YouTube user Brentafloss has done it again. I loved his renditions of the Mega Man 3 Title theme with lyrics. He cracked me up when he gave the standard Final Fantasy Victory theme music lyrics. This time he's truly outdone himself. Doing a Louie Armstrong imperssionation, he's created a parodic take on "What a Wonderful World."
If I wasn't a frequent member of message boards, I'd probably never find all these cool things to talk about. I'm digressing again. And Digressing sucks. Unless it's good digressing. Where was I? Oh yeah. Game music.
I finally found a game rip to one of my favorite games for the Nintendo 64, Bettle Adventure Racing! Among other things, the N64 was heavily criticized for it's audio processor. Sega and Sony were living it up with CD systems and Nintendo was still stuck in the past using carts. When people knew what they were doing, the N64 produced some really sweet sounds. BAR's music was handled by Phil Western, Scott Blackwood, and Brenden Tennant. I think wiki sums up BAR's soundtrack pretty well. "The music in BAR is a groovy, breakbeat soundtrack with loud drums, organs, and guitars." It's realy flipping sweet.
You're probably look at the album art to the right and thinking "Downtwon What?" That's the Japanese name for River City Ransom, a cult favorite from the NES era. School kids just gotta kidnap girlfriends and rivals gotta team up to give said school kids a well-deserved butt-kicking. Only River City Ransom and a few Super Dodge Ball games made it to the states, but in Japan, the franchise is pretty famous. There have been titles on nearly every Nintendo platform overseases, a few of them have even been translated by fans.
It boggles the mind why Nintendo chose never to translate Mother 3 and bring it to the states. However, from what I've been hearing lately, keeping the game in Japan and ticking off the hardcore gaming crowd seems right up Nintendo's alley.
A group of fans decided to take matters into their own hands. Sometimes if you want something done at all, you gotta do it yourself. Ladies and gentleman. Boys and girls. Mother 3 is now available in English. I haven't played it but from what I'm hearing, Mother 3 is enough to make grown men drop to their knees and weep. Apparently the game is that good. I just hope Nintendo doesn't send the fans who translated the game a cease and disist. After all, all they did was make a translation patch. At any rate, you can now enjoy Mother 3 and understand what the heck is going on. Hooray!
Those that bought the Mega Man 9 Arrange Soundtrack got a nice little bonus: a 15 page manga by Rockman Megamix manga artist Hitoshi Ariga. The manga focuses on the events that lead up to the robots going beserk in Mega Man 9 and there's much more depth to the manga story than there is the game's. We all love Mega Man, but let's be realistic; the stories in the classic series have never been all that serious or on the same level as the X games. The Megamix manga does a admirable job of rectifying this.
On top of Ariga-San's sweet artwork, the story ain't too shabby either. Anyone that's played the Mega Man games will be trilled to see the Dr. Cossack, Kalinka (Cossack's daughter), and Bright Man appear, even if they only show up in a panel or two. It makes me wish for a proper Mega Man anime and for the rest of the Mega Man mangas to be brought states side.
For years I'd known of the existence of the Famicom game, Wily & Light's Rockboard: That's Paradise!! (such a long title) This was another one of those games that had not been localized and brought to the states. Perhaps the reasoning behind this lies in the fact that it isn't your traditional Mega Man game. Heck, Mega Man isn't even a playable character. Even so, this didn't stop a group of fans over at Mega Man PC Websites from translating the game into English. This is probably old news to many but to me, this is new and wonderful news.
I finished Mega Remixes 11-13 yesterday and that's going to be the last of them for a while. Finding remixes to make these albums was fun but very exhausting. The Mega Remixes 13 is heavy on the Doujin style music and it's pretty good to boot. I was able to find unique remixes for Tornado Man & Concrete Man's themes. On top of that, I found some remixes for the overlooked Mega Man Game Boy games, including a remix of the first Battle Theme from Mega Man IV, the Wily Boss Battle music, and Dr. Wily Stage 1 from Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge. Unless you're a frequent visitor of Doujin remix websites, I think these will be new to you.
I had no idea Capton Falcon's signature move, the Falcon Punch would spawn the ridiculous amount of videos that it has. Take this one for example. One of many that's up on YouTube. I need to learn how to do that.
I thought I'd seen everything with Mega Man music. This album I came across takes the cake. Released earlier this year, Tae K is a mix tape album that adds lyrics to some of our favorite Mega Man songs, fourteen to be exact. I've never really been one for rap, but Tae K is a huge exception. The author is obviously a huge fan of Mega Man so that scores him major bonus points right there. The mixtape take on Mega Man music works extremely well. My favorite track? "Money in the Bank" which adds lyrics to Dr. Wily Stage 2 from Mega Man 3.
Mega Man Battle & Chase was released in Japan in 1997 on the original PlayStation. Capcom had ran ads for the game in video game magazines in America, but Sony for whatever lame reason, didn't think the game was fit to cross over on American soil. The game didn't make it onto our scene until almost 10 years later when it was included in the Mega Man X Collection as an unlockable.
Great news, kiddies! Forget a Big Mac. It's allllll about Little Mac. Took Nintendo forever, but they've finally brought back Punch-Out!! and I cannot think of a more fitting system for a boxing game than the Wii. Look's like we're in for more 30 second KO bouts against Glass Joe, stuffing the Bull Charge, and more racial material than we can shake a boxing glove at. I'm off to do some road work while listening to the pass word music to Punch-Out!!