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The Legend of Heroes series has finally made it’s way into the GaMetal universe!

This series might not be as mainstream as a lot of others we cover on the channel, but I’ve been getting a lot of requests for it over the years. Despite it’s 18 million different official arrangements, Silver Will managed to break into the top #10 most requested songs from the 2020 GaMetal Song Ballot at the #8 spot (tied with a few others), with The Legend of Heroes ranking as the #4 most requested new-to-GaMetal series (alongside Persona at #1 and Terraria at #3, #2 we haven’t gotten to yet so we’ll keep it a secret for now).

As I just, there are about 18 or 19 million official versions of Silver Will, and I listened to several during my pre-remix research. It seemed that most versions play off either the original (of course lol) and the Super Arrange version, so this remix is mostly based on Super Arrange.

I’ll certainly be returning to this series later, so don’t fret TLoH fans, we’re not done with this series yet!

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Here it is, what will possibly be the GaMetal remix of the year: Freedom Fight from the legendary Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries.

You were probably thinking this would be the 2020 finale, but I just couldn’t wait any longer.

In all seriousness, I actually have a bit of history with Mechwarrior 2: it’s the first game with online play that I was really into. I remember playing it a ton back when Microsoft Zone was a thing. Back then, most people still had dial up internet and pings in the 200-400ms range. We had to compensate for the delay by ‘lag shooting’, where you shot a little bit ahead of your target in order to hit them.

Hilariously, I don’t really remember any actual songs from the game (or the Mercenaries expansion for that matter). This song, however, came about via the GaMetal Patreon Request list, where we listened to it during a listening stream and it happened to get pulled in a drawing soon after. It’s a badass, straightforward metal jam, really. The riff at 00:53 reminds me of some old school Metallica stuff.

Look, I know what you’re thinking: when on earth am I going to do more Mechwarrior material? Only time will tell, my friend, only time will tell…

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Mega Man’s return to the classic style with Mega Man 9 and 10 produced some of the best chiptune MM songs to date, and Nitro Rider from MM10 is no exception.

For this arrangement I mostly did my own thing, but I did steal borrow the key change towards the end of the song from the Rockman 10 Image Soundtrack version, which I thought sounded really cool.

Some day, Solar Inferno, some day…

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What do you get when you mix bugs and Paper Mario? Bug Fables! This game released during the tail end of 2019, and has been gaining a lot of traction throughout 2020 from the ton of positive reception that it’s received.

I feel that, if I hadn’t covered this song, it probably could’ve shown up somewhere among the top 10 songs of the next GaMetal Song Ballot, come 2021. I’ve been seeing more and more requests to check out and cover a song from this game, so I did just that and really enjoyed what I heard.

This remix was super well received by you all, so I will definitely look into doing another BF song sometime sooner rather than later!

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Happy GaMetalloween Boos and Ghouls!

Each year I hold a poll on the GaMetal Patreon that determines what song will be the year’s honorary Halloween Special. This year, I gathered a bunch of suggestions from the GaMetal Discord and chose a few favorites and songs I felt would create a good matchup to go into the poll.

Mystic Mansion came out on a top with a solid victory over 3 other songs.

This video also features a special guest appearance from none other than Sonic himself! Who’d of thought?

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Song 2 of our Halloween-themed line up for this week is from one of survival horror gamings most well-known series: Silent Hill! Silent Hill 2, to be exact.

While maybe not the ‘spookiest’ sounding song around, Silent Hill definitely fits the Halloween aesthetic.

This is probably the least metal of any GaMetal song I’ve ever done. I could’ve metaled it up a bit more, but there was something in particular I wanted to bring to life for fans of this song: the missing pieces from the trailer version(s?).

There is an extended version (or 2?) of Theme of Laura that plays in some Silent Hill 2 trailers which features a somewhat lengthy guitar solo that for whatever reason was left out of the official version. The problem is that there are a lot of sound effects going on over the top of this missing guitar solo section, so we’ve never had a clean cut to listen to.

Well no longer! I’ve done the best I can to piece together the guitar solo and provide you with a good, clean sounding version without a bunch of sound effects going on over the top of it.

Also, I’m sure you noticed in this video: new debut of my latest Guitar, the Dark Bootar! You can find more info on this guitar in my Instagram post about it, for those interested.

