NSFW: Spelunker – “You Just Fucking Died” (Mustin)

You can play this one loud, but obviously not at work 😛 It’s a good track from OverLooked ReMix’s SPLUNK! (2008) project, a remix album of crappy music from one of the crappiest NES games ever made. While the premise of exploring a giant cave in search of treasure you would think makes for a good game (Spelunky, anyone?), simply too many things went wrong with Spelunker (1983, 1985) to count. Basically, if you fall about half the character’s body height you die (and there are many more methods to count, including death by shallow hole, ghost, water, and bat poop). And then the game over music will still play for a few seconds after the character has respawned, making it easy to die again if you’re not paying attention. Mustin does this great justice in a song that became instantly legendary. That accent and “The Final Countdown” really ties the whole thing together 🙂

Spelunker – “You Just Fucking Died” (Mustin)

Anyway, the whole SPLUNK! remix project can be downloaded from their wonderful flash site. Now as you’ll soon find out, simply leaving the mouse lying around will allow the ghost to come up to the pointer and eat it. And you can’t click on a link with a ghost on the pointer, which means you can’t download the music! You have to actually struggle to get it!

OverLooked ReMiX is kind of a shadow site to OverClocked ReMix, posting, odd and comedy tracks. They’ve done a few projects of their own. Their mission: to entertain, annoy, heckle, and insult video game fans. Fun, fun! Joke songs seem to have caught on as an underside to vgmixing. Dwelling of Duels has even done a joke tunes months.

Mustin is part of a band called The OneUps. They’re one of the first US bands that started selling game music remixes commercially. It’s kind of weird because remixing in the US started off as a free and slightly underground thing, but now it’s a bit commercialized thanks to groups like The Minibosses, Armcannon, and The OneUps.

Castlevania – “Be in a Belmont” (Div and the Divs)

Here’s another song we can definitely say is not vgm (but is about games, so it fits here). It’s a bunch of guys complaining about how much it sucks to be a vampire hunter. The song was made back in 2005 by the UK high school ska band Div and the Divs for their album Tea (a quite British title). They seem to be nonexistant today, as their Myspace page (the only remaining record of their existence) has not been updated in five years (so THAT’s what Myspace looked like five years ago!). Don’t even bother with their homepage – it just pulls a 404.

Castlevania – “Be in a Belmont” (Div and the Divs)

Actually, this video here is a ‘speedy speedrun’ I made (basically a speedrun playback sped up to fit the length of a song so you don’t have to watch the full length – the most popular one is a Super Castlevania IV clip set to “Travel Demon“). I was surprised to find out it’s been syndicated on YouTube (as in, someone re-uploaded it). This speedrun was by the almighty Phil and Genisto; even though there’s a faster speedrun out there, this is the best in terms of tricks. Incidentally, I made another version of their speedrun set to “Scourge of 1691”, but YouTube won’t let you upload a file that’s longer than 10 minutes.

While I can’t really say that Div and the Divs were any good (pretty much all their music sounds like this), the sort of depressed, blue-collar English accent really does work well with the complaining (as well as the alcohol references from craftily-placed bottles of holy water). And of course he’s complaining despite the fact that the Simon in the video is ripping through this game. (Castlevania is even harder if you have a copy that likes to freeze halfway through Death’s level.)

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link – “Crying Alone in the Darkness” (Pixelated)

“I remember the other day I went right instead of left, and I probably shouldn’t have done that…” [NSFW for language]

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link – “Crying Alone in the Darkness” (Pixelated)

Link finds himself lost in the Great Temple at the end of his quest. What will he do? Will he save the Princess? Or will his blood be spilled over Gannon’s ashes to revive him? Sadly, this is the worst official Zelda game, mainly because of its poor difficulty balance (a sword the size of a butter knife isn’t terribly fun to use against six-armed guys with huge swords). I still don’t know how I ever beat it, but the ending is quite different from the other Zeldas.

This is really more of a narrative layered over a synth mix of the “Great Temple” theme (again, the voice level is a little low – this is probably the last poor recording I’m uploading).  To technically, it’s not VGM. Rather, it’s more stupid crap dredged from the archives of VGMix 2. Anyway, you could probably do something funny like this using Facebook journal entries.

