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Download (End card acoustic short: Voile, the Magic Library)

It’s Touhou again, with a special guest, the Touhou cover man himself: RichaadEB!

My first encounter with this song was doing it as an acoustic short on Patreon several years ago. It’s grown on me a lot since then, and I’ve always had it in mind to remix someday.

Richaad recently joined us in the Pepsi Man Pepsi Jam, and I’ve really been wanting to do a song with him ever since, because his guitar playing is out of this world. A while back, he released a Touhou tribute album, Bullet Hell, so when I had this song in mind and saw that he hadn’t tackled it yet, I just had to ask if he wanted to be a part.

I’m really hoping to give you all your Touhou fill this year! Perhaps there will be another soon…

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Guilty Gear returns to GaMetal!

A lot of you appreciated the Holy Orders arrangement I made back in 2017, so this one’s for you GG fans out there that wanted even more.

This is I-No’s boss theme from Guilty Gear X2 / XX, and as usual for Guilty Gear, it’s totally rockin’. Plus, I-No’s main weapon is a guitar, so this song was practically begging to be covered.

It can be a bit difficult to figure out the guitar lines for some of these Guilty Gear tunes: sometimes it seems like there are 3 or 4 different rhythm tracks each doing different things. I think I’ve managed to come up with a fairly faithful re-enactment in that regard.

We gotta do some more fighting game stuff sometime, like maybe BlazBlue?

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Download (End card acoustic short: The Heirs to Eternity)

Here’s our first main-series Pokémon appearance for 2019: the long awaited Battle! Zinnia.

Not surprisingly, Pokémon was the #4 most requested series in the 2019 GaMetal Song Ballot, and was one of the few series with a high number of total requests spread throughout several different songs. Zinnia was the most requested, and also placed in the top 10 most requested songs overall.

Since I replaced the main violin line with guitar, I thought I’d keep several of the other background elements like the accordion and marimbas in this arrangement, just to capture some more of the original feel.

This was a fun one, hope you dig it!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Tressa, the Merchant)

Here’s our first GaMetal remix from the beloved Octopath Traveler soundtrack!

The OT soundtrack has been renowned for being one of the best RPG soundtracks we’ve had in recent times, and it’s been showing among the requests, both from comments and from the 2019 GaMetal Song Ballot, where Octopath tied for 3rd place for the most requested new-to-GaMetal series.

Luckily for those of you that wanted some OT material, Daughter of the Dark God won a GaMetal Patreon drawing a little while ago.

When this song won, a long time Patron by the name of Nicolas Daoust (check out his Crypt of the Necrodancer Shopkeeper vocal covers!) sent me a message telling me about his girlfriend, Marie-Ève Ermel, an operatic soprano that happens to really love this song, and how she’d like to try out for the vocal part of this song if I were interested. Of course, I was, so they got a quick demo together for me, and I knew a few seconds in that she’d be perfect for the part.

And as you can hear, she absolutely killed it!

I’m certain I’ll be coming back to Octopath in the future, so stay tuned! 🙂

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Download (End card acoustic short: Spira Unplugged)

It’s time to rock with your pals Jonny Atma and ToxicxEternity for this Force Your Way remix, from Final Fantasy VIII!

I’ve been following Toxic since I first discovered him from his Banjo Kazooie intro theme remix that he made almost 10 years ago. It was actually one of the first VG metal remixes I had stumbled upon! I’ve always been a big fan of his shredtastic playstyle and his killer tone. He’s still been churning out banger after banger since then, and I’ve continued to enjoy each one and have the utmost respect for him.

We’ve been talking about doing some stuff together for a while, and this song was one of the many in the discussion. I love the way it turned out.

To double down on this collaboration event, I also appeared on Toxic’s channel for a remix of Spark Mandrill from Mega Man X, so be sure to check that one out too!

Remember to hop on over to ToxicxEternity’s channel for some awesome game music jams!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Good Night Mom)

We’ve returned to La Mulana!

Interstice of the Dimension was the first song I covered from this game, back in 2014. I had never heard of it before, but this game (and Interstice in particular) had a noticeable amount of requests, so I looked into it and loved the track, so decided to give it a shot.

Fast forward 5 years later, Good Night Mom won a recent GaMetal Patreon drawing, and this song in particular made me appreciate the La Mulana soundtrack even more.

