I’m very pleased to post an interview with Hyunjun Kim a.k.a. Justy, Music Director of Helicon SoundWorks and author of many beloved Pangya tracks. He has recently released a remix of one of his tracks (see New remix of Daydream by original author Hyunjun Kim (Justy/Helicon SoundWorks) released). I have got in touch with him thanks to that video, the result is this exclusive interview. Thanks for his time and patience in answering all the questions, you’ll find here quite a lot of new and interesting facts about our beloved game.
As a bonus I’m including some photos of the korean Ntreev offices in Seoul. They have been taken from my copy of the japanese Pangya 6th Anniversary Visual Book, released in 2010, and I have included the original captions for the photos. I apologize for the low quality of the scans; unfortunately, since they were printed on paper and some of them were very small, they had a strong moire effect due to the printing process. I have tried to fix them to minimize the effect, without compromising too much the quality, with the help of the G’MIC GIMP plugin (descreen and moiré filters), with mixed results. More fine-tuning and experiments would without doubt improve their quality.
Let’s begin with a foreword by Justy himself.
First, on behalf of the original creators, I want to thank you for all your hard work over the years. The fact that you’ve been playing Pangya from its very beginning right up until “now” truly astounds me with your proactiveness – when you hit a dead end, you simply forge a new path. And not only that, but you’re also running a community and a wiki! That’s an incredibly impressive self-introduction. One of the reasons I feel good about revealing myself recently is the thought that I can contribute, however small, to passionate individuals like you.
All the questions you sent were thoughtful and a pleasure to answer. Thanks to them, it was a delightful journey down memory lane. I wish you continued good health and look forward to hearing from you with more good news.
Interview
1) Could you please briefly introduce yourself to the Pangya Community readers? What is your current occupation?
Hey Pangya Community! I’m Justy (Hyunjun Kim), a composer living in South Korea. I was involved in creating various music for Pangya Online. It’s a pleasure to meet you all through this opportunity.
For quite a long time, I worked as a university professor, teaching composition and media music. However, I recently decided to wrap up that career chapter with a new purpose in mind and return to life as a full-time composer. Currently, I’m balancing my educator career, including mentoring in various institutional music-related projects, with my life as a composer. My recent goals include rediscovering my old works, creating new pieces, and advancing my game music career to a level I can personally be proud of. It’s been about two months since I, who had been living quietly, re-emerged online, and the fan interactions during that relatively short period have critically influenced the direction I’m setting. This interview also came about through that process. I’d like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to Varthall and the Pangya Community staff for creating such a wonderful opportunity for communication. It’s truly great to meet you all.
2) You were the Music Director of Helicon SoundWorks. When was this team created, and was it an internal Ntreev team or an external one under contract? I’m also curious to know if the name is derived from the brass instrument, or if it has a different origin.
Helicon SoundWorks was formed in 2001 by three members: myNoX, moai, and myself (in Korean style, that’s in order of age, haha). But even before that, we were close friends who were active together in an online chiptune community called ‘셈틀가락 (go adlib)’ within Hi-Tel, which was a major BBS service back then. The team name ‘Helicon SoundWorks’ was actually proposed by moai. At the time, there was a lot of criticism from within the team, like, “Is that a helicopter?” or “Is that a speaker brand?” but somehow, we just ended up using it. I still remember opening a dictionary much later and feeling relieved, thinking, "Ah, so it did have some meaning after all”.
The Ntreev Korea office entrance.
3) Where does your nickname (Justy) come from? Is it an abbreviation, or a reference to something specific?
When I was young, I used the ID ‘몽상가 (Daydreamer)’ on BBS. Then, when I tried to sign up for the large BBS Hi-TEL, only English IDs were allowed. So, after trying a few things, I ended up signing up with ‘justicer,’ inspired by Metallica’s album title '…And Justice for All’. Later, I met a mysterious lady who started calling me ‘Justy’ as a term of endearment, and I’ve been using Justy ever since. My youthful crush disappeared, but the nickname remained, haha. That’s life, I guess!
4) To this day, the complete memberlist of the team is still a mistery, though the authors of the BGM tracks are mostly known: Pangya Online Original Soundtrack - pangya.wiki . Were the various tracks made by single members or were they always composed together by all of you? Were there other members of Helicon?
Honestly, I was surprised to see how well-organized the Wiki you linked is. What can I tell you? Hmm… I suppose I can provide specific information about the songs credited to Helicon SoundWorks. Our working style was for each of us to proceed with our work in our own style, then monitor each other, give feedback, or collaborate if necessary. That’s why the credits are pretty clear. I’ve organized them below.
