What ties a musical style to a region?

[Drag]

Virt is great, but he is a modern composer, unfortunately he wasn't around back then.

I know, it's a complete shame. The NES doesn't exactly have an abundance of American-produced games either. I only know two off the top of my head, StarTropics 1 and 2, and they only really stick out to me because of how spectacularly they're coded.

Jazz and blues techniques were definitely used in japanese NES games, the first that comes in my mind is Earthbound, but it was probably used somewhere else too.

Of course! Jazz and blues aren't exclusive to America, you know. However, I believe you'd find a lot of jazzy sounding stuff if you rounded together all of the American VG composers who would've been around back then.

Of course, if you did that now, you'd find a lot of hip hop, and even then, hip hop isn't exclusive to America either. Kazumi Totaka can make some nice hip-sounding stuff; the sewer stages in Yoshi's Story, and the credits theme of Luigi's Mansion (and a few other songs in there) for example.

Mark Van Hecke

I like his music particularly due to his ability to take pre-existing themes and twist them into bigger compositions and varieties. The only downfall is that his music was mainly featured in some pretty mediocre games.

Back in my hayday, I was a fan of Thomas Mogensen (Drax), and a lot of the stuff Vibrants did. Thomas specifically had a pretty nice jazzy style that I identified with fairly well. Most of this was in Denmark though, so these are European composers. However, despite being European, I don't remember much techno-style music.

[tepples]

Kazumi Totaka can make some nice hip-sounding stuff; the sewer stages in Yoshi's Story, and the credits theme of Luigi's Mansion (and a few other songs in there) for example.

But then listen to all the K.K. songs in Animal Crossing to hear how much Mr. Totaka's range can vary.

[FinalZero]

Disclaimer: I know nothing about music or music theory.

What does the music in NES RPGs sound like? Are they eastern, western, or have elements of both? How are composers like Nobou Uematsu and Koichi Sugiyama organized/treated?

[Shiru]

Sound style in Japanese RPGs is definitely eastern, but music genres and styles they employ could be of any roots, because their goal is to create certain atmosphere for a certain location.