Official(?) Nintendo Consoles Music Thread v2.0

Dear God I've got a lot of catching up to do!

Pre-16:

Day 16:

Day 17:

Right, I'm struggling for choice here.  There are lots of great picks that are so good I could listen to them forever.  I think I'm going to go with what is possibly my favourite piece in all gaming, which means another Big Pick off the table (sorry gents):



The synth at the start!  The twinkling in the background!  The march to death or glory (or water)!  The bit where (gibbers slightly, has to recover himself) the bit where the strings come in!  THE SOLO TRUMPET AT THE END!  This is a perfect piece of music!  I love it to death.  I want to be the Buoy Base theme when I grow up.  And yes it's better than Gusty Garden.  (Not by much.)

D'you know, Balla, your taste in music is so unpredictable. That piece from SMG is really nice, but one I had completely forgotten about, and for sure not one I've have considered 'perfect' or even the best piece from the game. All gaming? I don't know what piece I'd award that accolade to, but... probably one you wouldn't rate, particularly.

Buoy Base is an interesting choice, but we all have different tastes. I'm more partial to the Comet Observatory music more than anything in that game. It's just glorious.

Good Egg Galaxy for me!

Few catch up thoughts:

Day 18: Game released the year you were born



The video might say 1990 but it did make 1989 releasing in the last few weeks of the year, like me I guess. Obviously never played this back in the day but I did get in on Wii VC and it's a sound attempt at a mascot platformer.

Last time I picked...:

Buoy Base is a good'n, swimming in Galaxy was always a beautiful experience.

I was born in 1990 so I've got some great tracks to choose from. Going for this tasty motherfucker though:

The F-Zero soundtrack is my favourite of the 16-bit era. Big Blue, Port Town, Sand Ocean, Red Canyon, you could have had any of them 

~

Day 18: Music In A Game Released The Year You Were Born


Have a tune from the game I was playing last night - Like The Wind from Power Drift:



I went to a holiday camp in England when I was really young, and I remember seeing two games in the amusements that really fascinated me with their graphics and sounds. I found out soon after that one of them was Street Fighter II, but the other eluded me for years. Eventually, some research and some YouTube digging brought me to Chegger's Party Quiz. No, wait, Power Drift, that was the game. It's like OutRun if it were on a rollercoaster, a really smart game with a proper '80's soundtrack.

Interesting as looking through games out in 1990, I saw likes of F-Zero but it wasn't released in Europe till 1992 that I've gone for a game I believe was released in 1990 over here

I didn't think of that. I'd almost forgotten how bad we used to get screwed on release dates!

Day 18: Music in a game released the year you were born



Lemmings was developed in Dundee and released in 1991 for the Amiga, and I was born in Dundee in 1991, so I am basically Lemmings. What? Anyway, its soundtrack consisted mostly of reworkings of classical music but I chose this easy listener from level 9, which is presumably based on something else, but I don't know what...

Monkey Island gives me SO MUCH nostalgia. My sisters played it a lot and I used to enjoy sitting watching from the side. Power Drift gives me nostalgia for an era I never experienced - proper 80s movie vibes.

By the way, the category for tomorrow - "cover of music by a different artist" - does that just mean "a cover of music from a video game"? The phrasing seems weird to me and I just wanted to check that's all it meant!

I presume so.  I'm going to try and do something slightly stricter, mind.

I will briefly try to explain why I love Buoy Base so much.  Firstly I'm a classical music fan, with particular focus on the 19th century when it was all lots of soaring dynamics and changes of key, which is what Buoy Base does baseically.  Secondly it does a lot of work with my favourite chord progressions.  Thirdly though, and most importantly, it makes me feel triumphant.  When I close my eyes and listen and concentrate, I feel like the music's lifting me up, like I'm being carried by a strong wind, soaring in glory and crashing through waves.  Obviously most people don't listen to gaming music with their eyes shut!  Or in that particular way if they do.  So it appeals to a very Balladeer kind of person, of which there aren't many.

I like Good Egg, it's good epic bombast - I just think other pieces in Galaxy do it better.  I don't like the Observatory music so much, as it feels a bit twee to me; but I wonder if that's a victim of context?  Buoy Base is probably my favourite galaxy, while I found the Observatory really disappointing as a hub: after Peach's Castle and Isle Delfino it had basically nothing to find apart from a few one-ups, and was more of a hindrance.  Also, as GJones says, we all have different tastes, and this project is teaching me that few are more different than mine and his.


Brief feedback because not much time: Bonk is bloopy, Big Blue is belting, Like the Wind is in the same bracket as Big Blue which is high praise, Monkey Island is my pick of the day thus far, and Lemmings is super-hummable.  Good stuff!  I was born in 1989, so I'm going to give you a piece from 2018:



Of course it's the Monster Boy music I keep subjecting you to but in its original form, which is still really good!  Chirpy and happy and with a few nice transitions.  Other picks that were in with a chance were Snowman from Mother and the vehicle piece from Super Mario Land.  Not the best year if we're honest...

Mr. GJones, picking Pikmin for music you never get tired of - what a great choice that is. I hear that in my head sometimes at the end of the day in real life.

