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Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX Soundtrack: A Nostalgia Bomb

It’s no mystery why the music in these dungeons hits right for players of the original game.

A few weeks ago, at an event held by my school’s gaming club, the topic of the music of video games came up. Considering the makeup of the club (an overcrowded room of undergraduate Nintendo fans), odds are it was in reference to a song someone wished was in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. But, as video game music conversations with me in them usually do, it ended up devolving into a discussion of a series with iconic and memorable music, which served largely as the soundtrack to our childhoods: Pokémon.

Now, everyone has their favorite Pokémon soundtrack – for many people, it’s whatever their first game was (although you can read about my favorite Pokémon soundtrack, that of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, in this article). Of the main series for people my age that usually means Diamond, Pearl, or Platinum (DPPt). So, one of my friends thought to bring us to a brighter time by playing the Route 209 theme on their phone. This, of course sparked memories of happiness, of exploration, and, you know, just kid stuff (until I ruined everything by humming Green Day’s 21 Guns over it). At which point, another person chose to play the theme that plays in the Champion’s room, followed of course by Cynthia’s theme. If you played DPPt early on, that piano intro is when you knew you were in for a bad time (see also: Giorno’s theme from Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure). This created an almost tense reaction, a combination of our good memories of childhood and also our nearly PTSD-worth experiences with Cynthia’s Garchomp. Another of our club members, seizing the situation, said something to the effect of “you thought that was pain-inducing memories?”, and turned on something the people who’d played that game had an even tenser reaction to – PMD2 (Explorers)’s Temporal Tower theme. I countered with Amp Plains from the same game, and we went back and forth for a while like this, laughing and having fun as we relived joyous and painful memories in equal measure together.

This brings us to last Friday and the release of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX for the Nintendo Switch. Now obviously we’ve heard remake soundtracks before – in the time I was playing, HeartGold and SoulSilver came early on, while Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire followed much later. But none of those struck me quite the way the DX soundtrack did. And so, I sought to seek out why this could be.

The conclusion I reached was that there’s a few big reasons for that. The first is the sheer impact the game that inspired DX, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red and Blue Rescue Team (for the GBA and DS, respectively)’s soundtrack, composed originally by Arata Iiyoshi and Atsuhiro Ishizuna. This is done through broad, sweeping, adventure-y pieces that filled the player with an amazing sense of what was going on. Like in my analysis of PMD2’s music, PMD1 (Red and Blue Rescue Team)’s music adds to the plot itself and the events occurring rather than simply providing nice background for an otherwise mostly peaceful adventure you might find in the main series. The other big reason is that lead composer Keisuke Ito designed and composed the minimalistic re-compositions of PMD DX with nostalgia in mind, and it rings through for the entire soundtrack (and the rest of the game, for that matter). So, I’d like to discuss a few of my favorite pieces to show how they accomplish this amazing nostalgic overflow.

Also: Unlike in my last article on PMD music, this one will have as few plot spoilers as I can manage while making my points. Oh and also I’m using Blue instead of Red because I might as well take the best I can get. And as a follow-up, PLEASE listen to all this music in-game, as it sounds so much better than the ripped version I have here.

Mt. Thunder

Blue Rescue Team:

Rescue Team DX:

To start with an excellent example of the point I’m trying to make, let’s start with Mt. Thunder. As the biggest and scariest dungeon of what I tend to call “Act I” of Rescue Team (that’s not an official designation, just something that tends to happen in fiction), the music takes a turn for the ominous early on with the stereotypical ominous instrument used whenever you need a sudden “spook” in your music. That, of course, is the church bell. Comparing the old and the new, the first and most obvious difference on note 1 is that it’s very clearly a synthesized Nintendo DS bell sound in the original, while DX opts for a more real-sounding bell. This becomes even more noticeable around 30 seconds in when the choir picks up. The main melody and high pitched piano parts in the new version are all totally revamped despite playing the exact same notes. This creates a memorable trip for those acquainted with the original, while still sounding modern enough that it fits in a game released in 2020. However, pay close attention to the low, scratchy, repeating synthesizer that’s underscoring and pacing the piece, providing the role normally played by drums or another percussion instrument (until like the ACTUAL drums emphasize it around 1 minute in). Compare that line to the original, and you may notice that it has the exact same line with seemingly the same synth. That particular noise is also used by PMD2’s Amp Plains, but as a main instrument, to represent the crackling of thunder. Fitting, considering its origins here on Mt. Thunder.

