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For the second song of the GaMetalloween 2023 season, we make our long awaited return to the Shantae games with this arrangement of Darkest Night (Village of Lost Souls)!

Each year, I let my Patreon supporters (come join us! 🥹) choose what the official Halloween special will be via Halloween Song Poll. This year, I decided to shake things up a bit and get more of the outside GaMetal community involved, so to help me choose what songs would go in the poll this year, I did a larger poll with 12 on the GaMetal Discord (which I also encourage you to join) to help me narrow down the field to 3 or 4 songs, which would then hopefully lead to an excitingly tight Halloween poll (more on that in the next song’s page).

Eight songs ended up doing pretty in that larger poll, and I noticed the top and bottom four could be split into two different tiers, the top 4 having a significant enough size advantage over the bottom 4 to warrant them being the official choices for the actual, official Halloween poll on Patreon. However… I was still interested in covering one of the other 4 songs that, for the first time ever in GaMetal history (important), I held TWO Halloween polls on the GaMetal Patreon instead of one.

Darkest Night (Village of Lost Souls) was a part of what I’d call the B poll, and going in was actually an underdog (tied with another song for the #7/#8 voting rank), but still managed to come out on top, despite looking like it would go to a different song in the early runnings.

This was a very fun song to cover (as most Shantae songs are a lot of fun in general), it manages to have a dark feel while also maintaining those dance-y, upbeat Shantae vibes. I’ve perhaps neglected this series a bit too much, having only covered Risky Boots in the Game Boy Medley and Burning Town a very long time ago. Maybe I should remake that one sometime. 🤔

 

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For the last few years, I’ve been doing multiple Halloween-themed rather than just a single one, a tradition I’ve continued here in 2023 (and will likely continue to do so cause… it’s fun!). While you could consider the previous song, At Doom’s Gate, to be fitting enough for the season, it was actually this song, Spooky, that I chose to be the first ‘official’ song of GaMetalloween 2023. (As my initial plan was to have At Doom’s Gate out in September.)

Whenever I initiate possible Halloween song discussion with the community, this song almost always comes up. Each year I end up filing it in the ‘maybe next time’ category, and it just so happens 2023 was finally “next time”.

In the original, the main chunk of the song (about 3 minutes) loops over again, but with some subtle changes and additions in the second playthrough. For this arrangement, I tried to incorporate all of the little additions and changeups into a single playthrough (as it felt like it would’ve been a little bit overkill to make this one 7 minutes, haha).

To make up for that (for any Spooky purists out there), I added an extra cherry on top by including the Spooky 2 theme at the end, which plays when Spooky has nearly been defeated.

Can’t go wrong with a song named Spooky for Halloween season! 👻

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It finally happened: I covered so many Super Mario RPG songs, I got sent to hell for it. (No idea why this is such a sin just trust me on this one.)

 

While in Hell, I started thinking about how I never covered the iconic At Doom’s Gate (aka E1M1 for my fellow senior gamers out there), a staple song for metal VGM cover artists. I knew I’d get around to it eventually, but I wanted to do something a little bit different with it. Ever since I did the Pepsi Man Pepsi Jam a few years ago, I’ve dwelled upon other possible songs to do a jam session over, and this song was my #1 choice.

As lovely as it was having multiple different instruments in the Pepsi Jam, for this particular jam, I thought it’d be most fitting to feature all Guitarists this time around, so I called upon the power of 8 almighty Guitar beasts to help me out, both familiar and new friends to the GaMetal universe! They are (in order of appearance): YaboiMatoi, Husky by the Geek, Joshua Taipale, Hountr64, Ro Panuganti, ToxicxEternity, RichaadEB, and FamilyJules.

Be sure to go and check out all these awesome shredders, follow/sub, and show them some love! They helped me out of Hell after all. 😈

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Boost Power is back, everybody!!

F-Zero has FINALLY seen a bit of a revival with the recent release of F-Zero 99, a game I have been enjoying quite a bit, so I wanted to make a quick remix for the occasion. I was already prepared for the big two F-Zero songs a few years back with Big Mute Blue City, so I decided to do what I think might be my 3rd favorite song from the original game: White Land.

There’s a really good Smash Bros arrangement of this, but I didn’t listen to it much while I was working on this one, I wanted it to be more of it’s own thing. I’ve also “included” the White Land II arrangement, which is almost the same as White Land I but down in key a half step and a slightly different intro. I bridged the two parts together with an original guitar solo section in between.

I’d like to do another F-Zero song sometime soon! The series has so many amazing songs that’ve been overlooked by F-Zero’s previous death. Now’s our time, F-Zero fans!

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Just when you thought it wasn’t possible… just when you thought your crystals were safe… and just when you thought ‘maybe Jonny is taking a little break with Super Mario RPG’…

 

…you’re suddenly transported to a dark, 2D world, and the Dark Knight of Vanda himself challenges you to a duel. Enter Culex!

