whole part is within.

The part actually has two bits that occur over and over, sometimes by themselves and sometimes together in one go. Check out the video below which shows at least most of the songs that have them! There’s also a few other songs of his that have been remixed in other games which may be neat to compare as well.

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It’s not too surprising that it’s in the Opening Demo tune (ie the music that plays if you stay on the menu screen for too long), as that (along with the Credits music often done by Tawada) is a mix of other tunes. Then again, it’s not too likely that everyone waits on the menu screen for too long either. After all, all the fun Pokémon battling isn’t found there!

Pokémon XD:GoD was a direct sequel to Colosseum down to using the same region (with a number of extra areas), and so it also reused the same tunes (although some did have a few added details added to them). However, from the list of songs with this specific motif the Pyrite Building theme did not reappear in XD. What’s more, XD had the somewhat odd case of shuffling around tunes. What was the Cipher Admin theme in Colosseum became a Colosseum Final theme, for example, while the regular battle theme also got moved. This was an odd feature of the songs.

Usually the motif appear in songs a player would hear over and over again (like the Trainer Battle in Colosseum, or Sashay’s theme in PBR if you liked Little Cup battles), so it’s certainly not something that’s too hard to find. Perhaps if you find yourself playing one of these games again, you should keep an ear open.

And it’s clear that remixing tunes is a fun past-time of Tawada’s as well. I don’t think many can complain about Miror B’s overworld theme in XD being a neat disco remix of his famous Salsa music after all. Using a piece of a world map theme in a boss battle theme that extends to two minutes is rather obscure but clear enough once you compare them. However, if a player had started playing Pokémon Battle Revolution before Colosseum or XD then it would be very easy to miss the last remix done by him. It’s rare for someone to start a second game file, let alone pay attention to the music that plays when you choose your name.

There may be one other common trait between most of these tunes. A large amount are from tunes representing the opposition, or in Colosseum and XD’s case, Team Cipher. Pyrite Building belonged to Cipher in Colosseum, and the Cipher themes say as much in their name. Greevil was the Big Bad of Cipher in XD, and the motif also appears in the battle against Cipher’s Shadow Lugia, while Team Snagem was also an opposing force the protagonist had to deal with. Meanwhile, although Pokémon Battle Revolution has no story, the theme does appear in all minor boss themes and a major boss tune. Not a bad representation for the motif – eight out of twelve!

The last comparison in the video is an interesting case of a potential remix made of Tawada’s music by someone else from a different gaming company. The underlying beat and note arrangement for the bass matches uncannily well when examined, so it’s no surprise that many a comment on the similarities has been made before. If it was then it wouldn’t be the first time this happened – again, recall the fact an orchestra played one of Tawada’s video game tunes for an event. Maybe this was just a nice throwback from one of Game Freak’s employees to Tawada’s work. And I think that’s a nice gesture.

 

Written by bobandbill
Edited by An-chan, Bay Alexison and Jess.