Great Canyon

Blue Rescue Team:

Rescue Team DX:

In one of the original’s most iconic pieces, you and your partner must journey through a canyon for Plot Reasons. It’s actually like the climax of Act I so… point is the theme is like amazing, okay? Anyway, just listening to the remastered version you hear again the synth so prominent in GBA and Early DS-era music, this time promoted to the harmony rather than just percussion (since Great Canyon in particular uses actual percussion). This is one of the best examples of the primary way Keisuke Ito went about rearranging this game – taking all but one voice in the song and revamping it, while leaving one instrument playing exactly the same as in the original GBA/DS game. That voicing in particular is quite prominent in the remake’s first few seconds, but as soon as the dramatic flute enters, that’s when you realize you’re really playing a remaster. Gone is the mediocre GBA flute anyone who’s played the original game’s ears have been trained to expect, in its place is a beautiful orchestral flute. Thing is, said flute and the chorus that follows are underscored by the same GBA synth as we remember from over a decade ago. This really strikes a chord, connecting the old and the new seamlessly without being quite as grating as the GBA soundcard could be at times.

The Escape (formerly: Run Away, Fugitives)

Blue Rescue Team:

Rescue Team DX:

More well known by its original fan-translated name, this dramatic song’s official english name is now The Escape for some reason. I liked the old better. Ah well. In the game, this song serves as the opening theme of what I personally tend to call Act II of the game – a gauntlet of back-to-back dungeons with almost no rest in between and story dumps galore. It’s also a truly painful time to be a Grass-type. But, such is life, I suppose.

I bring attention to The Escape as it’s one of a very small handful of themes that deviate from the major pattern I talked about above – Ito chose to entirely remake it rather than reuse a handful of instruments. As this song is deeply symbolic of the mood at the time, I totally agree with this choice. Every single instrument is updated to modern standards and just makes the moment all that more satisfying. Additionally, it makes it stand out even more from the attachment to the old heard in nearly every track thus far. It is worth noting that the same is true for the track Escape Through the Snow, which is a more desperate variation of this theme that plays later in Act II.

Boss Battle

Blue Rescue Team:

Rescue Team DX:

And on the other side of the spectrum, the boss theme was selected to take the most from its original counterpart. It does this musically by having that good ol’ GBA synth take the leading role, playing the main melody for a vast majority of the piece. Instead, the backing harmonies are what get revamped. This isn’t my personal favorite of the remastered songs, but I can understand why they chose the boss fights, the memorable battles, to keep as close to the original as possible.

Sky Tower

Blue Rescue Team:

Rescue Team DX:

I’ve already made the main points I really wanted to make for this article, but considering Sky Tower is another example of them and arguably the greatest final dungeon theme ever, I feel like bringing it up here. Much like Mt. Thunder, it uses the melodic time-keeping synth rhythm from the original and redoes all the top layers up until a very snazzy GBA-esque techno breakdown just before the song goes back to repeat the A section to make it sound like a proper adventure theme. The bells, flutes, and everything else just come together to really make it feel like you’re flying through the skies, which really matches the dungeon’s cloud-hopping aesthetic and creates a fabulous wrap up to Act III and the main game.

Defy The Legends

Blue Rescue Team:

Rescue Team DX:

What sort of Rescue Team music article would I be writing without addressing this masterpiece? It so emphasizes the GBA origins in the verses, while reverting to a more modern feel with a proper keyboard riff in the the chorus. It’s such an amazing remaster and I just lack the words to describe it further.

Also I hope you like the triangle, because the triangle player went HARD on this one. Can’t blame them though. It’s fire.

Oddity Cave

Before we go, I want to just bring up a piece of music not in the original for the sake of not leaving out this amazing medley. Oddity Cave’s theme serves as a medley of themes from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity. G2I is the series’ black sheep, so to speak, but the music is still undeniably awesome, so getting to listen to a new version of all these amazing themes (thank you for the Great Glacier cover, Nintendo) without having to trudge through the mess that is G2I again is really nice! The remix here even adds that weird GBA synth that wasn’t present in the 3DS origins of this song, making it match up even better with the rest of the soundtrack.

In short, Keisuke Ito’s arrangement of the Red and Blue Rescue Team soundtrack strikes home so much because of how true it is to its origins without totally sacrificing a more modern orchestral sound. In this way, it especially caters to older fans hoping for a surge of memories from an older time, but doesn’t deter newer fans from this amazing remake of a great game.