Mr Balladeer, yes I have to assume Jean Michel Jarre was insufferable if he thought that was right. I sort of want to fix it for him, making a Captain Blood-specific version that doesn't sound like nonsense (that Atari version had its own language in sampled speech for crying out loud)

My Day 17 Music You Never Get Tired Of
I'm picking a big'n, sorry:

It's Fear Factory from Donkey Kong Country. I could've easily chosen the jungley one or Aquatic Ambiance. This was so ahead of its time, and I can't believe it got to day 17.

Day 18 When ye were born
Right. You lucky bastards. Being young enough to have been born in the same year as Monkey Island with its iconic title theme, or the charming Wonder Boy III, or F-Zero's complete list of bangers, or Lemmings for crying out loud! Every song is amazing in Lemmings.
Right, I'm going to have to research what game music there was in 1982 for fucksake.

*researches*

GASP
Pengo!

Alright - slightly cheaty because it's a version of Popcorn by Gershon Kingsley. But I heard it on Pengo first as a kid. So it counts.
Woah - the original version is from 1969.

It's a new day, which a lot of covers I was thinking about are unfortunately of games we've done that I'm going for

Feedback on the above later.  For now: covers, a day I thought was odd ever since I saw the option on day -2.  We’re meant to be doing music in games, right?  Today doesn’t seem to fit.  Unless, of course, you can do both...



Another ‘surprised it got this far’ pick here, Celeste has a belting soundtrack - and the B sides are covers of the level music!  This is my favourite, a chill level remix of Celeste’s one and only belting boss theme.  On the whole I do prefer the originals, but this is still a stonking tune from a stonking game.

Hasn't Celeste been done, rather shocking if it hasn't

That's surely not a cover!

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

That's surely not a cover!

Correct, should be like mine

Why not? Another artist (this Jukio Kallio fella) does a remix of an in-game piece (done in this case by Lena Raine).  That’s got to count! Was also considering Smash pieces for today.

I will feed back on Mas’ pick later when I can listen to it properly and not get distracted by the fact that she’s definitely not playing the same thing in the video as I hear (the acoustics would be all wrong apart from anything else).  Fear Factory is pretty good but I would probably have picked Aquatic myself; but Pengo is a surprise belter!  Love it!  There’s no way the second level variant came out of that machine though, right?  Sadly, for it is a bop and a half.

Day 18: Cover of music by a different artist but the music's from a game and the artist isn't necessarily from a game just make sure it isn't the original I guess?



Does this count? Surely I can't go far wrong with a cappella Jesus. I chose this cover of the Mt Pyre theme from Pokemon RSE because it was my favourite tune from that game and he does a really great job with it. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba baaaaaa baaa indeed.

I'll feedback at the weekend but don't want to fall behind again...

Day 17: Music from the year you was born

Didn't realise I'm older than most of you sprogs. 1986 for me, so only apt it comes from the first game I played. The main theme is iconic if you ever had a Master System, but I love the underwater tune even more!



Day 18: Cover of music by a different artist

There was only really one option here...

That's a brilliant pick! 

~

Day 18: Cover of Music by a Different Artist


If I was going the gjones route, I'd have the cover of Steppenwolf's Born To Be Wild on Rock n' Roll Racing on the SNES here. But I'll do like masofdas and have this cover of the Toy Day tune from Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City (and a load of other Animal Crossing games, but didn't want to hoover up all of them).



It's not an especially Christmassy cover, so I don't feel to guilty about posting it today (or reminding you that it's only 128 days until Christmas again!)

I feel like people (Balla) are thinking about all of this much too seriously.

I listen to a lot of covers of game music, but I want to share something a little bit special:

Yep seemed rather simple a tune from a game (Kingdom Hearts) is covered by someone (Taylor Davis) nothing else to it it

Reading that again, I bet they did mean a cover of a "real" song, as used in a video game. Well, about 5 of mine are licensed things from the Wild West days anyway, pick one of those.

I have discovered things though, which is nice. I am now a big fan of this Skatune Network fellow! If I ever got round to writing an article about rebooting games that were a bit shit, there was going to be a running gag of "and a ska version of the original title there" - well it's been done it seems.

Are we allowed to pick the same artist on super hard mode?
Because I initially thought of Mr. McGroove, and the original RAINBOW ROAD

I used to see, back in the NGamer days natch, a lot of YouTube thumbnails comprising of 12 screens of the same person, and my initial instinct would be "NOPE" - Smootherson however is almost super-humanly talented.

...I'm very confused.  People didn't think I was saying what they should and shouldn't pick, or 'defining' covers, did they?  Because that's nonsense.  You interpret the brief the way you see fit!  I just found something I was happy with.  


Rum and Jim have both nicked games I was considering!  It's all Smooth's fault.  Couple of belting choices too - Mt. Pyre is indeed the correct RSE choice, and Rainbow Road is great no matter what game it's from.  

Alex Kidd's water theme is pretty nice for the time!  Bit more cheerful than Mario's underwater waltz.  And Castle Rock is of course a belter - the RLegends music levels were full of them.  

I've never actually got to Toy Day so I don't what the original sounds like, but ska is good and I enjoyed the piece!  I've never heard Kingdom Hearts' soundtrack either, and that cover's very nice when separated from the visuals - but then, it's violin, so I would say that...

Finally, that Scott Pilgrim cover is luuuuuurvely - and of course, not actually a Scott Pilgrim cover!  Which I thought it would be and then I'd have had to get all 'much too serious' about it.  I guess I'll tick off the original LoZ for that one....  Actually does it even appear in the original LoZ?