I personally agree, and let's express this opinion in the right place at the right time

Don't think that much of Ys either, but Ys Origin is awesome. I love a few other Falcom soundtracks -- Zwei, Gurumin, VM Japan, Dinosaur -- but not bothered much with their other works.

Thanks for that Jets n Guns link, Angela. Awesome fun stuff. Heh, I seem to be listening to more and more Western VGM these days.

Also, no Gradius music recommended? Get the Gradius Arcade Soundtrack and check out everything. Everything's got its merits although I'd say Gradius II & IV might be more to your tastes and the classic Gradius III hopefully too.

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Gotta agree there. They used really competent arrangers and orchestras / bands too not just crappy illusionists like Konami did. I have to say most of their employees are damn good too and many of them (especially Koshiro and Shirakawa) have gone on to do amazing things. I still respect the original scores but they don't appeal to me as much as a lot of other classic game music.

Yeah me too...

Oh wait, we were talking about Ys and not Hitoshi Sakimoto...nevermind.

There's a link to a full soundtrack rip of Thunder Force VI over at the SEMO forums (check the fourth post in this thread). The sound quality is great, and I'm really beginning to enjoy the music. Its more electro-inspired than earlier Thunder Force music, but there's a fair share of hard rock in there, too. Overall I'd say its split 50-50 between electro/techno and hard rock, and although I feel the rock tracks are much better than the techno ones, there are some electronic gems there (like "STAGE02-B" by Tamayo Kawamoto). Let's hope for a physical release of this, so the I-only-listen-to-officially-released-VGM-CDs people can enjoy this one as well.

I also noticed a case of VGM plagiarism in this soundtrack. Tsuyoshi Kaneko's track "ORN EMPEROR 2" rips off an entire section from Akira Yamaoka's "Sky to the Ocean" from the Shin Contra OST. The guitars are a bit weaker, but some parts are exactly copied, riff by riff. Whatever you can say about that, at least the guy had the good taste to rip off the best.

After finally getting to play the game in the form of the Ginga Ojousama Densetsu Collection, I wholeheartedly agree: Sapphire is positively kickin'.

Does anyone have a high quality rip of the original redbook audio that they're willing to share?  I'd like to compare it to my own recording of the PSP version; see if the quality took much of a hit in terms of compression on UMD.

Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire Game Recording (PSP):
http://www.mediafire.com/?nwoylytjjng

EDIT: With thanks to Carl, he was able to provide the redbook rip here.  Mine or Carl's, make sure you give one of these badboys a listen.  It's freaken phenomenal.