Soundtrack: Ghost Trick — the swing of possession, rewinding the four minutes before death

Introduction — the swing that plays first, the night you become a ghost

In a junkyard, the hero Sissel wakes beside his own corpse with no memory, and has until dawn to chase down the truth of his own death. In this possession-puzzle adventure Ghost Trick, which Komugi reviewed, the first thing to reach your ear is a walking bass, an electric piano and brush-stroked drums — a jazz that is a little noir and yet light on its feet. The tempo is medium, roughly — a touch faster than a walk, like the pulse of a late night spent chasing a culprit. It is a story about a tragedy, and yet the music keeps rolling along lightly.

It was written by Masakazu Sugimori, composer of the first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and of Viewtiful Joe. I have met him once before, in the Murder by Numbers piece. The original was the 2010 Nintendo DS version, 37 tracks in all. For the 2023 HD remaster the whole thing was re-recorded in arrangements by Yasumasa Kitagawa, and it is now available on the major streaming services.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (from the official Steam screenshots)

A puzzle-native trait — "four minutes before death," and a loop that waits

The puzzles in Ghost Trick are peculiar. Sissel possesses an object, triggers the single action it can perform (a bicycle tips over, a flag sways), chains those actions together, and re-edits the world of the four minutes before someone dies. Fail, and you rewind to "four minutes before death" and try again. Which means the music has to keep flowing under the long, motionless minutes of staring at the board, and under the fortieth retry alike.

So Sugimori's cues are short. They are jazz loops that come around pleasantly in a few bars and never wear thin on repeat. Rather than dropping one flashy hook, he leaves a light rise and fall inside the cycling bass and chords — the expression shifts just slightly, right before the ear tires. It never rushes your deliberation, never scolds your retry. The lowest bar a puzzle-game score must clear is "never grating however many times you hear it," and this one is designed for that from the start.

A hidden link to the experience — a re-recording, 13 years on, with Takumi in the room

What is interesting about the 2023 remaster is how the music was handled. Director Shu Takumi left the remaster itself to the development team, but personally supervised the re-arrangement of the music alone. It was his first time working with Yasumasa Kitagawa since The Great Ace Attorney, and he reunited with the original composer Sugimori, the team told Destructoid. The more you loved the original, the more you will notice that this re-recording is not a mere upscale but a "replaying" with the principals present.

The remaster adds exactly one new piece by Sugimori, "Ghost World." Producer Shingo Izumi said it is "a song that, just like its title, captures the mysteriousness and atmosphere of this world" (Destructoid) — meant to offer something new even to those who played the DS or phone versions. To that strange premise of possessing and moving objects, the composer gives an outline once more, 13 years later. A rare case of a mechanic-and-music bond being thickened after the fact.

The analogy to the puzzle — the rewind is a da capo

Here is how I read it. The tempo of solving Ghost Trick is a loop of "possess, set an action, watch the chain tick forward, and rewind if it fails." This is astonishingly close to the very structure of music that re-cues a groovy loop from the top, again and again. During the few seconds a chain advances, time is ticked out like a metronome; the moment you fail and return to four minutes before is the sign that sends you back to the head of the score — a da capo.

Silence suits the long deliberation of Stephen's Sausage Roll; a low drone suits the walking of COCOON. So what suits possession and rewind? The answer is a swing that survives being cued from the top. Cut it anywhere, restart it anywhere, and the beat stays alive; the sense of time moving forward is never lost. Sugimori's loops are woven, from the start, to be stopped and restarted. That is why, beneath a tragic countdown, the music alone gets to stay light.

Tracks worth hearing — from official sources

Start with the main theme: a melody bouncing over a walking bass, the game's calling card. Night, a detective and a little humor — all packed into a few dozen seconds.

"Chicken Paradise," which underscores the comic scenes, is a wisecrack of a track that lets a relentlessly tense story breathe. It is fun to hear as the design of pacing turned directly into sound.

And the remaster's new piece, "Ghost World" — a postscript 13 years in the making that offers the strangeness of this world like a single painting. All of these can be heard officially as the 2023 Original Soundtrack on the streaming services (see the links below). Please take them in through official sources, not unlicensed uploads.

In closing — what I'd steal if I were writing it

If I were writing music, what I would steal from this game is the resolve to compose on the assumption of being interrupted. Loops that survive being cued from the top, whose groove does not die wherever you cut them. Not one flashy stroke, but a cycle that endures repetition. Music that sits beside a puzzle's long deliberation and its retries is, more often than not, built on that single point. What makes you want to hear it again is not the swelling moment but the foundation that never grates however many times you return to it.

If you want to re-listen, pick a night when a deadline has you circling the same task again and again. Sound that stays light even when rewound works best in exactly those hours. To follow more of the same composer, head to the Murder by Numbers piece. If it is the possession-and-chain mechanic itself that caught you, go to the review of the game.

Reference links

・Steam: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective Original Soundtrack 2023 (official OST DLC)

・Steam: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (main game, CAPCOM)

・Destructoid: developer interview (Takumi & Kitagawa re-recording, new track "Ghost World")

・Wikipedia: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (music by Masakazu Sugimori)

・VGMdb: GHOST TRICK Original Sound Track 2023 (tracklist)

・RPGFan: Ghost Trick Original Soundtrack music review