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Kicking off our week of Halloween-themed songs is a sort of left-field, but awesome, song pick: Vordt of the Boreal Valley from Dark souls 3.

Yes, the meme one.

The most important part of rearranging this song, to me, was the inclusion of the operatic vocals. It would’ve been sacrilege to leave them out. Luckily, EastWest Voices of Opera had exactly the sound I needed to bring them into this remix. The opera vocals were so important to include, that if I didn’t have a suitable VI to use, I probably would’ve just done it myself.

Will I do more Dark Souls? Maybe, it depends on if I get enough requests for it! 🙂

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NES Medley is back for it’s 8th iteration!

Like we’ve been doing since 2015, all songs in this medley were chosen by GaMetal Patrons, with most being chosen at random via drawing. Here’s this year’s song lineup:

1. Title Theme (Ice Climber)
2. Identity Believer [Boss 2] (Mr. Gimmick!)
3. Koopa Kid / Boss Battle (Super Mario Bros. 3)
4. Round 4 (Mighty Final Fight)
5. Wily Fortress 1 (Mega Man 3)
6. Sailing (StarTropics)
7. Joe’s Bar (Deja Vu)
8. Castle (Super Mario Bros.)
9. Stage 2-2 (Ninja Gaiden 2)
10. Arctic Cavern (Battletoads)
11. Nightmare World (Little Nemo: The Dream Master)
12. Dark Man (Mega Man 5)
13. In Game Theme (Ice Hockey)
14. Battle Scene 2 (Final Fantasy II)

With most of these songs being chosen randomly, I never quite know what I’m getting myself into, but this year I feel like we had a near perfect mix of popular, obscure, and middle-ground song picks.

The next console medley has already been determined and should be coming before the end of the year, so all you console medley fans stay tuned! 🙂

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“Wario Time!”

I’ve never done a Wario song that wasn’t from Master of Disguise, so let’s change that with what some call Wario’s “unofficial theme”: Greenhorn Forest.

I actually had a bit of trouble deciding on the style/pace of this remix. My first attempt had a bit more upbeat tempo than the original (but slower than what I’ve ultimately ended up with here), but I wasn’t a big fan of it, so I scrapped it. Then I tried it around the original tempo… and didn’t like what I was coming up with at that speed either.

So finally I just went full speed ahead and raised the tempo significantly higher than the original (which I know raises the possibility of irking a few people, sry), making it a lot closer to the “Starring Wario” remake of this song that appears in DDR Mario Mix. After some trial and error with the rhythm sections (which really was the biggest problem I was having), I finally ended up with something I liked.

Greenhorn Forest wouldn’t be as “Wario sounding” if it didn’t have the Sax. I experimented with having it be more of a background instrument at first, but decided it definitely had to be up front, and backed up with some more brass when it’s melody repeats.

Some people call it ‘fart brass’ when describing it, and it doesn’t get any more Wario than that folks.

Have a rotten day!

 

 

 

(As I keep saying, I actually hope your day is great!)

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After talking about doing this song for years and years… I’ve finally done it: The Long Distance of Murder is here!

A question I get asked often is ‘if you could do a song that was completely your choice, not influenced by requests, what would you do?’. My answer is usually that, to this point, I’ve pretty much done every song that I’ve REALLY wanted to do, but there’s always a few out there, that I haven’t done, that have been on my personal to-do list for ages. The Long Distance of Murder is one of those songs.

This is my personal favorite F-Zero song. I first heard it in GP Legend (if you haven’t been able to tell, I’m actually a lot more familiar with the GBA F-Zero soundtracks than I am the others), and I fell in love with it. I’ve been meaning to do it FOREVER… but, it’s a really long distance… to murder.

Lucky for me, this got pulled in a GaMetal Patreon drawing, lol.

This arrangement combines elements from all versions of the song: F-Zero X (and eXpansion if you want to count that), GP Legends, and the official “Guitar Arrange” album version.

Bring back F-Zero, Nintendo!

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It’s about time that we finally do a completely new Mario & Luigi remix, so here’s easily the most requested one: The Final Antasma Battle from Mario & Luigi: Dream Team!

