Turtle Power! A behind-the-scenes look at TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge soundtrack

blog.playstation.com:

As a kid born in the mid-80s, a lot of my childhood was spent watching cartoons, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was my favorite morning show. I loved everything about it: The action, the colorful characters, the over-the-top voice acting, and of course, the music! TMNT was just everywhere. It was a huge part of my youth, so I was over the moon when this opportunity came along.

The first theme I composed for TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge was Big Apple 3 PM, and it was born out of pure excitement when I was first invited to score the project. Cyrille Imbert of Dotemu sent me some footage of early gameplay without music, and as I watched it repeatedly, with the biggest smile on my face, I began hearing a song for it inside my head. I immediately got to work and after an hour or so, I had a draft to show the Dotemu and Tribute.

This first draft was a basic proposition for the soundtrack’s general aesthetic, which I thought was very in line with the game’s philosophy – the goal was to dive into the golden era of TMNT, gather up some of the most memorable elements from all of the different media available then, and bring them back in a creative and modernized package. It would contain lots of fun references for that sweet nostalgia, but also be its own thing and introduce fun new concepts to the series, all within that ’80s and ‘90s palette of genres and sounds. Fortunately, everyone was on board with the style, and thus began this musical journey!

I fleshed the song out a bit for early integration so we could test it in-game, and this is what that sounded like:

It immediately sounds fuller by introducing a bunch of new elements and a new section. At this point, I had already started some of the other songs on the soundtrack, and