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It’s 2024, and it’s also… Pizza Time!!

Last year’s most requested series from the 2023 GaMetal Song Ballot was none other than the hit indie sensation Pizza Tower. The game brought along with it a soundtrack that has been revered by VGM fans.

I personally recreated all the voice samples for this arrangement to get it feeling as close to the original as possible (plus ya know, licensing concerns!).

This was a really fun one to do! Being such a popular game from the last ballot, we’ll surely have more time for Pizza in the future.

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And so 2023 ends with a song that’s received numerous requests over the course of several years… one of the greatest final boss themes in gaming, The Serpent that Devours the Horizon from Bravely Default!

A quick note: this song has gone by a few different names, mostly Serpent Eating the Ground, but I’ve also seen mixups of this variant and Serpent that Devours the Horizon as well (such as Serpent Eating the Horizon or Serpent Devouring the Ground, etc). The official title of the track, according to the official soundtrack release, is Uroboros, the Serpent that Devours the Horizon…. although, in-game, the final boss is spelled Ouroboros, so unless there’s some fun Uroboros fact I’m unaware of, I assume that part is a typo. I’m rather fond of the official interpretation, so I’ll personally be labelling this version as Ouroboros: The Serpent that Devours the Horizon.

The requests for this song, as usual, started with my first cover from the game’s soundtrack back in 2015 with That Person’s Name Is (actually titled That of the Name). 4 years later I introduced the GaMetal Song Ballot. While Serpent didn’t have more than a handful of votes on the first ballot, it did place #8 overall the following year in 2020, #9 in 2022, and #14 in the most recent 2023 ballot. Most of the popular songs that I don’t get around to covering tend to fall off when the next ballot comes around, but Serpent has managed to maintain a strong presence in ballot requests over the years.

I felt like this song was already perfectly arranged, so aside from the intro, I didn’t change too much about it. It would’ve felt wrong to me to change some of the instruments handling the melodies at certain points of the song to lead guitar, especially when they tended to be followed up by a lead guitar section any way.

I hope you all enjoyed the song line-up for 2023! I’ve got some awesome things planned for the years ahead, so stick around!

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I almost didn’t do a Winter Special this year… but, at the last minute, I decided to see if I could squeeze one out real quick. I went with one I felt I could get done quick enough to continue working on the other songs I have planned, so here’s our third full stage theme remix from Mega Man X: Chill Penguin!

Complete with a new section to give this arrangement an extra Wintry-feel. 🐧

 

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A little over eight years ago, I started the GaMetal Patreon campaign (still goin strong, come join us!) A few months later, we reached about 30+ Patrons, and I decided to do a new console medley: our first ever SNES Medley, and give EVERYONE a song entry.

That medley ended up being enormous and extremely long… but still there were a few key games and songs missing.

Last year, we put together our 10th NES Medley, NEStalgia X. I thought this year, we could take a little break from the NES Medleys and revisit the Super Nintendo for our first console medley sequel that isn’t the NES.

Enter SNEStalgia II ! This one isn’t as long as the first SNES Medley, and there’s always going to be a notable game or two that might go untouched on, but I’ve still got plenty of awesome songs for you!

The complete song list:

• 00:00 Intro (Killer Instinct)
• 00:48 Snakey Chantey (Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest)
• 1:22 Beach (Plok)
• 1:57 The Oracle (Secret of Mana)
• 2:21 Overworld (Super Mario World)
• 2:57 Seaside (D-Force)
• 3:20 Cold Man (Rockman & Forte) [Mega Man & Bass])
• 3:57 Battle 7 (Ballz 3D)
• 4:26 Space Ship (Gundam Wing: Endless Duel)
• 5:10 Old Enemy (Shin Megami Tensei If…)
• 5:56 Boy Meets Girl (Earthbound)
• 6:37 Flower Garden (Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island)
• 7:16 Johnny C. Bad (Final Fantasy VI)
• 7:54 Vegas (Top Gear)
• 8:25 Super Pipe House (Super Mario RPG)
• 9:01 Battle Course (Super Mario Kart)
• 9:36 Ending (Kirby Super Star)

Thank you to the GaMetal Patreon community for helping me put together this spectacular second entry in our SNEStalgia series. Maybe we’ll even do a third next year! 😉

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It’s been quite some time since I last did a new song from the original DKC trilogy… 5 years, actually (discounting the Stickerbush Symphony remake a couple of years before this). I thought this time we could do a song from the under appreciated DKC3 soundtrack, Nuts and Bolts.

When I was looking into a DK song to cover, the heavy riffs and guitar effects of this one had me sold. I made sure to do my best to emulate the iconic “RAAAAH” whammy dive at around the 30 second mark. 🍌

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At long last, Mother 3 has been localized for GaMetal! Oh wait, Natural Killer Cyborg… forgot about that one. Well… localized AGAIN!

I put this one on a GaMetal Patreon Halloween Poll a few years ago but it didn’t win. This year, I stuck it back in that larger Discord poll I mentioned in the Darkest Night song post, and it did well enough to be part of this year’s official poll.

The official poll ended up being one of our tightest polls of all time (the broad Discord poll method ended up working near perfectly), with 3 songs duking it out till the very end. It wasn’t till the final hours of the last day that Master Porky’s Theme ended up edging out a victory behind two other strong contenders. RIP to the 4th contender which did not do so well (as I said, near perfectly 😅).

This song might not have an immediate “Halloween sound” to it, but I’ve always felt it fit the aesthetic well enough to warrant poll inclusions. This song manages to have a sort of unsettling feel to it even throughout the more powerful/intense first half. Things get a lot creepier during the part that is later used for the Absolutely Safe Capsule theme.

Then there’s the game itself. If you’re not too keen on the ending of Mother 3, I won’t spoil anything for you, but it’s when you sit and dwell on it for a bit… it’s a very disturbing thought.

Just for the heck of it I also threw in Porky’s Porkies near the end because I like that song a lot and wanted to extend this one a little bit without having to go through an entire second loop (which didn’t feel all that necessary).

So there you have it, Halloween Special 2023! Also, it was very nice of Ne-, I mean, Sans, to join us for the video on this one.

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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). 🤪