Fun fact! You can actually get sheet music for the entire soundtrack over on the official La-Mulana site. (over in the specials -> downloads section) This was extremely helpful in figuring out some of the harder to hear background stuff going on in this remix (and of course, the original).

I will probably come back to La-Mulana again in the future. It’s hard to ignore such a great soundtrack.

PS: It was just announced recently that La-Mulana 1 and 2 are both coming to Xbox One, PS4, and Switch in 2020! 😀

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Download (End card acoustic short: Rose of May)

Here’s a tribute to one of gamings badass female characters, Beatrix, with this remix of Something to Protect from Final Fantasy IX!

While researching this song, I stumbled upon the Dissidia NT remix which is bangin’, but I purposely didn’t listen to it too much because I wanted this remix to be able to stand on it’s own. and not just sound like of a cover of the Dissidia NT version.

I’ve also incorporated some elements of Beatrixs battle theme (officially titled The Wavering Blade but seems to be mostly known as Sword of Doubt) for the second part of the song. Probably not enough to call this a double remix, but enough to pay homage to it.

I know there are some more requested Final Fantasy IX songs out there, but don’t you worry, we’ll get to them eventually! You know I love Final Fantasy music.

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Download (End card acoustic short: Outskirts of Time)

We’re FINALLY getting back to Chrono Trigger with this remix of the much requested World Revolution and Last Battle!

I feel like, every Q&A Live-Stream, someone brings up Chrono Trigger, and I talk about how I really need to get back to it and haven’t shown it enough love. The last time I did a full Chrono Trigger song was Battle With Magus back in 2015 (which I first covered in 2010), and we also did a little bit of Last Battle and Gatos Theme in SNES Medley (also in 2015).

There are a few more Chrono Triggers I’d like to get to in time, but I feel like this was the best way to get back to the series. Enjoy!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Departure)

Mega Man Zero music is great, and ever since doing Cannonball last year, I’ve been getting plenty of requests to do more. We took a fun little detour and visited the Star Force series with Crimson Dragon a few months back, so now we gotta show Zero some love again with this remix of the highly requested Falling Down from Mega Man Zero 4.

Mega Man was among the most requested series from the 2019 GaMetal Song Ballot, and was one of the series that had a large amount of variety in unique songs requested. Falling Down was the top, and I didn’t realize until I was collecting comments for the beginning of the video just how requested this song was. Outside of the 2019 song ballot, this may have been one of the most requested songs at the time.

This is an awesome song with some cool time signature changeups scattered about (especially towards the end of the loop). For the middle of this remix, I gave it an altered version of the original to do some Symphony X style Guitar and Keyboard soloing. Except in my case, rather than Michael Romeo, it’s more like Michael Rome-oh-no.

I love how this one came out! I’ll of course be visiting MMZ again in the future.

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Download (End card acoustic short: Jib Jig)

Here comes a real bop for ya… a Big Top Bop, that is.

Donkey Kong music is loved by many, so to fulfill my Donkey Kong quota for the year, I’ve decided to go with a more recent DK tune and most requested song from Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, the first boss theme: Big Top Bop.

This song was already rockin’, and combined with it being fairly long for a game song, didn’t really need a whole lot of changing up. The biggest change is the addition of a new guitar solo after the fake-out ending at 3:16.

I really ended up digging this song, it has made me interested in possibly doing another Tropical Freeze track in the future!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Castle Town Theme)

The Hero Draws Near! It’s time for our first full Dragon Quest GaMetal remix: the overworld theme, Adventure, along with the Battle Theme from Dragon Quest 3 (or Dragon Warrior 3 for those us in the West).

As you may know, “The Hero” from the DQ series was recently revealed as the next Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC character, alongside Banjo-Kazooie. With this news, I saw all sorts of Banjo related content fly out of the woodworks, but because of DQ’s low popularity in here in the West, hardly any DQ content in comparison. Which is a shame, because Dragon Quest is a great series with great music!

I’ve already briefly touched on 2 other Dragon Quest tunes: Dragon Lord from DQ1 in NES Medley 3 and the Battle Theme from DQ4 in NES Medley 5. I had originally intended for Dragon Lord to also be a part of this arrangement, but I just couldn’t get in to fit in well without sounding too out of place. Maybe I’ll get back to that one some other time.

