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We’re battling for everyone’s souls with this highly requested GaMetal song: Battle Hymn of the Soul from Persona 3!

Now this is a classic VGM jam right here! I’ve been seeing requests for this song since the beginning of GaMetal. Back then we just called it ‘Battle for Everyone’s Souls‘, but it’s now officially known as Battle Hymn of the Soul.

It’s remained such a strong request, that it was voted up to the #5 spot on the 2021 GaMetal Song Ballot (tied with Revenge from Everhood), and was the #1 most requested Persona song.

So let’s get to it!

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GaMetal is Ending. Just kidding, here’s a rockin’ tribute to one of gaming’s greatest staff roll themes: Ending from Super Mario World!

The #1 most requested series from the 2021 GaMetal Song Ballot was the gaming legend himself: Mario. Always bank on Mario. Although, the Mario series sort of has an unfair advantage over other series, since there are a a plethora of spinoffs that can be considered part of the Mario series.

I covered this song, partially, back in the 2015 SNES Medley. It was really fun to do a full version of. You’d think the main riff would get tiring after 4 minutes of constantly repeating, but it never really does.

That’s that Mario Magic, I suppose!

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Here’s this year’s GaMetal Patreon Halloween Poll winner: Dark Samus Battle from Metroid Prime 3!

I wasn’t sure how well it would fair against the other songs I put it against given it’s oddness, but it managed to win by a solid margin.

This song appears in both Metroid Prime 2 and Prime 3 with some differences, I felt the Prime 3 version was a bit more fleshed out, so I used that as the base for this arrangement.

Shade Man brought the light hearted Halloween fun feel this year, Dark Samus brought the horror feel. So we were able to have a bit of something for both sides this year!

I hope you all had an amazing Halloween, now we gotta get ready for the year’s end!

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Shade Man has come to make his long awaited Halloween appearance!

No, not Haunted Graveyard.

The REAL Shade Man Stage theme!

Every year since 2016, I’ve held a poll on the GaMetal Patreon (hey you should become a Patron!) to determine what the Halloween Special will be. Shade Man was one of this year’s contenders, but it ultimately ended up in second place.

However, I had made such good progress on the three confirmed Halloween week songs (Heart ot Fire, Truth Beauty Hatred, and Dark Samus Battle), that I had just enough time to squeeze in another. So I thought, hey, how about that second place song?

I always thought the first Mega Man 7 song I’d cover (not including medley pieces) would be the Opening Stage Theme, but this one works too!

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MAREWA! The Knight returns to GaMetal to take on it’s “fearsome” rival: the invincible, fearless, sensual, mysterious, enchanting, vigorous, diligent, overwhelming, gorgeous, passionate, terrifying, beautiful, powerful, Grey Prince Zote!

A couple of years back, Hollow Knight headlined our Halloween festivities with our remake of Grimm / Nightmare (still a favorite from that year). I played through the game shortly afterwards, and it’s remained one of my favorite platformers that I’ve played in recent years.

There are a few songs from this soundtrack that gets requests, and I ultimately decided to go with one that represents the mighty Zote, because he is awesome.

Here’s to hoping we’ll get Silksong soon!

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GaMetalloween Week 2021 began with the return of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, for this arrangement of Julius Belmont’s theme, Heart of Fire!

You can’t go wrong with Castlevania in October! This was the most requested Castlevania song from the 2021 GaMetal Song Ballot. It’s also the winner of our most recent GaMetal Discord Request Battle, beating out all other Castlevania songs.

Some info on this song’s title: the official Aria of Sorrow soundtrack goes only with the name of the first song that is represented in this arrangement, Don’t Wait Until Night, which is originally from Haunted Castle, but most people know this song by the name of the second song from the arrangement, Heart of Fire from the first Castlevania.

I hope you enjoy this arrangement of the best Belmont’s theme!

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It’s that time again, time for another NES Medley!