I got the idea for this arrangement when I kept seeing requests to “do a remix of Culex’s theme”… despite the fact I’ve done the Final Fantasy IV Boss Theme before (including a recent remaster of said remix on the XI album). But I know what some of you (including those fine requesters) were thinking: but this is Culex’s Theme I’m wanting, not some Final Fantasy boss song!

So I set out to create not just some ordinary remake of the FFIV Boss Theme, but a complete reimagining of it. I give to you: Fight Against Culex, a song that is totally not from Final Fantasy IV.

This arrangement has four ‘phases’. Phase 1 is a slow dramatic buildup. Phase 2 is when things kick into full gear and is a bit closer to what you may be used to hearing from this song. Phase 3 goes past full gear and into overdrive, inspired by the part of the fight where Culex said “it’s Culexin time!” and Culexed all over the place. Phase 4 is when our heroes triumph over evil and finish off Culex once and for all.

I took a lot of inspiration from mainly two songs for this arrangement: the JENOVA Quickening (which has a super, super, SUPER long buildup into the usual high-tempo JENOVA), and the Advent Children version of One Winged Angel, because an Advent Children of Dancing Mad would’ve been too much for the world to handle so they had to settle for making that instead, and it’s pretty cool.

Also, jokes aside, there are a few small differences between the Super Mario RPG arrangement of this song and the original version from Final Fantasy IV. Can you spot them? 🙂

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Everyone’s favorite ‘WTF IS THAT THING‘ has arrived: Zeromus!

 

So I heard Zeromus is coming to Final Fantasy XIV… actually, that’s not why I’m doing this song. It’s just a coincidence. But you know I love my classic FF music, so it was bound to happen eventually.

That new version of Zeromus dropped shortly after I finished this arrangement. While that arrangement takes more of “Battle! Zeromus” modern Pokémon battle theme approach, mine has a more ‘idk what I’m doing’ style that I think I encapsulate very well.

This is a fairly overlooked classic FF final battle song (it is competing with Dancing Mad and Neo-Exdeath after all. Oh yeah One-Winged Angel is also a song), but it’s still a great final boss theme that holds a lot of merit.

 

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Today in songs you’d never expect, we’re revisiting the funky fresh soundtrack from the Pokémon TCG Game Boy series, this time for a track from the second game: the Great Rocket Fortress Leader duel theme!

Unfortunately we didn’t get this second game here in the West, but at the very least, we did get a re-release of sorts of the first game on NSO. I know much has probably changed and evolved with the TCG since that game was released, but for those who were always interested in giving the card game a try, the GB game(s) are an awesome place to start.

When I was a kid, me and some friends had the cards, but no one was ever really interested in actually playing the game (except for me)… then the first game dropped, and I finally had an outlet. 🙂

Hopefully we can get an official English translation and port to NSO in the near future! I also need more of excuse to cover Ronald’s Theme…

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Bowser’s Keep (or Bowser’s Castle which is apparently the official name of this track) has always been one of my favorite Super Mario RPG songs. Sure, it’s mostly an arrangement of Fight Against Koopa, but it adds such a dramatic spin on it that it’s always felt like an entirely different song. In fact, I didn’t notice the whole arrangement matter till much later.

A fairly straightforward arrangement here. The biggest changes being the doubling the length of the section at 00:25, and a bit of a changeup for the guitar solo section.

Also yes, this is technically Bowser’s Keep (Second Time), but the (First Time) version is literally an 11 second loop (which is also the beginning of Second Time). 🤪

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Gettin’ ready for this HAPPY ADVENTURE COMING ON NOVEMBER 17TH 2023 AM I RIGHT?? 🎉

This is one of the few songs that I did not cover in that old 2012 Super Mario RPG mega medley. Why? My reasoning was: the original was too long and is only heard in the intro cutscene. Not really a great reason (I could’ve just included a small bit), but I probably wasn’t as bright 11 years ago as I like to convince myself that I am today.

As a small bonus and to give this track that true ‘just started the game up’ feel, I started off this arrangement with “In the Flower Garden”, which I just realized today is based on the Super Mario Bros. 3 World 1 Map Theme, another to add to my list of “VGM callbacks that eluded me for decades”.

I made a tweet a month or so ago where I asked people what their favorite non-Battle/non-Forest’s Mushrooms SMRPG song(s) are, and this one was mentioned a lot more than I expected, which made me feel a little dumber for not including it in the mega medley. It is, indeed, a Happy and Delightful song, and quite memorable.

Two and half more months folks… two and a half…

 

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IT’S WAAAAAAAARIO TIME!!!

