The Real Game Music Tapes

The Tomato Mart has cassette tapes with music from various YS games as prizes in the raffle.

But did you know that these cassettes actually have some real life roots?

It's very common nowadays for videogames to have a soundtrack CD to go along with the release, may it be as an included bonus in a limited edition or a standalone release later down the line.

Especially in Japan these have proven to be extremely popular. That trend isn't exactly recent at all however. Even deep in the 80s video game OSTs have been a thing and since the CD was still somewhat new, so a lot of them have been released on cassette aswell.

Sega was leading the arcade with not only quality gameplay and graphics but also with catchy and technically impressive music and so it was a no brainer that they eventually started releasing some of their now legendary works to be enjoyed outside of the games. Amoung those were of course the soundtracks from the games that Yu Suzuki made.

Original Japanese cassette tape releases from the late 80s

The two tapes above from the Sega Game Music series are the ones that match what you can get in Shenmue. Of course they look different and pack the whole soundtrack and not just a single track but they show clear signs of where the roots are.

The Outrun cassette was first released on December 21, 1986. That is only around two weeks after the start of Ryo's quest and makes it fit into place perfectly. The Tomato Mart could've easily given this out as an early release prize which would be a great promotion. But it wasn't meant to be and they decided to make a mock tape instead, maybe for legal reasons or just because the cassette in the game only has one track after all.

The After Burner tape is a bit more of an anarchonism as it was only released on October 10, 1987. 

Still, it is period correct enough and After Burner II itself was released around the same time and we all know that it can be found in Shenmue II.

 

There are no standalone releases for Hang-On or Space Harrier but the music of them is included within the three volumes of Sega Game Music, along with stuff from even more games. The Outrun tape has Space Harrier on side 2 and Vol. 2, wich has Fantasy Zone as the feature game, has Hang-On on it.

The cassette tape versions of these soundtracks are rather hard to come by and so were good photos of them. If you're interested in the details and how the tracks are arrangend check out the pages over at VGMdb.

Sega Game Music Vol. 1 - Outrun

Sega Game Music Vol. 3 - After Burner