Every year since 2014 (and once in the first year of GaMetal, 2009), we have put together an annual NES Medley to knock out a few awesome NES tunes that often get overlooked. Since the inception of the GaMetal Patreon in 2015, I’ve let the GaMetal Patreon community put together the song lists by submitting songs and choosing the line-up at random.

The 17 songs featured in this medley are:

1. Area A (Shatterhand)
2. Wily Battle (Mega Man)
3. Rising Tide (Layla: The Iris Missions)
4. Desert Tower (Joy Mech Fight)
5. Krang’s Theme (TMNT 2 / TMNT 3)
6. Hero’s Challenge (Dragon Quest 3)
7. This is the Final Battle (Final Fantasy 3)
8. Boss Battle (Ninja Gaiden)
9. Town Theme (Zelda 2: Adventure of Link)
10. Title Theme (Treasure Master)
11. Mission 01 (1943: The Battle of Midway)
12. Title Theme (Rad Gravity)
13. Boss Battle (Super Mario Bros. 2)
14. Energy Zone (Contra)
15. Stage 2 (TMNT 3: The Manhattan Project)
16. Valestein Castle (Ys 3: Wanderers from Ys)
17. Big Battle (Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse)

We hope you enjoy this year’s GaMetal NEStalgia Medley!

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In recent years, I’ve had a lot piled on my to-do list from GaMetal Patreon requests and Youtube requests, to where I haven’t been able to throw in a completely biased personal selection too often. This hasn’t been too much of a worry for me, as at this point, I’ve done most of my favorite game songs that I’ve wanted to cover. Either way, I’ve recently cut the to-do list down to a very manageable size, and thus, I can now throw in a random Jonny pick every now and then. This is one of them!

I’ve always really loved FF4’s Red Wings theme, and always wanted to cover it, but wasn’t quite sure if it had enough to it for a full remix. I had made a version of this a little while ago just for fun and liked it so much that I figured I’d try to make it into a whole thing.

The pixel remaster version added some new stuff by changing up the instrumentation of the second go-around, so I used that arrangement as the base for this one, and gave it an actual ending.

Doing this song has also made me realize that we have a strong lack of Final Fantasy IV on the channel, hmm…

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Download (End card acoustic short: Arena)

We’re visiting the Warriors series for a second time this year, this time we’re taking it all the way back to Dynasty Warriors 3!

I played A LOT of Dynasty Warriors 3 and 4 as a kid. Perhaps an unhealthy amount. I was introduced to the series by one of my best friends at the time, who had DW3. One thing that always stuck out was the soundtrack: it was full of guitar-centric bangers. Of course, there were plenty of rock soundtracks back then, but DW was one of the first series for me where I remember most of the soundtrack(s) having this kind of sound. I was just starting to learn guitar around this time, so I always loved it.

Over the years, I regularly get the occasional comment asking for some Dynasty Warriors material. There are a lot of great songs out there, but we’ve landed on this one which came from the GaMetal Patreon request list. It’s one of the most popular songs from DW3, the other probably being Arena. I’m sure I’ll get back around to this series sometime in the future. Besides, we did a Hyrule Warriors song earlier this year, so in a way, we got 2 Warriors songs in 2021! 🙂

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Another year, another Pursuit theme! This time from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies.

Like Pursuit ~ Lying Coldly, this one wasn’t exactly my among my favorite Pursuit themes, but it grew on me a lot while I was working on it. I think I said exactly this sentence in the post for that song, haha.

Ok for real, next time I’m gonna try really hard to not do a Pursuit theme for the next Ace Attorney arrangement!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Cherry Tree Bridge)

At long last we’re returning to the Etrian Odyssey series, this time for a remake of The End of the Raging Waves from Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City!

So a quick primer on the name of this song: most people call it End of Raging Waves, or The End of Raging Waves… or The End of the Raging Waves, but it’s officially titled Crest of the Violent Wave, which no one has requested under that title, go figure. 😛

Anyway, this song, as with most Etrian Odyssey music, is awesome. I put it up against a different EO song in a recent GaMetal Discord Request Battle, where it barely edged out a victory.