Composers for major tracks:
- Justy: Breeze, Daydream, A Shiny Day, Winter Ride, Navy Blue Memory, Somewhere, Nowhere, Happy Flight, as well as System BGM like Putting, Result, Scoreboard & etc.
- myNoX: Spring, Frog
- moai: Bunny Picnic, Snowscape, Crystal Waver
- Collaborations: ‘Tea Time’ and ‘Rising Sun’ were co-creations by moai and myself. ‘My Room’ was by myNoX and moai.
‘Crystal Lake’ is not a team song. Given the homage to the Daydream theme in its intro and its stylistic continuity, suggesting a high understanding of the direction, I strongly suspect it’s by supbaby, but I won’t confirm it as there’s a possibility it might not be. Regarding real names, there are surprisingly many people who are sensitive about that and might prefer not to be publicly known. So, I’ve decided to respect that.
The on-site cafe which was used for business meetings.
5) I sometimes hear music from other videogames that sound a lot like the music from Pangya. What are the characteristics that define its sound? Are there chord sequences, music styles or specific instruments that you have chosen to define a specific style for the music?
Well, technically analyzing the melody, harmony, and techniques could lead to many discussions, but if I had to summarize it with keywords, it would be 'openness, leisure, and vitality’. The question is how to achieve this, and for Pangya, a clear image intuitively came to mind the moment I saw a few initial concept art pieces. The genre that came to mind then was Bossa Nova from Brazilian music, and the first sketch created was "Breeze”. The sketch had a typical Bossa Nova instrumentation, but when it was later developed into the main track, the timbre changed significantly to become the current song. This tone then led to another Bossa Nova track “Spring” and the Samba x House crossover "Daydream” thus establishing the musical direction. In composing the most important element, the melody, I always prioritized spaciousness and simplicity, both then and now.
6) The later Pangya tracks sound a bit different than the earlier ones, their authors were also different: supbaby, ESTi, limgirl, nevis and Akimasa Shibata. At the same time I believe your team has started to work on the Trickster soundtrack, was this the reason why the later tracks were composed by different musicians?
I believe this flow, where a core direction for the entire project is set early on and then the diversity of fresh artists is brought in during the mid-to-late stages, led to interesting results. This approach continued not only with Pangya but also with Trickster. The fact that the direction was not lost and the identity was not compromised during this process is likely due to the excellent work done by the composers who joined later. Especially when listening to supbaby’s tracks, I want to praise them as a “human chameleon” for perfectly understanding the direction and creating new tracks as extensions of the past ones.
A showcase lined with character goods, books and more.
7) Many players, including myself, loved the illustrations made for the game by Seedark, and were deeply saddened by the news of him passing away. Did you have the opportunity to know him in person, or do you have any memory about him?
I first saw Seedark’s (시드) drawings when I was a naive high school student on Hi-Tel. Both he and I were probably amateurs then. But there was always something in his drawings that went beyond mere technical skill. The ideal goal for a popular artist could be said to be achieving both universality and individuality simultaneously. And he achieved that early on. It was a healthy and brilliant talent. At the time, Japanese culture was dominant, and many artists simply imitated that style, but Seedark internalized the technical aspects while clearly exuding a distinct Korean sensibility. It was hard to find any other artist who had embodied and internalized it to that extent back then.
When I first started working on Pangya and received the character illustration materials drawn by Seedark, honestly, I didn’t know he had drawn them and thought, “Wow, who’s in charge of the art? These drawings are absolutely incredible!” Haha. It was a joy every time I saw his drawings during the production process. The excellence of his art also inspired our team and greatly contributed to solidifying the music’s concept.
Even looking at them decades later, aren’t Pangya’s illustrations still outstanding, defying the passage of time? They say true geniuses die young, and hearing the news of his passing after his health issues was incredibly heartbreaking. If he had lived in good health, he would undoubtedly have continued to positively influence the game industry.
Although we weren’t close friends, he was the only illustrator I recognized so deeply in my heart. Therefore, I feel great joy and deep gratitude for the opportunity to talk about him through this question in the interview, and for the fact that so many players still remember and mourn him.
SeeDark’s personal page, still open after all these years: http://seedark.com/
One of SeeDark’s illustrations for the game.
8) Were you a Pangya player back in the days, and do you still play it nowadays (e.g. on the Wii, PSP or on one of the private servers on PC)?
