2025 is the year we finally get to play Yuzo Koshiro's Mega Drive shmup Earthion, and the famous composer and designer has revealed the title of the game's opening-level theme.
Koshiro says that the song is called 'The Vanguard Awakens', and admits that he broke with tradition for this game, naming the track at the point of composition rather than at the end of development, when "I or someone else mostly [names songs] when the OSTs [are] released."
"2025 marks a memorable year as the first time I, who’ve never named my songs when I wrote them, have named Earthion’s 1st stage theme while writing it," says Koshiro. "I start by making music in Cubase using the MAmidiMEmo plugin to create mock-ups. Then I convert it to MML with some tools, edit it in mmlgui, [and] tweak the details. Finally, I convert the data into a format that the real MDSdrv running on an actual MD can handle."
He adds that he has "already completed all the stage songs, the boss theme, and some smaller tracks, except for some minor tweaks. But I’ll probably remake the stage 2 song if time allows, as it doesn’t meet the level I’m aiming for since it was one of the first tracks I created."
Earthion was initially supposed to launch last year, but was delayed into 2025.