Manabu Namiki's second self-curated WORKS album spotlights his score for Thunder Dragon 2, the 1993 NMK shoot-em-up that let him flex his FM synthesis muscles on arcade hardware. The entire soundtrack is built around a clever mirroring concept -- "Fly To Live" and "Live To Fly" themes alternate across stages, each variation shifting the emotional register while maintaining a throughline of desperate aerial combat energy.
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"Fly To Live I" opens with a melody that immediately lodges itself in your brain, and hearing it return for Stage 8 and the staff roll gives the whole game a satisfying sense of coming full circle. "Marginal Attack" is the clear showstopper, deployed for the Enemy's HQ stage where it delivers the kind of relentless, pulse-pounding FM work that Namiki would later become legendary for in the Cave shmup scene.
"Impatience #3" serves as the major enemy theme and lives up to its name with agitated rhythms that make mid-boss encounters feel genuinely threatening. The inclusion of "minus one" karaoke-style versions of several tracks, including unused cuts, gives a fascinating look at the compositional layers underneath.
The bonus arrangements round out the package beautifully. "Still live to fly" reimagines the core themes with richer instrumentation, while "Fly To Live -- Love Theme" strips things down to something unexpectedly tender.
For anyone interested in Namiki's evolution from early arcade work to the bullet-hell masterpieces he'd score later, this album is an essential missing link that shows his signature intensity was there from the very beginning.