There are a few different official arrangements of this song, this remix is based off the original arrangement from Etrian Odyssey 3.

Doing this one makes me want to do another EO song sometime in the near future. Till then!

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I can’t lie to ya, I’m not super familiar with this game, so much so that I’m going to use an unrelated classic GaMetal bard image for the thingy here.

This song comes from the visual novel game Sorcery Jokers. Numerous folks from the GaMetal fanbase that have played this game and other visual novels say it’s a pretty good one, so if you’re a fan of VN games, definitely check it out!

But wait! Even if you have never heard of Sorcery Jokers, you should still check out the song, because it’s really good. I promise. 🙂

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Download (End card acoustic short: The Playroom)

Revenge from Everhood is a really, really awesome song. I’d go as far as to say it’s the best new game song I’ve heard in quite a long time.

The game has a few other standout tunes as well like The Final Battle, Feisty Flowers, and more, but Revenge takes the cake as my favorite (and several other people’s favorite) from the soundtrack.

This song first showed up on my radar from the 2021 GaMetal Song Ballot results, where it placed #5 overall. The first time I listened to it was during the ballot results Patreon stream, and I was immediately blown away.

I didn’t really do a whole lot of alteration to this song, it was already insanely good. So I just threw in some lead guitar during the organ-sounding section that comes in after the first part of the intro and after the first chorus, and added an acoustic guitar outro to make the original outro less abrupt sounding, which works perfectly in the context of the game, but outside of it on it’s own can come rather suddenly.

I’d definitely like to do another song from this game sometime in the future!

Also, this game is still new as of the posting of this remix, so for those of you who are considering picking it up, I do recommend playing it when you can, it’s a really fun game! I bought it solely because I liked Revenge so much, and I definitely do not regret my decision. 🙂

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Download (End card acoustic short: To the Gateway)

Bowser’s back and he means business!

…as is the feel with all Final Bowser themes.

Originally, this was only going to be the final Bowser theme from the first Super Mario Galaxy, but I decided to go ahead and throw the second SMG Final Bowser theme (“Fated Battle”) into the mix as well. Fated Battle retains the intro from the original (with a few small alterations), but bumps the intensity up some afterwards.

I also threw in the normal Bowser battle theme to back up the solo section.

Having three different parts reminded me a lot of last year’s MegaDragonBowser cover, so if you’re a fan of this one, be sure to check that one out.

This can be considered a continuation of our quest to eventually cover every Bowser battle theme. I know a lot of people are waiting for Bowser’s Fury. In time, in time. There’s still a lot more Bowser for us to get to!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Waltz of the Troupple King)

Shovel Knight has returned to GaMetal! It’s been almost 4 years since our last track (The Fateful Return), so it was nice to get back to some Jake Kaufman chiptune insanity.

There are two different versions of this song, the original “A Thousand Leagues Below” which was composed by Manami Matsumae, and “The Price of Doing Business”, which is a rearranged version of A.T.L.B. by Jake Kaufman. This arrangement is based on the latter. I was going to attempt to fit in a variation of the original version, but the two have such different feels that it would’ve felt forced in, so I decided against it.

This is probably my favorite SK arrangement to date. I think I might be getting a little better at this whole ‘music’ thing.

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We’re once again joined by a special guest on a song for a second consecutive time, this time featuring the awesome pop-punk vocal stylings of StudioNicktendo!

Remember this song? REMEMBER?? I did a version of Reach for the Stars in the first Sonic Fan Medley way back in 2013. I had quite a few requests for a full and possibly vocal version, but I never quite got around to it.

About a month prior to this remix, Sonic Colors Ultimate was announced (or a little before that, leaked), and I knew at that very moment when I saw the leak announcement that now was the perfect time to give this song a full rendition.

I learned about StudioNicktendo from his City Escape cover, and I loved how well his style fit the song, so I just had to reach out to him to see if he’d be interested in joining me on this Reach for the Stars cover. I was looking for a more aggressive vocal sound than the original, and he was able to encapsulate that feeling perfectly. It was exactly what I felt this song needed!