Also: Season 3 of Legend of Neil will finish shooting by this weekend, so there will be some new episodes up next month! I guess this will just have to hold you over until then…

Mega Man II – “Anymore” (BlackPerson)

What would happen if videogame heroes got fed up with their jobs? “I quit! I am tired of this game! I quit! And I don’t wanna be MEGA MAN ANY-MORE!” This song came from good old VGMix 2.0. Anyone else remember those golden days?

Mega Man II – “Anymore” (BlackPerson)

If you hadn’t guessed the theme it’s based on, try “Metal Man”. It’s actually kind of funny, too, to think of Dr. Light and Mega Man as black dudes.

Sadly, most of BlackPerson’s recordings have pretty poor audio (this is one of the better ones) and 128kbps encoding didn’t help either. Guess he needed a better mic! Oh yeah, the double ending is too ridiculous. However, it’s still pretty funny! (Especially for a slightly disgruntled Mega Man fan.)

8-Bit Mondays: Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins – “Athletic” (Kazumi Totaka)

Kazumi Totaka (Link’s Awakening, Virtual Boy Wario Land) has made some pretty memorable music in his time, but one of his classics is the fondly remembered Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins (1992) for the Game Boy. It also appears to have been his debut! [Edit: Nope – that was X on the GameBoy.] It’s another nice soundtrack that never saw an official release (seems to be a pattern with Totaka’s stuff). The “Stage Music 1” or “Athletic” main theme is one of the most memorable tracks, and a good fit for today’s 8-bit Monday.

Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins – “Athletic” (Kazumi Totaka)

The “Stage 1 Theme” is nice, bright, and cheery, with Mario going about his merry way in the open, sunny world of Super Mario Land. The “Athletic” themes are for obstacle courses, the various platforms and enemies players must overcome to reach the goal. The ‘guitar’ and drums create a very dynamic base line, building the forward momentum over which the main melody is layered. It’s a quite memorable song built along a solid foundation of long notes that is leisurely melodic and instantly hummable – you could easily add your own lyrics. Classic Mario.

This was also the time when Nintendo composers were experimenting with theme and variation for Mario games, with the various level themes containing a few notes and variations of the game’s main theme. Previously, Koji Kondo had done this with Super Mario World (1990), but Totaka did this as well for Super Mario Land 2, including a hilariously creepy underground variation and a waltz-like version for the Space Zone that is clearly inspired by 2001. Even the boss music has a take on the theme. In fact, only a few levels have their own themes (“Space Zone 2” and the hip “Wario’s Castle Stage Music/Final Stage” being notable exceptions. It’s almost as if Totaka and the other developers had wanted to musically make the second half of the game unique and unexpected.

Oddly enough, there seems to have been very little Mario Land 2 remixing going on, aside from the funkadelic Super Mario Land 2: Tremendous Achievement (2008). It’s a bit much for me, but I do enjoy the “Final Stage” remix by Willrock, which was just released on OCR a couple weeks back. There was also some funky mixing going on in Super Mario Compact Disco: Ambassadors of Funk Featuring M.C. Mario (1993), but I don’t have a copy of that one.

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment – “Seven Sisters High School A” (ATLUS)

“Seven Sisters High School A” is a nice easy listening piece from Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (2000) with smooth acoustic guitar and piano with a nice cello midline. The guitar lays the foundation as a rolling baseline while the piano layers on top like butterflies floating in air or water trickling down a stream. It’s slightly nostalgic. The dark underside of the world is forgotten as sunlight streams through the classroom windows to create a place of peace and learning. The track is divided into four parts, first an intro with a hollow wooden ‘pong’. The other three sections are defined more by changes in the texture of the guitar than the overlying piano melody, which smoothly transitions between segments.

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment – “Seven Sisters High School A” (ATLUS)

My brother has insisted that there really aren’t many good tracks in the Persona 2 soundtrack, but this one is certainly worth the listen. The game was composed by a number of people, directed by Toshiko Tasaki, who has been working with the Persona series since the mid-90s, Kenichi Tsuchiya (Shin Megami Tensei III, Persona III FES), and Masaki Kurokawa. There are also two Persona 2 games, though the first has not been released officially in the US (oddly enough, I have a copy of Innocent Sin). The US version goes for quite a bit now, but ultimately 3 and 4 are much better titles.