This is it, the fifth and final song from the Wario: Master of Disguise soundtrack that I’ve wanted to do. Maybe. Who knows? There could be another one someday. Maybe we’ll even get a Wario: Master of Diguise 2 with more badass songs by a returning Kenji Hikita to cover.

This one’s about a minute long originally, so I gave it a bit of a jam-session treatment with lots of guitar solo work and a drum solo break section.

Now with this one out of the way, maybe we can finally get to a Wario Land song…

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We’re taking on our first song from this classic Capcom RPG series: The Battle Begins from Breath of Fire!

Not to be confused with Let the Battles Begin! from that other game. You know the one. There’s no permission for these battles.

Originally, this is a really cool battle theme, but to me it suffered from one major problem: it has a rather abrupt loop point… like it almost feels like the song is unfinished. Enter this arrangement!

I moved the final section of the original loop back a little bit to let the first couple of sections after the intro play again (with a slightly altered strings melody the second time), then brought that final section back but added a lot more to it, which makes this feel like a far more complete song now.

Plus you know, the usual GaMetal shenanigans.

I know there are some diehard classic BoF fans out there that’d like to see me return to this series, fear not. I’m aware I at least need to do something from BoF 2 or 3. In time, friends! 🙂

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We’re taking to the streets… of rage… for the first time in the GaMetal universe, with this arrangement of the iconic “Go Straight” from Streets of Rage 2!

Remember that Genesis Medley from about 8 years ago? There was a lot missing from that medley… Streets of Rage 2 is one of the first games that comes up. That was because I made that medley before the time when I started throwing in ‘can’t miss this game’ song picks into first-time console medleys.

But fear not, Streets of Rage fans, I have your back with something better than a medley inclusion: a full remix!

This song (and most of the SoR soundtrack for that matter) has such strong funk/dance vibes that I couldn’t help but keep that as the central theme for this arrangement. I also added a small portion of the melody from Street of Rage 4’s “They’re Back”, the spiritual musical sequel to Go Straight, mid song. It originally repeats that same section for quite a bit, so I thought we could spice it up a little.

Now, what do we call this genre? 🤔

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Eureka!

(I’m running out of Ace Attorney speech bubbles to quote.)

I did this song a while back as an acoustic short, and I’ve been a big fan of it ever since. With the recent announcement of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy coming later this year, I realized we haven’t done any Ace Attorney for a little bit, so figured we could get back to it with this banger.

While I was mostly familiar with the original version, I did hear the Spirit of Justice version before, went back and listened to it, and perhaps ended up liking it even more than the original. It raises the key up a couple of steps, and adds a new section right before the chorus, which it also doubles in length (a feature I kept in the run-through of the original version here in this arrangement because it felt WAY too short after I listened to the SoJ version for a while).

I also got to put myself behind the desk in the video and that was fun. 🤓

 

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It’s Pikminin’ time!

 

Perhaps I’ve been a bit harsh on Pikmin in the past. There’s been a bit of a long running joke that I haven’t done Pikmin songs because when asked why, I usually respond “Pikmin has music?”.

I was only joking of course… but in all honesty, I never really knew too much about Pikmin, and the few Pikmin tracks I had heard could only be described as “Environmental” at best.

So Pikmin 4 came out recently, and I decided it’d be fun to celebrate by finally doing a Pikmin song. I checked up on the GaMetal Patreon Request List and this was one of the few Pikmin songs suggested, so after listening to it, I thought it’d be a fun challenge to take on.

Not challenging because the song itself was hard to play or even hard to translate into a different format, it had plenty of rhythm and melody to play around with. The challenge came in incorporating the several different variations of Wistful Wild, and there are A LOT. Something like 13 or so. Thankfully, the variations mostly add or change a simple instrument line or two.

We can make things a little easier to break down by first starting off with the 2 biggest and most noticeable differences: the normal versions and the “sunset” versions. The Sunset versions are all generally the same as the normal versions, with one major difference: the acoustic guitar and flute (and probably a few other less noticeable instruments I’m forgetting to mention) have been replaced with a music box. So by incorporating a few music box bits into this arrangement (at 1:34 and the outro), we’re acknowledging the existence of all of the Sunset variants.

Now to get a little more complicated, we have the 6 different variants of Wistful Wild overall: Normal, Enemy Near, Battle, Working, Treasure, and Spiderwort Near. The changes here also mostly apply to the Sunset variants, barring a few small exceptions.

Normal is mainly the acoustic guitar and flute lines (as well as the Cello and Sitar-sounding part later in the song). For the most part, they’re heard throughout every variant, with a few exceptions of variants changing the instrument of the main melody/some rhythms.

Enemy Near adds a little 2 note jingle throughout the entire song. I bring this in at 0:28 in this arrangement, and it plays throughout most of this arrangement represented by harpsichord (though I do tone the volume back on it a bit, as it would get annoying if it were too prevalent for too long, lol).