Did you know: I made a new Mario & Luigi remix since Adventure’s End back in 2017. Ok sure, it was the 2017 finale, but that was still over 2 years ago. Also, I’m not counting the 2018 In the Final since that was a remake and all.

M&L songs tend to be among the most popular GaMetal remixes, so I regularly see requests for more songs from the series, but the majority of those requests have been for Antasma. It was the #7 overall song from the 2019 Song Ballot, and moved up a couple of spots to the #5 slot in 2020.

I recently held the first ever GaMetal Discord Request Battle tournament, and this was one of the contenders. It wiped out every song it went up against, perhaps a bit more than I was expecting.

While Antasma has never quite been my favorite M&L song, I’ve come to like it a lot more and I’m really happy with how this one turned out.

There are probably a couple of other M&L songs in particular that I see requests for, so I’m sure we’ll get back to the series sometime in the future!

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Here’s an interesting one!

It seems I’ve been doing a lot more ‘chill’ GaMetal this year like Dire Dire Docks, Misty Rain, maybe Confronting Myself, and probably some other one(s) I can’t remember at the moment… but now we have another to add to the pile: Sky Tower.

But I’m a-ok with that, because chill songs are fun!

Sky Tower falls into the ‘pretty long for a game song’ category, coming in at a whopping 3:40 before hitting the loop point. I did, however, (at the suggestion of GaMetal Patron FZRBrawler, gotta give credit where it’s due) throw in some of Sky Tower Summit to cap off the song.

I’ll be getting back to PMD again I’m sure, till then!

PS: If you didn’t understand why Mario Kart Wii shows up in the video at around 3:28.. well, just listen to the first part of MKW Rainbow Road and then listen to this section of Sky Tower!

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For the second time in a row, I’ve got another song for you that I’ve done previously in a medley: Goe Goe Spark from Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon!

I first did this one rather recently, back in December 2019, as part of the Nintendo 64 Medley. Because of that, if you’re not familiar with Goe Goe Spark, you might be expecting it to break into Jet Force Gemini’s Character Select theme at the end of the loop.. but alas, it does not.

But it doesn’t need to. This is a great song on it’s own. I’ve seen quite a few people cover Goe Goe Spark, despite Goemon not being particularly popular here in the West. So as fate would have it (this won a GaMetal Patreon drawing!), it was time to throw my hat into the ring.

Aside from the usual shenanigans like a pretty cool guitar solo thrown in the middle, I also did a key change that I think ended up sounding pretty awesome for the last loop of the song.

I wonder what song that I previously did in a medley will come next?

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Download (End card acoustic short: WANTED!)

You’re probably not familiar with Metal Max, and that’s ok, it’s not exactly the most popular game/series around. But by no means does that mean it’s bad!

My first encounter with this song was when I covered it back in 2015 for the SNES Medley. This medley, if you didn’t was, was entirely assembled by choices made from the GaMetal Patreon community back in its infancy, when we only had a handful of supporters.

I’ve never heard of this song or game before, but it was one of my favorites to do from that medley. I knew I wanted (get it?) to do a full version of it some day, it was just a matter of squeezing it in when I could. So I did!

I haven’t played or listened to the soundtracks from all of the Metal Max games, but from what I can tell, WANTED! or Battle with the Wanted (from what I have seen, it has officially been titled both of these names with WANTED! being the most common) is in most if not all of the Metal Max titles, even dating back to the first one on the Famicom.

It’s short and sweet (originally about 25 seconds, IIRC), but it’s still really catchy and high energy. Later official arrangements added a few more things here and there, but the core melody remained in tact.

Then there’s the Metal Max Xeno version.

Xeno added an insanely long and great guitar solo that I couldn’t pass up on playing, so I’ve included it in this remix, making this about 66% guitar solo!

Xeno aside, this arrangement was also strongly influenced by the Metal Max 2 and Metal Saga versions of WANTED!. From 2, I used a lot of the background organ line that is present there, and Saga incorporated some synth leads that I’ve included as well.

I know this won’t be the most popular GaMetal song around, but this might end up being one of my personal favorites that I’ve done this year. It’s just such a great song!

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At long last… a GaMetal Super Mario Galaxy remix! And we’ve invited a special guest along for the ride: the amazingly talented String Player Gamer!

