Wild Arms & A Fistful of Dollars

The retro gamers among you probably got goosebumps from that music. Wild Arms wasn't exactly the most memorable RPG, but its intro did everything right: the association of the theme Into the Wilderness to animation by famed studio Madhouse is probably the reason many gamers remember the game so fondly.
But why exactly did that music aready feel so familiar when you heard it for the first time all those years ago?
Writing the music to a western themed game, Enio Morricone's iconic score to Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy was an obvious source of inspiration for composer Michiko Naruke. Listen to the similarities: