Music of Wild Arms

All tracks were composed by Michiko Naruke, who would be responsible for the majority of the Wild Arms series' soundtracks in the coming years.[2] The music of Wild Arms is highly reminiscent of classic American Westerns and related films, which coincides with the game's setting in a fantasy world made to resemble the American Old West. While the tracks contains a number of synthesized instruments, recurring sounds include mandolins, acoustic and electric guitars, woodwind instruments, trumpets, and whistling alongside a score composed in a classical style.[3] Arrangement for each track was handled by Kazuhiko Toyama.[4]

The soundtrack contains a total of 36 tracks, representing less than half of all the total background music in the game.[3] All tracks are contained on a single disc, with the order and arrangement of the pieces being different than their presentation in actual game-play. Among the songs present are the original Japanese ending theme "Swearing to the Blue Sky" performed by Machiko Watanabe[5] that was not used for the North American or PAL region releases of Wild Arms, and "Clash and a Promise", which features a choral accompaniment by students of Tokyo's Keio University sung in Latin.[6]

All tracks were composed by Michiko Naruke, and lend themselves to the American West thematic present throughout the game. Like the Wild Arms Original Game Soundtrack, it contains a number of tracks representing a wide variety of synth instruments, with accompanying vocals on select tracks. Though the album houses all the music from its predecessor, it contains an additional 43 tracks of previously unreleased tracks.[7]

An additional production credit was given to Takeo Miratsu, who served as an arranger for certain tracks, while Michiko Naruke and Kazuhiko Toyama retained their roles as arrangers and primary album supervisors.[7] The track "Holy Mother of Darkness" contains addition choral music from Keio University's chorus, originally recorded in 1996 and released with the Wild Arms video game in Japan.[6]

Wild Arms Drama serves as an interpretation of various scenes from the original game, which itself featured only written dialogue.[10] As the album was only intended only for Japanese audiences, it is performed entirely in the Japanese language, with sound effects and background music added to increase realism. The album is divided into seven disproportionately sized chapters that take place at certain points throughout the original game, each one following events in the same order as they would appear in normal game-play, with extended and entirely new dialogue added to enhance the story. Background music featured on the album consists of unaltered tracks from the game's soundtrack, and sets the mood and location of each scene.

Originally meant to be the first part in a series of similar albums, Wild Arms Drama vol. 1 remained the only drama CD released for the original Wild Arms for four years until it was re-released in 2002 with the "volume" designation removed. This album later began the trend of issuing only a single drama album for successive games of the Wild Arms series.[11][12]