http://www.otakon.com/guests.asp

That's what I get for half-assing the convention this year (I'm headed down tomorrow...this is my first time checking the site to see what was going on). No autograph session, but I'm still going to bring my copy of Lost Files and hold it up during the whole Q&A session and try to get it signed (don't have my Seiken 2 or 3 or Soukaigi soundtracks on me...DAMN!) I know Yura has been to Otakon before (I think with Sakimoto? not sure...I don't follow or particularly care about Eminence).

That was a pleasant surprise, going from "yay, another Otakon tomorrow" to "Holy cow, Hiroki freaking Kikuta is gonna be there!" Hope I can get into the building before the Q&A starts.

You should bring Nice Life as Wife and have him sign that instead.

Seriously though, me of 10 years ago would have canceled all of my plans for tomorrow and forced my way into Otakon to meet him and have him sign my SD3 cart.  I miss me of 10 years ago.

Ten years ago I was working retail part time (full time during the summers), Perfect Dark was only a few months old, I had just gotten a Dreamcast for Double Impact, the tech bubble had only started to pop, and I was about to enter my senior year of college.

Me of today is supposed to spend tomorrow caulking the bathtub, cooking for myself, and then working my second job.  Man, that's depressing.  Thinking about it when I'm this tired probably isn't helping either.

If he produced something of substance more than once every 10 years I think people might be more interested.

Oh man!  Last year was the first Otakon in about 5 years I didn't go to since I was busy with other stuff.  Since friends moved out of the area I had no one to go with this year so I didn't even bother to look at the guest list.  I would have loved to see Kikuta and have him sign my Soukaigi and/or Concerto Gate OSTs.

...Now I'm sad.

The same could be said of nearly all VGM composers nowadays, though.

Edit: Does anyone know if there was a backstory to the six Mysterious Story of the Island of Souls tracks on Lost Files? Unfinished game or anything? Might be a good Q&A question.

http://www.gamersadventure.com/otakon/somostsigned.jpg

I wish I had thought to make an audio recording of the whole thing on my camera.

I remember you asked a good question about Lost Files, GoldfishX, but I can't remember all of the details. I know Kikuta was asked in general about lost songs that might not have made the cut like the unreleased tracks from Chrono Trigger, and he basically said that he doesn't do more work for a soundtrack than is necessary, and that's its important to always have new ideas. If he can't remember a song that he thought of then it probably wasn't a good song in the first place.

Kikuta was asked about his favorite song from Secret of Mana and said it was the theme for the sprite, Popoi. He didn't know the English translation of the song but it was played and its track 10 on the soundtrack. It was the first song he composed for the game and he said it set the theme for the game.

I got to see the opening animation Eminence worked on during closing ceremonies, and the song had a good vibe to it to get me pumped up for Otakon, and its a good theme for the convention.

Sounds pretty awesome. :) Kikuta seems like a really nice guy, especially in comparison to how a lot of other game industry people interact with their fans.

So wait a second, the Secret of Mana characters actually have names? I don't think there were any names given in the US manual. *looks it up on Wikipedia* Randy, Purimu, and Popoi? Wow, it's so weird knowing they have official names after assuming they didn't after all these years. I'm half tempted to start up a game just to give them their real names. It's funny that the sprite's real name kind of rhymes with the name I'd always given him - Joey, since he reminds me of a baby kangaroo for some strange reason.

i always thought the sprite was a girl, and I always named her TRAMP

I wasn't able to make it to Otakon in time for the panel (plus I didn't feel like paying just to get in for that), so I'm not sure what types of questions were asked. Sounds very interesting though. I did manage to get my Secret of Mana and Deathsmiles Arrange Album signed though (had a lot of other things signed when i met him in Germany last September). Good times!

Mak, I got the same little drawing when he signed my Lost Files. I'll upload my pics a bit later. I also got a couple pics with him (the singer girl snapped the pics down in the dealers room). I saw Discoalucard (Kurt) in line for the panel and he had the motherload of Mana goodness  (soundtracks for SD2 and 3, 2 SD3 carts and I think a Secret of Mana cart) for Kikuta to sign. Hope he found him in the dealer's room, lol.

The Island of Lost Souls tracks were to a fighting game that Square was apparently supposed to put out, but apparently got canceled . I think I worded my question, "Can you elaborate on the Lost Files album and specifically, the six Island of Lost Souls tracks", but I think the translator only picked up on the part about the Island tracks, because the answer was really detailed. He didn't really pick out anything else (Yura was saying something about a version he recorded that didn't make the cut and was only available at Otakon...I wasn't sure which track he was talking about).

I actually heard him say he did over a hundred tracks for Seiken 2, but only about 40 or so made the cut. I was surprised how long he said it took to compress his music for the SNES. 1 day to compose, 7 days to compress. Wonder what a "full" version of the Seiken OST's sound like. Hmm...

And that one dude from OCR got a really kick-ass gift from Kikuta: A copy of the Seiken 3 OST with his own personal artwork on it. Yowza!

Yura was funny. He kept ripping on Activision (or was it just Blizzard?) and the "other" Mana games (I'm guessing he meant to say "Dawn of Mana" and not "Legend of Mana"? lol). But yeah...I haven't even seen the Otakon opening animation thing yet. With all due respect, that 3-person Q&A was the Hiroki Kikuta panel basically.

ARGGHH no I got called out of the panel by some friends because of that whole fire incident and didn't go back because I thought they'd be in the dealers room later -- they even said as much. They weren't, and the official Otakon staff table had no idea who they were. The closest I could find was a little piece of paper of how to order that opening animation music CD off the Eminence website. Oh well.

It appears he scores a new title of Shining series, so perhaps you'd be interested.

in the music, of course, not the game

*sigh*

what

www.instantrimshot.com

Speaking of Shining Hearts music, you can listen to a sample on the teaser site:

http://bit.ly/aGnWhZ

Sounds nice. Extracted MP3

I was going to have an interview with him one on one, but jetlag prevented that. That and the fact that I was the only press outlet that requested an interview with him (surprising!)

I wish I had gone to the panel, but I was too busy planning for my other interviews and suchlike.

Thanks for telling me about the panel. I'll have to remember to have redundancies in the future when it comes to interviews.

Did he look tired during his panel?