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December 10th, 2020, was a super conflicting day if you’re a big fan of Smash Bros, Final Fantasy, and Super Mario RPG.

On one hand, we got a Sephiroth reveal, which to be fair would definitely be -the- Final Fantasy character to go with for hype and popularity factor, and a few new official FF7 remixes. I’m more of a FF6 guy, so I would’ve preferred some 20th century FF love outside of 7, but that’s pretty tough to get from Square these days, so I understand.

Then, on the SMRPG fan side, and more so the Geno-for-Smash community side, our biggest fear became reality: the Geno Mii Costume reveal.

Geno fans, which includes myself, the world over mourned. It was a sad day.

Thus, I bring you this Sad Song from Super Mario RPG remix.

I know it’s a Mallow song, and Geno could always still be a possibility, but the mii outfit has arguably reduced his odds by a ton.

That’s alright, maybe next Smash..

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For our first curveball song of the year, I bring to you the mighty Kid’s Room track from Road Trip: Arcade Edition! Or Gadget Racers…. or Choro-Q!… depends on where you live.

This game is based on toy cars called Choro Q (in Japan) or Penny Racers (in America). The soundtrack has some ironically killer tunes, with Kid’s Room probably going in hardest of all.

It’s a good song, don’t pass it up!

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Monster Hunter is back! This time we’re taking on everyone’s favorite punchy boi, Brachydios, as well as Raging Brachydios.

While I’m not sure what exactly the choir is singing in Raging Brachydios (if anything at all), there was one part that sort of let me down when I first heard it. It’s the part at 3:15 of this remix. In the original, it sounds like the choir is singing “Brachy…”, so for the next 2 seconds I got super hype and anticipated the choir to follow up with “dios”… but alas, they did not.

So I made it happen. It was really important to me.

There’s still quite a few killer MH tunes out there so I’m sure we’ll return in the future!

Brachydios pixel art by JaceDaDorito (Thank you!)

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I just really love this soundtrack is all.

I was first introduced to it when a large group of people requested Count Cannoli back in 2014. I listened to the song and loved it, then checked out the rest of the OST and loved it just as much. The composer, Kenji Hikita, was also the composer for F-Zero Climax and GP Legend, which hold most of my favorite F-Zero songs and arrangements. Eventually I would get around to doing Head Honcho Carpaccio in 2016 and Terrormisu in 2017 (as well as a 2018 remake of Count Cannoli), covering the whole trifecta of W:MoD unique boss themes. Since then, when people ask if I would ever return to W:MoD, I always say if I did, it’d be an Allergia Garden remix, since it’s the last song from the soundtrack I’d be interested in covering.

The only exception to that might be the boss theme, which is a kickass tune, but feels rather short. Then again, Count Cannoli is a shorter song too, so I suppose it wouldn’t be that hard to extend…

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2021 begins! We just shattered a god with a star… so now we have to give birth to another one!

You may or may not noticed, but a crucial game series was missing from last years line-up (as far as non-medley songs go): that’s right, Final Fantasy. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t some other important series we didn’t get to in 2021.

This was actually a bit of a late addition to my 2021 Premiere candidates list. When Sephiroth was revealed for Smash Ultimate, I absolute had to do a song to celebrate, and thought it would make for a great 2021 opener.

Like most remixers, I’ve already done One-Winged Angel, which left only a select few Sephiroth-themed songs to go with. The OWA remix wasn’t too long ago (plus it’s been done to death at this point), so I wasn’t too interested in remaking that one. Instead, I decided to go with the Sephiroth song that always gets overlooked in favor of OWA and J-E-N-O-V-A: the Bizarro Sephiroth battle theme Birth of a God.

I also used this song to unveil my latest Atma Weapon themed Guitar!

Don’t worry, we have to make up for the lack of Final Fantasy last year, so there will definitely be more in the near future.

And maybe some other series we happened to forget too…

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The #1 most requested song from the 2020 GaMetal Song Ballot has finally revealed itself: the epic God Shattering Star from Fire Emblem: Three Houses!

I wanted to get this one done earlier this year, but I kept having to push it back to get to other things, till it eventually got to the point where I figured it’d be best just to make it the 2020 finale, like I did with last year’s #1 request, Void Termina.

Earlier this year, Nicolas Daoust (alongside Marie-Ève Ermel) joined us for the Smash Bros Brawl Main Theme remake. I thought he’d make a great fit for this remix, so I asked if he was interested in being a part. He was totally game, so we both took some time to do some research on the song and got it together just in time to close out the year.

My first obstacle was how I’d go about combining Rain (the vocal version) with Thunder (the instrumental version).  Thunder is generally the same as Rain, but replaces the ‘softer’ sections to be more similar with surrounding sections of the composition. My ideas for options were: mesh the two together, expanding each section where first the vocal is present followed by the instrumental form, which I didn’t like at all because it’d ruin the flow of everything. Option 2 was to do 2 seperate tracks, one vocal only and one instrumental only, similar to Brawl, City Escape, and a couple of other past GaMetal remixes with 2 versions, which was an idea I didn’t hate but wasn’t crazy about.  Then I had a wild idea for option 3:

4 minute Guitar solo over the Thunder version

It may seem like overkill… but this song was already over the top, and this is the 2020 Finale, so we have no choice than to go the extreme route. Thus, the Thunder half of this remix features my longest Guitar solo to date. Also, so we didn’t complete drop the vocals halfway into the song, the penultimate section of the Rain half is instead covered by the guitars while Nicolas drinks tea. He’s then brought back at the very end of the Thunder section to sing the final part of the song.

