Music Monday: Panzer Dragoon Saga

I couldn’t resist listening to this spine-tingling choral piece at least once each time I loaded Panzer Dragoon Saga during the 30 to 40 captivating hours (over the space of what can’t have been more than about a fortnight) or so it took me to complete it.

Ecce Valde Generous Ale (or Behold the Precious Wings to translate it from the Latin) sets the mood perfectly for the sombre yet majestic, other-worldly atmosphere of Team Andromeda’s stunning 1998 fantasy RPG.

Saori Kobayashi and Mariko Nanba produced some extraordinary (mostly chip-generated rather than the real orchestra employed here) music for Azel: Panzer Dragoon RPG (as the game is known in its native Japan) – not to mention a host of other Sega works – although many of my favourite pieces from the series as a whole are still from Panzer Dragoon Zwei (1996), which used a different team of composers.

Turn your speakers up and let the timeless ethereal beauty of this one wash over you.

It goes without saying that a contemporary downloadable HD re-release of Panzer Dragoon Saga would be welcome, though the game’s director Yukio Futatsugi has gone on record as saying that the original code has long since been lost. In videogaming terms this is something of a tragedy, though fortunately there are still thousands of original copies still out there, though mostly in the hands of collectors with the Western versions fetching a high price.