Adventure is one of the most popular and known Dragon Quest songs, so I figured that’d be a great starting point. I also found the DQ3 battle theme to be really interesting, probably because of that part where everything randomly spazzes out for a second (I had Bowser handle that in the video because it was a bit too crazy for me).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than hype for Banjo-Kazooie’s inclusion in Smash, but I felt this was remix was necessary after seeing DQ not getting a whole lot of love made in the new content department. I’m sure we can get around to celebrating Banjo later. 🙂

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Download (End card acoustic short: Parting ~ Farewell)

We’re headed back into the Mystery Dungeon with this remix of Amp Plains from PMD: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky!

Ever since the Primal Dialga remix, I’ve been getting a lot of requests to do some more songs form the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games. I’d definitely like to do more in the future, but first here’s a small snack of a PMD remix for you.

Amp Plains is super funky, it reminds me a lot of Tim Follin stuff. Minus the random insanity Follin would’ve thrown in somewhere in the middle.

I’ll be back, PMD!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Tyrant’s Bounty)

Time to venture into some more of the lesser known with this arrangement of the final boss theme(s), Ex Machina, from Monolith!

This is one of those evolving songs that amps up in intensity throughout the battle, similar to the M.R. cover from Rabi-Ribi we did a couple of years back. There are 3 different phases to the theme: the first phase originally keeps things simple and doesn’t have much in the way of percussion. The second phase (which begins at around 00:45 in this remix) brings in the drums and main melody. The third and final phase (starts around 2:07 in this remix) kicks things up a notch with a rise in tempo.

A bit of an obscure reference, but this reminds me a lot of Teleroboxer music (Virtual Boy game).

Monolith is a highly praised top-down shooter roguelike, give it a try sometime!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Kefka)

It’s time to take another stab at my favorite game song of all time: the almighty Dancing Mad from Final Fantasy VI.

I always held off on remixing Dancing Mad till I felt I was ‘good enough’ to give it a shot… back in 2014. Well I probably wasn’t quite ready yet and that version was only sort of ok (in my opinion), so this time, I’ve given it my absolute all and tried to make this the best Dancing Mad I could possibly make.

Here are some of the biggest changes from my old version (aside from swapped instrument parts and stuff like that):

Part 1: Moved everything back up to the original key (this goes for all parts), changed and added some lyrics (listed below)
Part 2: Added lyrics from the Distant Worlds version
Part 3:  Added more bass and drums, changing the entire feel
Part 4: Faster and overall heavier than before

Lyrics (mix of English and Latin):

Part 1
Deadly world of oblivion
Heavenly day
All is calm but transitory
(Forgot those days I am your Master)
Vanish

The day of terror
Day of the tyrant
The light of judgement
Will count the death toll

Gloria
Fortuna
Scorched earth
Feral rage

Discontent
Monument to non-existence
(Exterminate)
Deleo Interneco
(Arise from hate)
Poena mortis

Part 2
Vo, vo, vo, vo, vo, vo, vorto (x6)
Di, diem
Fla, flammus
No, nova
Cae, caelum

Vo, vo, vo, vo, vo, vo, vorto (x4)
Di, diem
Fla, flammus
No, nova
Cae, caelum

Part 4 (at the every end)
Gloria
Fortuna

I think I can sleep peacefully with this arrangement of my favorite game song. Now I gotta remake that old Decisive Battle remix…

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Download (End card acoustic short: Pepsi Man Theme)

PEPSI MAN!

Every April, I do a wacky song for April Fools day. Last year I didn’t get around to doing one because of the Dreamland Invasion album event, so this year I decided to do 2 April Fools’ specials instead. This is the second one. (This was released on April 61st for those wondering).

I’ve been wanting to do the Pepsi Man theme for a while now, and it was the type of song that I thought would be cool to feature someone on to have a jam session with. Then I realized… why not have a bunch of people for one big jam session?

The Pepsi Man Pepsi Jam features solos from these 7 amazing musicians:

InsaneInTheRainMusic (Saxophone)
ToxicxEternity (Guitar)
The8BitDrummer (Drums)
Tee Lopes (Synths)
Eric L. (Trombone)
RichaadEB (Guitar)
Sax Dragon (Aerophone)

Show these guys some love, they are all awesome!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Kirby’s Dream Land Ending)

The long awaited Zero Two remake has finally arrived!