A lot of you were curious about the lyrics, and trust me, so were we. Our research (and I’m certain Nicolas did far more than I did) had shown that no one has yet been able to decipher what language the lyrics are in, or even if it’s anything more than pseudo-Latin sounding gibberish with ‘Shattering Star’ thrown in (this is my favored theory, as it seems like pseudo-Latin has been showing up in more and more game songs recently), everything is simply theory and speculation at the moment. So Nicolas did the best he could approximating the lyrics as closely as possible, while also trying to make sense phonetically.

The lyrics for this remix (which you can also view by turning on Closed Captioning in the video) are as follows:

Vu zarruith pa, sa boosh
Ladh’vi, cadath ingrang
Va, chavas ful, bil hurith
Va, thibaath

A ria sio va, dhahkoh
Ladh’va, yurki fo ya rihan
Ladh’a dhavi ya tha drahanvi
A dolawa, cathi, hidia

A ria thvartoh Fodra
Ven, haling “shattering star”
Il dra, ben haya
Ath’va, vooka, vohl, vi yurida
Ash vi yurida
Im pahkenti
Dhagi cran th’va

Va, rihermash Fodra
Shirbash ragi honla

Pohuir dathlur kath blatha fo harida, vi
Iyuru odh’va adh’va luith, a ya jishara
Coduwa tharichi hilpo cotra
A riva delth, cathi bi, ha! ha! ha!
Vi hali ha!

Dum, pu lahi, du lahi, thvartoh
Ihija, il prathu, ihu fali raf prashari ha!

Someday we may know the truth behind the original lyrics, but till then, these should do!

Thank you all for all of your love and support through the insane year that was 2020. As always, I’m expecting the new year to be even better, I’ll see you in 2021!

And final shoutout to Nicolas Daoust for his outstanding vocal performance, please be sure to show him some love over at his channel!

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It’s the first ever GaMetal Christmas Special!

Every December of every year, people have suggested I do some sort of Christmas special, but usually I have too much else planned and going on to squeeze one in. This year I’ve had enough cleared from my to-do list to finally squeeze one in.

Via GaMetal Patron suggestion (shoutout to Bud!), I went with probably the most Christmasy sounding game songs I know of: Frosty Village and Walrus Cove from one of my favorite N64 titles, Diddy Kong Racing. With the subtle hints of popular Christmas songs sprinkled in (like Frosty the Snowman), I don’t think there’s a better choice.

Plus any excuse to cover more DKR is a win to me!

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Since 2017, we’ve been doing a different console medley alongside our usual NES Medleys. This year’s console: the Game Boy Advance!

Like with all of the other console and post-2014 NES medleys, most of the songs on this list were chosen by GaMetal Patrons.

The 20 songs featured are as follows:

0. Game Boy Advance Startup
1. Title Theme (Golden Sun)
2A. Wario’s Adventure (WarioWare Mega Microgames)
3. Vaati’s Wrath (The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap)
4. Sami’s Theme (Advance Wars)
5. F-F-Fire (Mother 3)
6. Clockwork (Castlevania: Circle of the Moon)
7. Beach Overworld (Bomberman Tournament)
2B. Wario’s Adventure (WarioWare Mega Microgames)
8. Cheese Land (Mario Kart Super Circuit)
9. Rainbow Route (Kirby and the Amazing Mirror)
10. Final Transmission (Mega Man Battle Network 3)
11. Max Heat (Mega Man Zero 4)
12. Haunted Island “Path Through Town” (Frogger’s Adventure 2: The Lost Wand)
13. The Final Battle (Riviera: The Promised Land)
14. True Area 53 (Sonic Advance 2)
2C. Wario’s Adventure (WarioWare Mega Microgames)
15. Blazing Emperor Gulcasa Sortie! (Yggdra Union)
16. Arachnus X Boss Theme (Metroid Fusion)
17. Overworld (Yoshi’s Island)
18. Comrades (Fire Emblem Sacred Stones)
19. Mist Flow (F-Zero GP Legend)
2D. Wario’s Adventure (WarioWare Mega Microgames)
20. Battle! Frontier Brain (Pokémon Emerald)

Along with the randomly chosen songs, I tried to include as many of the most well known GBA games/series (such as Golden Sun). There still might be an ‘important’ game or 2 missing, but that doesn’t mean they can’t show up in a future GBA Medley!

This song, after the GS Title Theme, is a very long ramp up in tempo from beginning to end. Wario’s Adventure, which was one of the randomly chosen songs, starts off with a very slow tempo but speeds up throughout the (micro)game. I thought it’d be a cool idea to give Wario’s Adventure ‘micro’ appearances throughout the medley, as the medley sped up, hence the several appearances throughout.

Till next console medley!

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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!