Man, what an awesome bonus. Whether you bought the North American or the Japanese version of Chrono Trigger for DS, early-bird purchasers (that is, those who preordered or picked it up in the first few days of sale) were treated to this mini-soundtrack as a bonus. It contains two tracks, performed by an orchestra, and arranged by Natsumi Kameoka. For those who don't recognize the name, Kameoka has been very active recently in the realm of VGM arrangement. Kameoka-san's previous work from this year includes Echoes of War (the Blizzard Entertainment two disc set from Eminence) and orchestration (alongside Yoko Shimomura) for the "drammatica" album. So, put simply, Kameoka is really good at orchestral arrangement.

Do I have complaints about this soundtrack? Oh yes! I know I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but at the end of the day, I want more of this. Don't you? Six minutes simply isn't enough. The main theme is only two minutes, and that's fair (especially because it's a superior arrangement to what was found on OGC5), but the medley could've been much longer. And when I say that, I mean it in two ways: 1) each chosen piece in the medley should've been longer, especially Frog's Theme; 2) more pieces should have been included in the medley. Alternately, they could've scrapped the medley concept and just done a full orchestral arrange album. Some VGM fans have felt this way since the beginning. Many people revile the "Brink of Time" arranged album, even though it's excellent jazz/fusion, because they wanted an orchestral CD instead.

So, Kameoka-san, and Mitsuda-san, can we have more please? This mini-album is truly excellent, but there are plenty of fans who would pay good money for a full disc (or heck, even a two disc set!) of Chrono Trigger orchestra music. Arrangements of songs written by composers other than Mitsuda would be good too (Uematsu and others participated in the game's original score). In the meantime, I guess we have this fine little disc to hold us all over.

Reviewed by: Patrick Gann