Myst III: Exile – “Main Theme” (Jack Wall)

Myst III: Exile (2001) is a tale of revenge. After being imprisoned by the wicked sons of Atrus and believing his family and world destroyed, Saavedro vows his vengeance. He is somewhat mentally unstable, consumed by his hatred. The “Main Theme” from Exile latches onto this theme and intensely executes it with a brilliant force of power and deliberate, calculating machination. The innocence of the children and peoples of Naranai.

Myst III: Exile – “Main Theme” (Jack Wall)

Jack Wall uses an exotic set of instruments that and a scale that recalls Middle Eastern, along with heroic lyrics of revenge that remind me of Italian opera. The track successfully ties elements of all the different Age and character themes as well as the main themes from Myst and Riven into the characters and cultures of Exile (it is particularly easy to pick out the plucking of Robyn Miller’s Myst theme). Though Wall spontaneously came up with the theme one day, it took a considerable amount of polishing and editing to complete. Wall gives a masterful description of his goals and composition of the theme. Here is an excerpt:

The Armenian Duduk for what I imagined the Maral-Obe might sound like; the Sheet Metal for its haunting mystery; Percussion as there was some drums in the village in Riven, so I wanted to reflect that in this score; and, a choir to represent the Narani people who were so affected by the events in the story.

There are lyrics on this page as well, with both English and the fictional Naranai.

Exile‘s composer, Jack Wall (Jade Empire, Mass Effect 2), is a co-founder of the Game Audio Network Guild. He has a nice homepageshowcasing his work. The soundtrack is performed by the Northwest Sinfonia, responsible for Medal of Honor and Halo 3, among others. The album is the only place where the full version of the “Main Theme” is played.

Exile has some imaginative world designs (including one with a giant rollercoaster you unwittingly construct), but I have to admit it was a bit easy in that I beat it in about a week. The special soundtrack could either be purchased separately or included in the Collector’s Edition of the game (along with a pewter Squee toy, which I have to admit I still have sitting on my desk).

Demon’s Crest – “Memorial of the Fallen Ones” (

Demon’s Crest (1994) is a sadly overlooked SNES title based off the Ghosts ‘n Goblins series. The game has a fairly speed and a trick easy-to-achieve ending, but it has solid play control and very detailed graphics. I especially like the wall-grappling ability. The levels which initially appear to be straightforward actually contain many hidden passages that lead to other areas of the stage and hidden bosses and exits. Defeating the different bosses will grant you with new powers that allow you to fly higher, run fast, and travel underwater. Very imaginative stuff. Unfortunately, the game also has a pretty dark tone – the demons have taken over the Earth, and humans are a thing of the past – just piles of bones for the monsters to play skittles with (they probably died because Ghouls ‘n Ghosts was so dang hard! It’s a skull for each time someone lost a life in that game! :). Kind of makes you wonder…

Demon’s Crest – “Memorial of the Fallen Ones”

“Memorial of the Fallen Ones” plays as the game’s credits theme. It’s a very somber, elegiac organ piece, with a lilting melody that calls and responds. It’s almost like a funeral procession. At 2:11, the track transitions from heavy organ to a nice choral section. There’s some string plucking in there too. The credits video shows all the game’s bosses as well as each of the abilities of the magical crests you collected, so it’s probably referring to the dead bosses (rather than the dead people – or maybe both). I’ve shortened the loop as it gets a bit old after awhile. The song is also an arrangement of the first stage theme (“Beyond the Colosseum“). Yes, the very first boss is an undead dragon. Awesome.

Most of the other songs aren’t that memorable, though this main theme is certainly good. I actually don’t know who composed this soundtrack. Judging from the graphics, etc, I’d take a guess it may have involved some of the Mega Man X team, so it’s possible Yuki Iwai composed this one. The ending looks just like a Mega Man X ending, and a lot of the instruments sound similar to those in other Capcom games. Sadly, they didn’t care enough to list the developers in the credits.