That’s right. I myself was a Pangya player and enjoyed it until Season 3. In fact, I see myself more as a gamer than a musician, haha. However, like many fathers around the world, it’s now impossible for me to play for long hours like I used to, but my affection for games remains undiminished. Still, if I was lucky, it’s that I stopped playing for various reasons before the use of angle calculators became popular on the Korean server. Isn’t ‘bad luck’ the fun and essential element that makes games exciting? That’s why I remember feeling a sense of foreboding when I later heard about the angle calculator issue, thinking that something bad was happening to Pangya. I hear you’re running a private server, how can you be so passionate? If I ever have the time, I’d really love to play together.
A spacious development room where Pangya and other games were developed.
9) You have recently released a remaster of the iconic Daydream music. This new version is pleasantly more upbeat and sounds more cheerful than the original one. You mentioned on a forum that, at the time you were using Reason. What music tools are you using nowadays? Do you think that there are other Pangya tracks that would benefit from a remaster, and are you planning to release them in the future?
Currently, Logic Pro and Ableton Live are my main DAWs for production, but a long time ago, when working on Pangya Online, I primarily used Reason. At the time, Reason was an extremely closed environment, but surprisingly, this has now become an advantage. Because I couldn’t use expansion instruments back then and had to work only with Reason’s built-in instruments, when I open those project files now, the sound is 100% identical to how it was. This aspect greatly facilitated the Daydream remaster. I once mentioned in a comment on my channel’s Trickster music that I plan to work on remasters whenever I get the chance, so they can be heard on Spotify and other platforms. After Daydream, I’d like to tackle ‘A Shiny Day’. The key challenge for ‘A Shiny Day’ is whether I can reconstruct the working environment from back then, as it wasn’t a track created 100% in Reason.
10) Regarding the original version of Daydream, there’s something no-one apparently ever commented about. When I listen to the track I can always hear a single, flute like note being played on the left channel at the 00:15 mark. It sounds a bit off, and I have noticed that all the game’s soundtrack CDs have a new version of this track with that note removed. I believe at least the North American PC version of the game always had the original version though. Funnily enough, over the years I have become so used on hearing it that I miss it when I hear the fixed version instead… Was that note indeed an error, and were there other wrong bits, or deliberate easter eggs, on this or other tracks?
When I first heard this, I thought you were talking about clipping noise caused by degraded hits from a rhythm guitar played in 16-beat, which I’ve heard in some of the audio files on YouTube. But a flute sound? To confirm, I downloaded the OST uploaded to the Pangya community. And sure enough, around the 0:15 mark, there was a howling, resonant sound! This is a sound I’ve never heard before in my life, haha. How did this sound get in there? Unless someone intentionally added it later as a watermark or deliberate insertion, it’s not a sound that could accidentally get in. Just in case, I checked all the Daydream source files, but there was no such track. It’s a mystery. In any case, I can definitively state that it was not an intentionally arranged instrument. However, I well know that for some fans, even that part is a cherished memory. Remastering is an incredibly careful process because I need to achieve a pleasant sound for current listeners without damaging those precious memories. Fortunately, the reaction to the Daydream remaster has been positive, so I’ll keep pushing forward!
Daydream track with the howling sound at 00:15: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZbmJWxUTvA
Daydream track without the sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky0Q6onZLls
The company was full of energy and there were many female staff members.
11) Have you ever listened to any fan remix of your Pangya tracks, if so do you have any favourite one?
I remember listening to CDs and digital tracks produced by doujin (fan-made) activities not long after Pangya first launched its service in Japan. Some were simple copies of the original, while others were rearranged to suit personal tastes. I enjoyed all of them, and most importantly, I felt grateful to sense the effort and dedication put into them.
The remix that comes to mind right now is definitely the Hatsune Miku version of ‘A Shiny Day’. The melody line of ‘A Shiny Day’ was originally conceived with a vocal line in mind, and it was impressive how they caught that and did the Vocaloid work. It was very exciting and created in a different direction from the original, which I thought made it a proper remix.
If there are any other songs you can recommend, please don’t hesitate to share them anytime. I’d love to hear more!
12) Pangya fans are nowadays collecting and documenting all the information about Pangya that is still available, for example courses guides, release notes of all the updates for the various international clients, online comics and music tracks that were released on the official game webpages, and so on. Do you maybe have any unreleased track, or ideas for other trackes that you could share to the community? It would be very interesting to hear any new music related to Pangya, and it would be a pity if such material would be lost.