I’ve been tossing around remaking this one since May Madness 2017, but like with Bowser’s Rage / King of the Koopas and Golden Sun Battle, it’s just barely missed the cut each year… but not this year. This was the #1 most requested remake from the public May Madness 2019 form by a huge margin, so it was destined to happen this year.

Like the new Ultimate Show remix, I once again didn’t change much from my actual 2011 song arrangement, just a re-recording with some new instrumentation. I know a lot of people think of sorrow and despair when it comes to Zero Two’s theme (which is why some people despise the Smash Bros Brawl remix), so I tried my best to ensure the synths I chose here made it sound as dark and despairing as possible.

Maybe, just maybe, we can get to Void Termina now for the next Kirby song…

PS: Since a lot of people are asking about a return of Edo Bean version, I’ll just let you know not to worry because we have been talking about it. 🙂

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Download (End card acoustic short: Paper Jam Boss Battle)

The Ultimate Show from Super Paper Mario has returned! This was, quite comfortably, the #2 most requested song in the public May Madness 2019 form, and the early frontrunner (where it became the first confirmed remake) in the Patreon May Madness vote.

My 2014 arrangement of The Ultimate Show is among the top most viewed GaMetal songs on Youtube (at #11 now, if you want to be specific), but it was still a very hot request for a remake, to which I definitely agree with those that voted for it because I’m really not fond of my 2014 sound these days.

I didn’t change much from my actual arrangement in the 2014 version, so this one is almost just a straight forward re-record. Probably the biggest change is that I added a few more things to the break sections (like the one around 1:08-1:20) to make it a little truer to the original.

Ciao!

Download (MP3) (Vocal Version)
Download (MP3) (Instrumental Version)
Download (End card acoustic short: Chao Garden)

Songs that were formerly a part of an old GaMetal Medley (in this case, the original 2014 Sonic Fan Medley) don’t normally get a ton of votes in the May Madness polls despite being eligible, but I’ve still been trying to choose 1 each year. This year, the medley song with the most votes from both the Patreon and public May Madness polls was, by a large margin, Escape from the City from Sonic Adventure 2.

A fun fact about this remix is that I had a near complete project of this made back in 2017, but I just never got around to finishing it. I ended up using that project as the foundation for this version.

My aim here was to mix the original Escape from the City with the ‘modern’ version of Escape from the City (aka the Blue Blur RMX because RMX is far edgier than Remix).

As I did with Lifelight, I’ve also provided an alternative instrumental version, so you get 2 for the price of one here!

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(End card short coming soon!)

3D Dot Game Heroes is a really cool, underrated game with a really cool, under-appreciated soundtrack.

Risk Your Life plays during the Block Defense mini-game. It’s a song about love, triumph, determination, the almighty struggle of humanity, and defending blocks. Or maybe just one of those things, I forgot.

I did sneak in a small reference to Breakout, the most well known song from this game. Did you spot it?

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Download (End Card acoustic short: Ghost Gulping)

The second remake up for May Madness 2019 is the almighty Bowser’s Rage / King of the Koopas arrangement from Paper Mario that I first made all the way back in 2011.

This also includes Wish of the Princess which plays during the scene in between final battles where Peach wishes for Star Spirit help, making this a complete medley of the entire final battle from Paper Mario.

King of the Koopas is cool and all, but Bowser’s Rage has always been one of my favorite Bowser fight themes for quite a while. It has this dark, black metal feel to it that you don’t hear much in Bowser themes.

For this new version, I did something I normally don’t do and extended it rather than shorten it. I felt my cut off points in the old 2011 version were kinda sucky, so all 3 songs in this remix are a little longer this time.

The song I changed most was Wish of the Princess, the 2011 version was just far too weak for my liking. While the other 2 are mostly the same (aside from ya know, better layering and stuff like that), I pretty much remade WotP from scratch.

This song almost didn’t make the cut this year, it was a very popular choice in the Patreon May Madness vote, tying for the top spot, and did so-so in the public form, where it was in top 10. Like Golden Sun Battle, this was one I wanted to remake last year but I got pushed out in favor of others, so that helped lead to my decision to remake it this year, and I’m really glad I did because I think it turned out stellar.