Battle brings in a march-sounding drum line, which I bring in here around 0:38. Since this is a GaMetal arrangement… it’s pretty much all battle sounding whenever the drums are playing, haha.

Working cuts the drums out and instead incorporates a different piano and pizzicato string rhythm section. This one was a bit trickier to represent in this arrangement with all the different instruments going on and what not, but I did include the Piano/plucked strings line during the second loop. The rhythm section that comes in at 2:21 is a direct acknowledgment of the Working variant rhythm line.

Treasure replaces the flute melody with an accordian. Simple enough, just had an Accordian handle the lead melody at 2:31.

Spiderwort Near is the normal variant with a simple long soft flute/string/choir rhythm line in the back. Technically when I bring in the music box at 1:34, this is the Spiderwort Near variant. I do keep the rhythm going for a bit once the full band comes in.

Now that I’ve proven in a court of law that I’ve represented all of the different versions of Wistful Wild… I must make one confession. There are ANOTHER thirteen variants which I did not acknowledge: the Louie versions. Louie’s versions basically give the song a slight swing tempo, that’s all really. I don’t think anyone noticed….. 👀

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Get ready because he’s coming this way!!

If you’re visiting this page, you’ve probably visited the Fight Against a Somewhat Stronger Monster page, read the entire thing multiple times, listened to the remix on loop since it was released, saved it on Spotify and got it on Apple Music and Amazon and all other fine places where GaMetal is streamed, and understand how excited I am about the upcoming Super Mario RPG remake.

I made this remix for fun in my spare time. I didn’t really extend it or anything, so it’s only a minute long. I was initially considering recording actual video for it like usual, but since this is such a quick little remix, I decided to make a video edit of the Dodo mini game scene instead, which I really wanted to make sure I included either way because it’s such an important part of this song.

Also, I was surprised to notice on a quick look-back that I didn’t include this song in the old 2012 Super Mario RPG mega medley. In fact, I don’t even think I noted it in the page description! Trying my best to remember, I probably opted to leave it out since it’s basically a rearrangement of Fight Against an Armed Boss, and had already done such a thing with Here’s Some Weapons, so perhaps I was trying not to be too repetitive.

Or, maybe, just maybe, I knew this song was so important that I had to save it to do in it’s entirety 11 years later. Yeah, that was it.

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Here’s a rare remix for ya… a Panzer Dragoon Orta song, of all things!

Pretty straightforward arrangement here, not too much to note. This one sort of gives me Star Fox 64 vibes, which I’m always a fan of. The bagpipe (which makes me only think of Majora’s Mask) seemed like a pretty important element, so I kept it goin on here as well.

To Panzers and Dragoons everywhere, enjoy!

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SUPER MARIO RPG IS COMING BACK!!!

The year is 1996. I was 9 years old, and had received a new game for my birthday: Super Mario RPG. Little did I know how much this game would have an impact on my life. It quickly became one of my favorite games. I remember finding some pictures of the 3D character renders (Mario, Mallow, Geno, Bowser and Peach) on AOL, printed them out and hung them on my wall.

Super Mario RPG was also when I started to realize that I really liked game music. My mom helped me record some of the songs onto cassette tapes by using a boombox with a record function and holding it up to the TV speaker while I let songs play. To this day, Super Mario RPG still has one of my favorite soundtracks, I’ve always ranked it as #2 behind only Final Fantasy VI. I even loved it enough to cover the entire soundtrack in one gigantic mega-medley back in 2012. Fast forward almost 3 entire decades since release. Super Mario RPG had seemingly long been left behind by Nintendo. Fans of the game had been clamoring for some sort of SMRPG content, or even acknowledgement, for years. The best we got was a quick Geno cameo sprite in a Mario & Luigi game, some character moveset references (Mario and Peach, Wario’s Booster punch) and the Geno Mii outfits in Smash Bros. The latest of which, a late Geno Mii outfit release in Smash Ultimate, seemed to be the final nail in the coffin, as there had been high hopes in the SMRPG community for a full Geno character inclusion (I commemorated this tragic event with the release of “Sad Song” in 2021).

Then on June 21st, 2023, something magical happened.

Super Mario RPG

is

BACK.

And….. from what we’ve seen so far, it’s looking BEAUTIFUL!

I’ve never in my life been more stoked for anything revealed in a Nintendo Direct, or any game-related showcase for that matter. I’m thrilled that not only will us older SMRPG fans be able to relive one of our favorite games, but younger folks who never got a chance to give it a try will now be able to as well.

And now, I begin my quest to remind the world that the Super Mario RPG soundtrack is much, much more than just Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms.

LETS ‘A GO!

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Are you READY?? 🔫🐰