Thanks for writing - to be honest, I doubt it. However, I’m sure that somebody has painstakingly transcribed a MIDI version of it. From that, you could boost it into a notation program like Finale/Sibelius and print off the parts. I can’t promise you that they’d be right, but you never know!

Let me know how it goes!
Cheers,
Kenley

Definitely Tomohito Nishiura. I own Dark Cloud 2 (Major fan of the OST) and some of tracks have a great resemblance to Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I myself haven’t purchased the game, but I will now because knowing that PL&TCV had Tomohito Nishiura as its composer.
Really enjoyed this podcast!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q4QXxtQmlc

And not quite the same, but still accordion-centric Queens from the first Dark Cloud:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEi8wPBx2SA

I’ve been a fan of his since the first Dark Cloud. And the games were good too.

Ben - if you want a Sakimoto episode, you may have a little bit of a wait, but it’s coming up. It won’t be the one coming out soon, but the one after that. Ben/Onto, sadly, it is not for FFXII - though, I do love the score to the game. It is quite “outside the VGM box” in just being more cinematically-scored rather than the formula of video game music (which I love, it’s just that FFXII is different). One thing that I love about Sakimoto is that he really knows how to work with orchestral tone colour… for example, the Imperial Theme and the theme of Archades… same melodic content, but totally different colour, you know?

Re: Piano books… I think that Squaresound.com has a pretty solid collection of music books. Most are Square, though… I’ll keep my eyes peeled
Josh - good call on the “Legend of Legaia”, I haven’t played too much of it, but I definitely remember it… PS1, right? I should get my hands on that… good find!

Keep it up, guys! Love to hear your thoughts!

By the way, I have noticed that quite a few of the comments deal not with the respective present episode but with the podcast in general- …

P.S. I loved the Metroid and Final Fantasy VII episodes!!

Another good show - I really enjoyed Professor Layton, and some nice accordions make it even better.
I wanted to share a thought that came to me recently in the car - there hasn’t been a show on Hitoshi Sakamoto yet, there? The obvious choice for a score to delve into would be FFXII, though he’s also done great work on the FFT series, Vagrant Story, Odin Sphere, and a bunch of other games… and I’ve just noticed he did the upcoming Valkyria Chronicles which I’m really looking forward to. As for musical concepts to tie in, one thing that’s always stood out about his work is how very orchestral it is compared to most video game music; less melody-driven, and more about swapping themes around through various instruments and creating appropriate moods. Anyway, just an idea for consideration.

Also, in a reply to an earlier comment of mine, you talked about picking up the piano scores for the Chrono games - they are indeed awesome. I’ve managed to collect sheet music books for most of the major Square games but haven’t seen much else out there. Have you come across any other piano books for game music?

@Jisho - Thank you for such kind words, the music community deserves an academic and down-and-dirty study of what these composers do and the medium to which the music serves. I wrote a very short work called “About ‘Into the Score’ - Thoughts on Video Game Music” at the top of the page (on the tab) and I think that it really speaks to that notion… speaking of that notion…

@secret bass - wow, long-time listener, thanks for sticking around AWESOME find with the Alex Ross commentary. I love that he talks about “Classical music isn’t what music is, it’s what composers do” and I think that concept really speaks to music from video games. It’s about applying ideas and mixing with them through time and style to create this incredible cutting-edge product, which he (Alex) is talking about in his narrative! I think that I’m going to pick up this book… thanks for the heads-up!

back @Jisho - yeah, all about the FFVII:CC… totally loved that game, really enjoyed the story, graphics, gameplay and engine and of course, the score. When it was first announced, I was really interested to see how the composer would mix the old with the new, but Ishimoto did a really nice job. I think that I’m going to do a show on it near the end of the year…
With regards to the Books of Ys, I juuuuuuust discovered them a little while ago, but haven’t played them yet. The music is wonderful, but I’ll have to play through it first!

If you’re interested, there’s a segment of Authors@Google where Ross gives a rather nice speech about the book here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOSZ4BqQ4Og

I highly recommend it.

I still think if you want to make your site “definitive” you need to cover “Ys: Book 1 and 2″ for the Turbo-CD. It’s interesting not because of any musical quality (although there is plenty to be had) but because it is one of the first games to use true cd quality sound on a home console. The really nifty animated opening is also a plus: check this game out if you have any desire to know more about the history of music in games and rpgs!

Were you saying your game of the year is “Crisis Core” btw?

Thanks for listening and yes, “Professor Layton” is one of my fave DS games too… put it down within a week… couldn’t put it down… unless I got stuck Thanks for the comment!