As a kid born in the mid 80s, a lot of my childhood was spent watching cartoons, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was my favorite morning show. I like everything about it: The action, the colorful characters, the excellent voice acting and of course, the music! TMNT is just everywhere. It was a huge part of my youth, so I was too pompous when this opportunity came.
The first theme I wrote for TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge was Big Apple 3 PM, and it was born out of pure excitement when I was first invited to grade the project. Dotemu’s Cyrille Imbert sent me some clips of the original game without the music, and as I watched it over and over again, with the biggest smile on my face, I started hearing a song for it in the background. head. I immediately got to work and after an hour or so, I had a draft to present Dotemu and Tribute.
This first draft is a basic proposition for the overall aesthetic of the soundtrack, which I think fits very well with the philosophy of the game – the goal is to dive into the golden era of TMNT, collect some elements of the game. the most memorable elements from all the media available then and bring them back in an innovative and modern package. It will contain a lot of interesting references to that sweet nostalgia, but also its own thing and introduce exciting new concepts to the series, all within the palette of genres and tones. those 80s and 90s. Fortunately, everyone fits the style, and thus begins this musical journey!
I’ve added a little song to the integration soon so we can test it in-game, and here’s what it looks like:
It immediately sounds fuller by introducing a bunch of new elements and a new section. At this point, I’ve started some other songs on the soundtrack, and because those songs are a bit longer, I feel like I should stretch this song a bit for consistency. I added a little pause around 1:09 to let the song breathe for a while before repeating the action. At this point, guitars were still computer generated, and solo guitars didn’t exist yet.
Instruments are key to creating a bridge between classic and modern for this soundtrack. It sounds like a game from the early 90s, but in high fidelity this was not possible then due to hardware limitations. Many of the sounds used in the video game tunes of the day were sampled from popular record players, which were also a big part of Pop music. (editor’s note – A rompler is a synthesizer that has original audio presets based on audio samples). I realized that by using those kinds of sounds, I could realistically emulate the audio aesthetic of that era, even beyond video games.
I felt the mix was solid, but the song still sounded a bit thin to me, so I called Jonny Atma to put down some guitars. I sent him a reference and asked if he could improvise a guitar solo at around 1:19, and the next day he hit me back with this sentence:
When I showed the teams this version, everyone was amazed at the energy and weight that Jonny’s guitars added to the song. Delighted with their response, I went back to the lab and spent a few more hours polishing and fine-tuning as much detail as I could, before exporting it for final processing. I worked closely with talented sound engineer and composer Andrew One, who mixed and mastered the OST for the Streets of Rage 4 DLC a year ago. After a few days, here are the results of our joint efforts:
I hope readers enjoyed this brief look at the making of this soundtrack. It has been a real privilege and pleasure to be involved in this project, and to work with so many talented and passionate artists around the world to create this labor of love. Cowabunga!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is now on PlayStation 4. You can listen to the full original soundtrack. here.
