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Celebrating the close of its most prolific decade in the video game business, and the company’s own 35th anniversary, Namco turned an ensemble of musicians loose on musical themes from the company’s legendary lineup of arcade games. Whether or not every resulting reinterpretation of those themes is successful is really in the ear of the beholder, but at the very least they’re all interesting new takes on the simplest of old favorites.

That simplicity is really the fascinating wild card of the This Is Namco! album. Some of these tunes hail from such an early period of video game sound that they barely even qualify as polyphonic. In some cases, with just one line of melody and perhaps one line of counterpoint to work from, the artists were free to layer their own improvisations onto the music freely, from rhythm to harmony. “Pac-Man A Go-Go” takes the simple intermission music from that game and turns it into a bouncy, brassy horn-and-sax jam. “One O’Clock Galaga ‘88“, on the other hand, takes thematic material from that game and reinterprets it in a Benny Goodman-inspired style.

The boldest experiment on This Is Namco! is “Solo Suite Xevious No. 1″, which rearranges music from that seminal game into a piece for solo violin. Considering that the original music consists of intricate, fast-moving, almost hypnotic passages, that it actually works is almost surprising. The other pieces on the album, all arranged by Kenichiro Isoda and Kenichi Mitsuda, vary in how much they lean on the original game music. “One O’ Clock Galaga ‘88” is actually a good example of not relying on the original music very heavily at all, merely using it as a springboard.

This Is Namco! is a nice exercise in using the most basic of material for inspiration and coming up with something that, while the resemblance is still there, is on a whole different level.

1. Pac-Man A Go-Go (5:07)
2. One O’Clock Galaga ‘88 (3:36)
3. Mappy’s Lullaby (3:53)
4. Dragon Spirit (6:28)
5. Solo Suite Xevious - No. 1 (2:41)
6. Tarosuke In Beijing Hotel (6:30)
7. Main Theme From Rolling Thunder (7:29)
8. Thunder Ceptor (4:23)
9. The Return Of Ishtar (3:24)
10. Ending Theme From Assault (5:22)

Released by: Apollon / Compusic
Release date: 1990
Total running time: 48:53

Rocketed through the usual licensing hurdles in what may be record time for a TV soundtrack album (usually the process takes at least a year after the show’s premiere, but in this case it was a mere few months), the first soundtrack from the weekly hour-long episodes of the new Battlestar Galactica is as near-exhaustingly visceral to listen to as the show is to watch. Nimbly leaping from ethnic polyrhythms to warlike martial drums as the situation demands, and sometimes layering one on top of the other, the action cues from this selection are some of the best I’ve heard, period - “Starbuck Takes On All Eight” is unrelenting enough to make one break a sweat while listening at a dead standstill. “The Olympic Carrier” delivers a cleverly literal treatment of the motif of the episode 33, dropping back to a ticking time-bomb of a strict one-beat-per-second meter as the action approaches its climax. And if Cylon sex scenes are your thing, grab “Two Boomers” and make yourself a sandwich (well, hey, it is an action scene of sorts…). It’s not a stretch to say that virtually all of the key action cues from the first season are represented here - if that’s what you’re looking for here, you’re not going to walk away disappointed.

It’s not all in the action cues, though. Tracks such as “Forgiven” and “Two Funerals” lend the show’s moments of human drama a lot of their weight, while “Helo In The Warehouse” is positiviely eerie. The miniseries isn’t forgotten either, with clockwork-like tuned percussion serving as a signature for the Cylons (and specifically Number Six) in tracks such as “Baltar Speaks With Adama”. Many of the pieces, while they still touch on the miniseries’ Mediterranean sound, also demonstrate a shift toward a somewhat wistful Gaelic sound. And after having grown accustomed to the show’s avoidance of the leitmotif-heavy Wagner-by-way-of-Korngold-by-way-of-Williams scoring that’s commonly associated with filmed science fiction, hearing a full-on orchestra is almost a shock to the system in “Passacaglia” and “The Shape Of Things To Come”, the latter dedicated to composer Bear McCreary’s late mentor, Hollywood great Elmer Bernstein. There’s another unexpected instrumental surprise with “Flesh And Bone”’s guitar work. A fun handful of source cues appears as well, some with lyrics, and you’ll probably be interested to read the translation of those lyrics in the liner notes.

And while the new Battlestar Galactica has escaped the “Star Wars Lite” style that both distinguished and occasionally hampered the original 1970s incarnation of Galactica, it’s interesting to hear that themes do emerge. Characters and even concepts have their own musical and, occasionally, rhythmic signatures. But it’s more subtle than what you may be accustomed to. After years and years of this genre, and really, a lot of other genres, being represented by droning orchestral and synth chords, it’s a treat to hear barrages of military percussion, talking drums, wailing vocals, and what honestly sounds, in a few cases, like large pieces of metal slamming together (as cathartic as it is to listen to some of these pieces, it’s got to be at least that much fun to be performing them!). The new Galactica demands a visceral, pulse-pounding sound, and Bear McCreary and his small army of musicians deliver it in spades. If the first episode of season two is anything to judge by, I’ll go ahead and leave an open space for the season two soundtrack. No rush, though - I’ll be listening to season one for quite a while yet.

1. Prologue (0:28)
2. Main Title - U.S. Version (1:02)
3. Helo Chase (1:29)
4. The Olympic Carrier (5:39)
5. Helo Rescued (0:59)
6. A Good Lighter (1:52)
7. The Thousandth Landing (3:04)
8. Two Funerals (3:22)
9. Starbuck Takes On All Eight (3:44)
10. Forgiven (1:28)
11. The Card Game (3:01)
12. Starbuck On The Red Moon (1:58)
13. Helo In The Warehouse (1:59)
14. Baltar Speaks With Adama (1:52)
15. Two Boomers (1:46)
16. Battlestar Operatica (2:33)
17. The Dinner Party (3:12)
18. Battlestar Muzaktica (1:41)
19. Baltar Panics (1:44)
20. Boomer Flees (1:14)
21. Flesh And Bone (4:04)
22. Battle On The Asteroid (6:50)
23. Wander My Friends (2:55)
24. Passacaglia (5:13)
25. Kobol’s Last Gleaming (2:47)
26. Destiny (4:42)
27. The Shape Of Things To Come (2:53)
28. Bloodshed (1:46)
29. Re Cap (0:34)
30. Main Title - U.K. Version* (1:06)

Released by: La-La Land Records
Release date: 2005
Total running time: 78:33

* The U.K. version also appears to be the main theme for season two on the Sci-Fi Channel in the U.S., though without the rapid-fire clip montage set to a furious battery of drums; a similar (but far more drastic) editing fate also seems to have befallen Sci-Fi’s other major original series, with Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis having had their opening title sequences trimmed down to 10-15 seconds each.