Same here, except replace Bike race with Tryano Castle.
It seems like one of two things hapenned. One, since it was a different game from final Fantasy, he tried to make a different style and (IMO) failed at it... or at least didn't do as good a job as Y. Mitsuda. Or, two, he figured "well, I only gotta make x number of tracks for the game, shouldn't bother trying too hard at them."