Y'know that rock theme that plays during Tales of the Abyss's opening/introductory anime scene, the anime scene that precedes the title screen?

Does anyone know if this song was actually pressed on an album? I know it's not on the original soundtrack, unfortunately (why not? Artist licensing issues?)

I'd like to get a hard copy of the album that has this song...anyone know which album it is, if it's even available?

You can find the two CDs including the "Karma" j-pop opening song simply by searching "Abyss" at gmronline.com...

Yeah, I already sampled those off of RPGFan's soundtracks sections, but those only have a vocal version of the song...with a sacrifice of the guitars to vocals... T_T

Was the instrumental-only version of the song "Karma" ever pressed onto an album, or is half of the original song vocal, then the other half instrumental only?

Eh, if you mean localised version of opening songs you need to state so. Since most official soundtracks are from Japan localised music mostly never makes it onto any CD release. Tough luck.

Yeah, I can't name the amount of "American opening/ending themes" for games I'd love to have on a official disc... Wild Arms and Mega Man Legends have great localized ending themes that have never and probably will never grace an official CD.

Oh, you're saying they just cut out the lyrics for the U.S. version to accomodate the xenophobes? *sigh* They couldn't have put an instrumental-only version on the single along with the vocalized version, could they? What a drag...not that I hate Japanese vocals, it's just that I've gotten so used to the instrumental-only version...

No. They don't put them on the soundtracks....because they aren't in the Japanese games. It's a really simple concept.

-Joshua

Why should they fine tune their products for a market they really don't seem too concerned about penetrating... it be a waste of resources if you looked at it from a business angle. I know of a few instances where they have they have modified products for other markets but it's always few and far between.

The US opening was specifically made for the US version of the game (and even none of the people who did the original track were involved), and that after both the Japanese game and the Japanese soundtrack were already released for a long time. Of course the newly made music can't travel back in time to be included on the already released Japanese soundtrack/single/whatever as well.

Ashley Winchester:

Hey, if you want the Wild Arms 3rd English songs (Wings, Advanced Wind and Only the Night Sky Knows, at least), I have them.  The singer, Samantha Newark, had them up on her site a while ago (oddly enough, marked as Dark Cloud 2 songs, which made it hard for me to find out what they actually were).  Haven't got anything for the rest of the series though.

Thanks for the offer but I'm not really big of fan of WA3's vocal themes as I am those that where in WA2 and I'm pretty content with what I currently own/have as far as WA music goes. Still, I personally have no problem listening to vocal themes with Japanese lyrics even if I can't understand them... a song can still be quite beautiful even if you can't understand a single word. Actually, sometimes a song feels pretty empty when they take the Japanese vocals out during localization... I honestly can't listen to WA2's "You're Not Alone..." without the vocals.

Like I said sometimes I wish extra tracks like localized opening/ending themes would make the soundtrack, but like it was siad above soundtracks are usually finished by the time localization begins.

Sure, just thought I'd offer.

I usually like to listen to both versions when I can.

Has anyone here played Tales of the Abyss? I actually was going to pick it up but never did as it came out around when FFXII and VP2 came out and I figured I blew enough money in buying those. It got some unflattering reviews but I got the vibe that some people were being a little over critical about it.

Best Tales game yet. I'm liking the characters and plot so far, probably the most serious and involved yet. Best thing, the characters are believable, and act and react just how you'd expect someone of their background to, without being too cliche about it. The voice-overs are excellent, they couldn't possibly sound more fluid or natural.

Seconded. The game is freaking excellent, the difficulity modes are great for people that think jRPGs are too easy, the visuals are breathtaking (not that polygon counts are high or something, but the artistic direction of some of the stages is staggering), the story's great if you're into anime.

Voices are great too, and if you somehow don't like them, there's a great UNDUB patch floating around.

Two bad things - skit's aren't voiced (but heck, at least they didn't dummy them like in ToE) and the loading time after fight on world map is massive.

Other than that, pure gold.