Lunar 30th – Interview 2: Noriyuki Iwadare – Carpe Ludum – Eidolon's Inn

Noriyuki Iwadare is a veteran composer of video game music. In addition to his work on Lunar, he became known for his early Mega Drive works Gynoug, Gleylancer and Langrisser (Warsong) in the 1990s, and later for his compositions for all three Grandia titles in the 2000s.

Carpe Ludum: Iwadare-san, what memories do you have of the development of LTSS for Mega CD?
Noriyuki Iwadare: The biggest challenge was the very limited playing time for CD music given the size of the game. This forced us to make the tracks very short. The four of us worked together. Fujioka-san, Mizoguchi-san, Kubodera-san and I divided the songs between us. I composed the opening song, the closing song, the battle song, the village song, the moon theme and other main songs, but the rest of the team (who are older than me) also wrote great songs. The best memory is working with Kuboka-san, Shigema-san and the excellent staff at Game Arts. It was really exciting and a lot of fun. And I’m very happy that the music is still loved by people all over the world.

Carpe Ludum: Was the painful compromise in sound quality for the successor LEB for the Mega CD a curse or a blessing for you?
Noriyuki Iwadare: RPGs require a really large number of songs, LEB had over 100 songs. When the sound manager at Game Arts (Kamijo-san) said, “Four hours of music is fine!”, I was very moved and thought, “Now I can make as many songs as I want! I was happy and grateful to be in a situation where I could compose songs without thinking about the recording time, like when I was at LTSS. Under these conditions, I was always excited to see new scenarios and new storyboards and to compose for them.

Carpe Ludum: How did the completely new soundtrack for the LTSS remakes come about?
Noriyuki Iwadare: Music sets the style of a game, and when you have several composers working on a title, there are bound to be slightly different styles. This can be a good thing, but I think it’s better to have a consistent style. We decided to rethink the music for the new consoles from the ground up, which resulted in a number of great songs. For me, the only one that worked perfectly was Lunar: Silver Star Harmony, which I highly recommend. Even Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete had some limitations.

Carpe Ludum: Can we hope for a Lunar 3?
Noriyuki Iwadare: It’s very difficult to continue a game with high expectations and possibly exceed them. We know that the whole world has been waiting for it. The expectations are so high that it’s hard for the developers to say: “Let’s do it!” I also know that it is difficult to tackle this in the current situation. However, I would personally like to be involved in the production of Lunar 3 if it comes to fruition. It would be important to get the original team back together. Otherwise, players would feel that it was something different.

Carpe Ludum: We really liked the Twelve Doors CD from 2020 with chamber music remakes of your works from Lunar, Grandia and others. What’s next for you?
Noriyuki Iwadare: For Nintendo, an RPG called LOOP 8; Langrisser Mobile will be celebrating its third anniversary; and an indie RPG called God Shard Chronicles. I will announce new projects as soon as possible on iwadarenoriyuki.com and the social media sites linked to it.

Carpe Ludum: Iwadare-san, thank you very much, all the best and stay healthy!