Be sure to check out, subscribe, and show some love over at Studio Nicktendo’s channel!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Crash Team Racing Main Menu)

Whenever I tally up songs from the GaMetal Song Ballots, I make a few different categories, one being ‘most requested new series’, to see what series we haven’t covered yet that people want to hear. Crash Bandicoot has shown up in the top 10 of that list every year since I started doing the ballot. It’s about time we remove it from ‘new series’ contention!

The Marimba is such a staple instrument to Crash Bandicoot music that I thought it’d be cool to feature an actual Marimba rather than just keyboarding it. So I called upon the amazing percussionist DrumUltimA to help me out on this one.

Ever heard a Marimba shred? Well, now you will!

DrumUltimA absolutely slayed it on this one, be sure to show him some love over at his Twitch and Youtube channels!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Kirby’s Block Ball Stage 1)

After a year and a half long hiatus, we’re FINALLY back in the world of Kirby to take on the mighty Drawcia Sorceress / Drawcia Soul!

This was the #1 most requested Kirby song from comment requests and both the 2020 and 2021 GaMetal Song Ballots (it was #6 overall in the 2020 ballot, but took a bit of a fall from last year’s lack of a full Kirby remix), so I know this is one a lot of you have been waiting on for a while.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t too big of a fan of Drawcia’s battle themes at first, but I’ve been listening to them for a while and they finally grew on me. The originals might come off as a bit… grating… to some, but I heard a lot of potential to make them into something really cool.

There was another Kirby song that tied with Drawcia in the 2021 ballot, perhaps we’ll get to that one later this year. Till then!

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We’re taking an unexpected detour to the game Resonance of Fate / End of Eternity to cover a very under-appreciated Motoi Sakuraba battle theme: Battle to Pay the Debt!

For this arrangement, I had the lead guitar play along with most of the string melody. In the original, it’s strings only. I kept everything else, including those cool organ solos.

For those unfamiliar with RoF/EoE, this song plays during battles when protagonist Zephyr and friends travel to the student loan office.

Shoutout to GaMetal community member Omegpha for providing some animations for the video!

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A common question I get asked from the GaMetal community is: what songs do I want to cover purely for my own enjoyment, without regards to requests and such?

The answer is: at this point in time, I’ve pretty much covered almost all of my favorite game songs, so there’s no 1 particular tune that sticks out. But when one does come back to mind… in comes the Birthday Special!

Once a year, to celebrate my birthday on July 1st, I make a completely biased song selection to make into a GaMetal arrangement. Occasionally these might be inspired by current events (such as the release of Dragon Quest 3’s Adventure theme after the Hero  Smash reveal), but most of the time it’s stuff that isn’t necessarily requested… at all, but they’re favorites of mine (like the Bridge / City / Sewers medley from Darkwing Duck NES).

This year I’ve once again chosen a song from my favorite game soundtrack, Final Fantasy VI, but this time I’ve gone with a song I’ve always loved but does not get a whole lot of love in the remix world: Metamorphosis.

It lacks the popularity of songs like Dancing Mad or Terra’s Theme (and let’s face it, with this entire soundtrack, it’s got nothing but stiff competition), and is on the short side clocking in at around 35 seconds originally, but it’s a damn effective song that plays during a few of the games ‘all hell has broken loose’ moments, mainly when Kefka is doing some crazy s-.

I was actually working on a version of this song way back in 2013, but never got around to finishing it. Unfortunately I lost all of my pre-late-2014 files in The Great Hard Drive Crash of 2014, so I can’t dig it back up to comparison… but I’m sure this version here is way better than that one.

Since this song is practically a Kefka song, and the tempos are similar, I also threw a bit of Kefka’s Theme into the mix to provide some length and keep things interesting.

I’m glad I was finally able to get this one done! When I was trying to decide on what this year’s birthday song would be, I was having trouble finding the right one. I was scrolling through some of my favorite game OSTs when I came across Metamorphosis and was immediately like ‘yeah… this is the one.’