If I dig through my old external hard drives, I’m sure there will be a few unused songs. I can’t guarantee that they will sound like the ‘Pangya’ music of today, but since they were written in the same era, they would at least be artifacts that evoke the atmosphere of that time. When I worked on Trickster M, some of the songs provided to that project were actually unreleased tracks from the Trickster Online days that were revived as complete versions. If I can find similar songs for Pangya, wouldn’t it be possible to let you hear them after some proper polishing? It might be difficult right now, and it will take time until I can release them as official sound sources, but at the very least, I’d love to create content like videos where I play the project files from back then, sharing the DAW screen and listening together on my YouTube channel or SNS.
Some staff members kept their favourite figures on their desks.
13) Regarding the PC version, do you know of any information about planned but never released new courses or seasons after the last season (8)?
Well, on this topic, I’m sure you, along with the rest of the Pangya community, know more than I do, perhaps at a ChatGPT level, haha.
14) Is Helicon nowadays still active? Are you in touch with the other members?
Unfortunately, among the original members, I’m the only one still actively composing. However, I do still keep in touch with myNoX and meet him when various things come up. He’s a good person and an excellent senior colleague. It’s one of my personal wishes to someday create an opportunity that helps him return to music and work together again.
Big posters of Lucia and Kooh hanging on the wall.
15) Are you following the latest developments of the game? NCSoft had Pangya M in development some years ago but it was unfortunately cancelled. Ntreev Soft has unfortunately gone out of business, as it seems its founder Kim Jun-young and some of its core development team have in the meantime opened a new game studio called Two Hands. They have released a mobile game called Golf Super Crew which is in many ways reminiscent of Pangya. Have you been in any ways involved with the development of these two games, or did you have the opportunity to see Pangya M in action while it was in development?
Unfortunately, no. Like you, I only heard some news about Pangya M while I was participating in the Trickster M project, but the news was not hopeful regarding its release. I was not involved in either project.
16) Recently you have posted an interesting comment about the impact of AI on music composition. Fans and musicians are already releasing, on various platforms, remasters and new songs in the style of famous bands or musicians thanks to various AI tools, even creating new songs with voice tracks made by synthesizing the voice characteristics of famous singers, something that would have been impossible just a couple of years ago. Do you think that the recent AI tools are a threat to music composers, or are they an opportunity to help to compose music?
This can lead to diametrically opposing views depending on one’s position. I expect that while it might be a bit tough during the transitional period, every profession will eventually converge into a “director” position. Like other professions, composers are largely divided into music directors and practicing composers. AI is rapidly replacing the latter, making it a threat to composers who lack directing abilities.
On the other hand, if you’re in a director’s position, it’s like having arrangers and guide vocalists assisting you for free, 24/7. Their advantage, as you mentioned, is their excellence in style imitation and vocal characteristic replication. Their drawback is that they are only excellent at imitating existing styles; that is, they are highly dependent on references and it’s hard to expect true inventiveness from them. However, since a director already has their own plan, this isn’t a major problem. Instead, it becomes a game of how to direct AI to extract the desired output from your mind.
So, if we temporarily step away from the equation of profession = making money, AI offers an incredible opportunity and productivity as a tool for realizing ideas and sounds in one’s head.
I myself have been utilizing AI for several years. Nowadays, I first complete just the melody, chord progression, and voicing. After that, I use audio-to-audio to quickly dress it in various genres to check the theme’s development potential, or I reduce the ‘weight’ significantly and give AI autonomy, enjoying the strange and intriguing sounds that emerge randomly. This is why, in recent productions, the ability to write excellent ‘themes’ has become extremely important. When actually fed to AI, the level and quality of the melody influence the output. I believe the core of production has shifted from composition to arrangement, and now, once again, back to composition.
A stylish conference room. The background wall was completely mirrored.
17) As a final note, do you have any message for the Pangya fans out there?
First and foremost, thank you for loving Pangya and our music. I respectfully acknowledge your unwavering passion and interest over such a long, long time. This year, my decision to reveal myself online was prompted by a comment on a Reddit post looking for the Trickster composer. Through that process, I came to know all of you who are still nurturing the verdant memories of the past. As a gamer myself, there are games that make my heart swell just thinking about them, so I truly understand what that means.
I especially want to applaud and thank you for your dedication in maintaining this community, the wiki, and even a playable environment for the game. You are the true guardians of this legacy.
Inspired by all of you, I’ve rediscovered the joy and meaning of being a composer. My task from now on, I believe, will simply be to continue creating good music.
Beyond the remaster projects, if any new and interesting projects begin, I’ll share the news. Let’s create joyful moments together.
Once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart!
With respect,
Justy (Hyunjun Kim)