Super Contra – “What Is This Place?” (arr. Naoto Shibata)

Red Falcon has invaded the Earth again, this time brainwashing the military. It’s just another day at the office then for Bill Rizer and Lance Bean, who rock ‘n’ load a second time to fight the evil alien menace in Super Contra (1988). With Naoto Shibata at lead guitar, you gotta crank the speakers. The original was composed by Kazuki Muraoka (Metal Gear series) and Motoaki Furukawa (Gradius II, Dracula X: Rondo of Blood), who made that classic Konami arcade sound. This mix appears only on Konami Battle the Best (1996), a compilation and remastering of some of Shibata’s best work, along with a couple original tracks from Super Contra.

Konami Battle the Best – Super Contra – “What Is This Place?” (arr. Naoto Shibata)

“What Is This Place?” is perfect 80s rock. It’s got everything that’s right about America, from freedom and muscle cars to pre-steroids baseball and big guns. Trust me, it’s all here in this song, which I think may be the best Konami Battle mix Naoto Shibata did. The long notes punctuated by percussion explosions make this particularly memorable, and also follow the drudge of ‘back to the battlefield’ for a virtuous videogame war that seems endless (which keeps our thumbs and brains happy). All the instruments have excellent recording here, especially the drums and cymbal crashing (there’s some nice drums at 1:12). Shibata adds a kickass guitar solo at 1:25 that lasts about a minute before smoothly transitioning back into the main theme.

The original version is really cool as well, particularly with the voice-over intro, monsters, and explosion. This hands-down makes this one of the coolest game intros ever. If you haven’t seen it yet, you deserve to watch it right now. Ronald Reagan would be proud.

Explosive drum beats, blaring trumpets, and rockin’ guitar synths make for true dramatics. Those opening notes are immediately recognizable and a sure attention-grabber. This medley is from Contra Spirits (1992) and contains “Thunder Landing”, the stage one theme. This is a very intense guitar-driven piece with some nice string synths. Stands its ground well against the original Contra theme. There’s also “Great Heli-Ruined Base”, a nice, intense boss theme that was reused in Contra 4. The whole soundtrack was released in Music from Super Contra & A-Jax (1988) and has more mixes. If you check it out, be sure to listen to “Jungle Juncture” which is a hilariously awesome jungle rhythm. (Incidentally, though the NES did not have as good a sound chip as the arcades, they managed to replicate some of the trademark string and percussion bursts from the original in Super C).

Persona 3 – “Aria of the Soul” (Shoji Meguro)

Here’s another piece by Shoji Meguro, “Aria of the Soul” (aka “The Poem for Everyone’s Souls”), the music that plays in the Velvet Room of Persona 3 (2006), a space-time portal where you can fuse Personas, or facets of the psyche. Each Persona is a god or magical creature. Despite the creepy Persona dealer, the Velvet Room is a calm refuge from the monsters of Thanatos.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 – “Aria of the Soul” (Shoji Meguro)

Because the player will be spending a lot of time in here fusing Personas, the theme is quite long (2:45 loop) and also calming. The transitions between sections of the song are very smooth and perfectly executed by vocalist Tomoko Komiya. Komiya’s silvery voice is pure and strong, able to hold firmly to the long, clear notes with strength of devotion. She is supported by strings and piano woven into a rich tapestry that builds to a bold finish with trumpets and organs. In this regard, I think the second title, “Poem for Everyone’s Souls” is more fitting because the aria’s devotional or prayer-like composition serves as a reminder of the purpose for why they are fighting against the shadows.

The other interesting thing about “Aria of the Soul” is that elements of it are used in “Battle Hymn of the Soul“, the penultimate boss music.  Actually, “Battle Hymn of the Soul” seems to be a dark rock rendition of “Aria of the Soul”. The combination of guitar and piano adds gravitas and sadness to the piece, a nice brooding theme for a dark monster of the id. I happen to like both songs quite a bit. Customers who bought first prints of the game in the US received a small sampler CD, which contains both songs.

Persona 3 was the first soundtrack where Shoji Meguro was able to express himself to the fullest with game audio, thanks to the high quality samples allowed by the PS2. He complained about the low-quality audio he was stuck using with Persona 2 – using better audio would have undoubtedly given the game better reception.