GigaMaidens Musical Sampler #1

As you know, GigaMaidens has been in development for a while. Over that time, we developed the game piecemeal with lots of different things being focused on at the same time – from art, to 3D models, to animations, to code, to music.

Developing the game in chunks this way wasn’t exactly ideal, and in the end, it didn’t yield the result I wanted, necessitating a “Plan B” approach towards getting the game funded, which I’ve talked about a couple of times by now.

But in the end we did create a lot of assets and groundwork code for the game, and it was a great learning/networking experience. Something else really fun came of it as well.

This month a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game came out – one I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. And you may know the composer of this game, Tee Lopes, who prior to his breakout work on Sonic Mania was a smaller indie composer, who previously did tracks for indie games, Youtube channels and Sonic fangames. Now he’s working with the likes of the honest to god Wu Tang Clan and Faith No More, and it’s starting to look like he’s left the indie game scene behind – hopefully not for good though.

It may come as a surprise, but I was actually able to scout him to work on some GigaMaidens music a while back. This happened years ago, and it was actually fairly simple to reach him back then, as he wasn’t nearly as busy as he is these days. Since these days he has moved up to working on big licenses like Sonic and TMNT with actual celebrities it seems like it may be a hard sell to get him to come back to more humble indie projects like this, but hopefully I’m reading that wrong and we will be able to work together again.

This happened quite some time ago, BEFORE Sonic Mania came out – so the exact details of our first meeting is still kind of fuzzy to me, but as I recall, Tee was an incredibly sweet and gracious dude from the first moment we spoke. He agreed to compose some tracks for the game and worked with me closely on them, as I explained what I wanted the general attitude and tone of the songs to be like. I wanted music that called to mind a Dreamcast-era game audio aesthetic, and gave him a bunch of example songs that I thought fit the mold. I also gave him details on the characters themselves, telling him about their background and personalities, what they fight like, and showed him concept art and other materials. Then I just left him to do his work, and well, he didn’t disappoint.

So today after having this track in my files for years I have decided, now that I have a blog, and with the game still a long way away from being finished, I may as well share what he made for me with all of you. It’d be a shame to have this great music locked away indefinitely, unheard by anybody, due to the protracted development of the game. So as a GigaJournal exclusive, please enjoy the first of several never-before-heard Tee Lopes songs, composed exclusively for GigaMaidens!

I present to you: Sachi’s theme!

I can’t remember the exact words I used, but I recall telling Tee that I wanted a sort of spicy heroic theme for Sachi that also has a slight melancholy about it due to her troubled past and stressful life. I wanted the theme to convey the plight of an incredibly skilled warrior who has been fighting the paranormal since she was a teenager – her personality is very temperamental and mean, but she cares about people, even if nobody cares for her. She is long past the point of even thinking about ceremony or reward, and only cares about doing the right thing no matter what anyone else has to say about it.

Hope you enjoy the music! I’ll be sharing a few more GigaMaidens music tracks over the coming weeks in future blog updates, so please stay tuned.