My first interaction with String Player Gamer was when he invited me to be a part of his K.K. Crusin’ mega collab, which I gladly took part in. In that same discussion, I mentioned that I’d love to have him on the channel sometime in the future. He was down, so after some discussion on what sort of series he’d be interested in, I told him I’d get back to him with a good one.

Fast forward just a little bit, and this song was chosen in a GaMetal Patreon drawing. When I finally sat down to flesh out the arrangement, it hit me that this could be a perfect Violin and Guitar duet for String Player Gamer and I. So I brought up the idea with him and he was all in!

I’m really fond of how this one turned out, String Player Gamer made it beyond perfect! Be sure to check out his channel, subscribe, and show him some love!

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Time for some NU METAL!! That’s what this theme reminds me of anyway, haha. Either way, CO Brenner’s theme Hope Never Dies is badass.

I’ve only done one Advance Wars song (Sturm) a few years ago, and I’ve intended to get around to doing another when I found the opportunity. I found said opportunity in this banger of a tune.

While the Days of Ruin soundtrack is great, it suffers from one major issue: extreme bitcrush. The compression on these tracks are so bad, it’s almost as if they’re coming straight from a Game Boy speaker.

My intent was to keep this one pretty true to the original, but bringing it out of that bitcrushy mess into the full quality glory it deserves.

I also threw in a section with a solo reminiscent of Zakk Wylde (more like Zakk Mild am I right, haha… I think I made this joke before plz forgive me I’m not funny).

I’m sure we’ll get back to AW eventually, till then!

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Deltarune showed itself once again in top 3 most requested songs of the GaMetal Song Ballot (alongside The Battle of Award 42), with crazy song: Chaos King!

I’d definitely put this song higher up on the crazy scale than The World Revolving, but it’s still a cool song none-the-less. I tried to emphasis the calamity with a lot of back and forth keyboard/guitar action, and a sort of nutty solo.

There are probably still a couple of Deltarune tracks I’d like to get to sometime later. We also really haven’t had much Undertale in a while, have we? Maybe Chapter 2 will come out before I get to either one of those?!

We’ll find out eventually! 🙂

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(End card acoustic short download coming soon!)

Chill GaMetal is back, and this time we’re revisiting Mega Man ZX for a take on the Graceful song Misty Rain (Area I – Imprisonment Facility).

I first did this song for GaMetal Patron SolarZero as an acoustic short several years ago, and I’ve been a fan of it ever since. It has an aura of mystery to it that I find really appealing.

This arrangement borrows influence from both the original and the ZX Tunes version, though the ZX Tunes version is really just a higher quality version with some additional instruments added. Namely, the arpeggiated synth line that plays over the altered intro after the first loop, and the addition of vocals carrying the intro melody and main melody during the second repeat. Here, I held off on the vocal “oo”s until the end, behind the outro/guitar solo.

I’m really happy with how this one turned out. I know it’s not exactly the most popular ZX song around, but I’ve always felt it was way under-appreciated and needed some more love!

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Download (End card piano short: Rawk Hawk)

It’s time to RAWK! …and 1000 other ‘Rawk’ puns.

Paper Mario: The Origami King was just released about a week ago, so I thought we’d celebrate in classic Paper Mario fan fashion by bringing up The Thousand-Year Door again.

This song is originally pretty short (about a minute?), so I did quite a bit of arranging for this remix. I held off on the second half of the song, which plays a heavy sounding riff, till we do a couple of runs through the first few sections. Then I expanded the heavy section to be a lot longer (because I thought it sounded really cool) and also made it the dedicated solo section.

With Rawk Hawk finally complete, there’s only a few popular Paper Mario requests left hanging around (along with several other great songs that just aren’t as popular). I still have to listen to the Origami King soundtrack to see if there’s anything there we need to hit up!

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(End card acoustic coming soon!)

At long last, something from FighterZ!

I’ve done a fair share of Game Boy Dragon Ball songs in the forms of Decisive Battle from Legendary Super Warriors and both Elite Frieze Soldier Battle and Frieze Battle in the Game Boy Medley, but this is our first foray into music from a more modern DB title.

This was already a pretty bangin’ song, so I didn’t change much, but swapped in the keyboard to take over the lead melody after the first loop, and added a guitar solo.

Badass song from a great soundtrack, perhaps we’ll get back to it again someday!