14 Curated Videos
OST showcases, NES longplays, hardware explainers, chord analysis, Capcom NES retrospectives, and developer content related to Masashi Kageyama and Ghosts ‘n Goblins NES.
The complete NES chip music soundtracks by Masashi Kageyama and confirmed titles.
The complete Ghosts ‘n Goblins NES (1986) soundtrack composed by Masashi Kageyama. All stage BGMs, boss music, and jingles. The Stage 1 main theme, Graveyard theme, Village theme, and all subsequent stage music in sequence. Essential primary listening for any study of Kageyama’s NES compositional language.
Full soundtrack for the Famicom port of Black Tiger / Black Dragon (Capcom, 1990). Probable Kageyama credit - community and VGMPF sources cite his involvement on this Famicom port. The soundtrack demonstrates the same 2A03 five-channel approach as Ghosts ‘n Goblins NES.
Full soundtrack for Section Z (Capcom NES, 1987). Unverified potential Kageyama credit. Included for completeness of the Capcom NES era - the title is from the same internal production period and team context as confirmed Kageyama works.
Complete gameplay runs with audio — the Kageyama soundtrack heard in full context.
Complete two-loop run of Ghosts ‘n Goblins NES. The game requires completing the entire game twice - first loop unlocks the true final stage, second loop completes the game. The Kageyama score runs through both loops, heard in full gameplay context. The Stage 1 theme plays on every restart.
Analysis of GnG NES’s notoriously punishing difficulty - the hit detection, enemy placement, lives system, and two-loop requirement. Contextualises the soundtrack’s role: Kageyama’s music is heard on every death and restart, making it one of the most repeatedly experienced NES scores.
Retrospective and documentary content covering Ghosts ‘n Goblins and the Capcom NES era.
Gaming Historian’s retrospective documentary on Ghosts ‘n Goblins - the 1985 arcade original through the NES port and beyond. Covers the game’s cultural impact, its difficulty legacy, and Capcom’s creative decisions. Essential background for understanding the context of Kageyama’s NES composition.
Retrospective covering Capcom’s NES music era - the internal sound team including Kageyama, Tamayo Kawamoto, and other composers; the production context of 1985–1990; and the musical legacy of the Capcom NES catalogue.
Interview with Tokuro Fujiwara discussing the development of Ghosts ‘n Goblins - the game’s difficulty design philosophy, the NES port decisions, and the creative context that Kageyama’s music inhabited. Rare primary source for understanding the directorial vision behind the GnG NES project.
Side-by-side comparison of the original Ghosts ‘n Goblins arcade score (Ayako Mori, YM2203 FM synthesis, 1985) and the NES port score (Masashi Kageyama, Ricoh 2A03, 1986). Demonstrates that the NES version is an independent composition, not a transcription of the arcade music.
Technical explainers for the 2A03 APU and music theory analysis of Kageyama’s NES compositions.
Technical breakdown of the Ricoh 2A03 APU - the five-channel sound chip that constrained every Kageyama NES composition. Channel specifications, duty cycles, LFSR noise generation, DPCM limitations, and hardware quirks. Essential foundation for understanding the sonic palette Kageyama worked within.
Analysis of borrowed chords (modal mixture) in NES music composition - the harmonic technique central to Kageyama’s Ghosts ‘n Goblins Stage 1 theme. Covers how parallel-mode chord borrowing works in the context of the 2A03’s limitations and how it produces the unusual harmonic colour of the GnG NES score.
How NES/Famicom composers of the 1985–1988 Capcom era approached the 2A03’s five-channel constraint. Duty-cycle timbre variation, triangle bass construction, noise channel percussion techniques, and DPCM trade-offs. Direct context for understanding how Kageyama’s compositional decisions were shaped by the hardware.
Broader analysis of harmony and chord usage in NES chip music — covering how composers of the era used the 2A03’s limited channel count to imply harmonic depth. Famicom music community analysis of borrowed chord usage and modal mixture across the NES catalogue, with GnG NES as a representative case.
Demonstration of each 2A03 APU channel in isolation - pulse 1, pulse 2, triangle, noise, DPCM. Hearing each channel separately provides direct understanding of how Kageyama assembled the GnG NES soundtrack from these five distinct timbres. The basis for all NES music analysis.