Hip-hop, J-pop, and electronica slamming together on a DS cartridge in 2008. The World Ends with You by Takeharu Ishimoto threw out every rule about what handheld game music should sound like. Twister is permanently lodged in my brain, that vocal hook over crunchy beats is just infectious across every remix on here.
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Calling goes full vocalist pop-rock and sounds like it belongs on a Shibuya 109 playlist. Then Emptiness and pulls everything into this quiet, aching space that actually hurts. The whole thing sounds like Tokyo at night.
If you played this on DS and never grabbed the soundtrack, you've been missing half the reason that game felt so alive.