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It’s the 10th anniversary of the GaMetal NES Medley… get ready for NEStalgia X!

This year’s song line-up:

1. Title Theme (Kid Icarus)
2. Plant Man (Mega Man 6)
3. Stage 2 (Gyruss)
4. Character Select (Super Mario Bros. 2)
5. BGM 03 (Yoshi)
6. Stage 4 (Journey to Silius)
7. The Amazon (DuckTales)
8. Building Theme (Dick Tracy)
9. Stage Theme 1 (Hi no Tori Hououhen: Gaou no Bouken)
10. Yamato Man (Mega Man 6)
11. Level Theme (T & C Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage)
12. Round Theme (Wario’s Woods)
13. Stage 9-2 (Kira Kira Star Night DX)
14. Boss Theme (Zoda’s Revenge: StarTropics II)
15. Detected! (Metal Gear)
16. Overheat (Gradius II)
17. Zone J (Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers)
18. Ending Theme (Darkwing Duck)

At 18 total songs, this is the largest NES Medley to date! I wanted to make this one a little more special than usual, as it’s the 10th one and all.

For those unaware of how I choose the songs for the console medleys, here’s a quick breakdown and some NES Medley history for you. I’ve been doing NES Medleys since the first year of GaMetal, starting with the original NES Medley #1 back in 2009. This was a much smaller medley than pretty much every medley I’ve done after, with only 5 songs: the first level themes from Bionic Commando and Journey to Silius, Together We Ride from Fire Emblem, the Dungeon Theme from StarTropics, and the Main Theme from Bubble Bobble. All pretty much random picks from games/songs that I really liked.

While I was among the smallest of small time acts back then, this medley was one of my least viewed/listened to track from those days. So I was like.. ‘yea I probably won’t do another one of these anytime soon’.

Fast forward 5 years, and I decided to give it another shot. This time, however, I had other people choose the songs to go into the medley. If memory serves me correctly, I did this on Twitter. I still have a fairly small following, so it’s not like I was getting cascaded with thousands of submissions. From those that did respond, I chose 10 random songs, and made them into the smash GaMetal hit NES Medley #2.

Just kidding, it wasn’t actually a smash hit, but it was still pretty cool to fulfill requests for 10 people all at once. It also forced in some variety as it featured several songs from games/songs I was either unfamiliar with (like Werewolf: The Last Warrior and Gimmick!), or would’ve never thought to put into a medley (like Gemini Man, Fallin Love, or Ragnorak Canyon).

A year later, the GaMetal Patreon had been created, so I decided to move the song selection operations to the GaMetal Patrons, since they’re the lovely people mostly responsible for putting a roof over my head, feeding me, and funding the continued improvement of GaMetal (thank you Patrons!). Once again, 10 songs were chosen by people and made into the medley, along with 1 song I threw in myself (Quackerjack’s Bridge).

After that, I decided to make the NES Medley’s into an annual event, with the song lists put together by the GaMetal Patrons. The song count has also grown slightly over the years, averaging around 13-15 songs, sometimes even higher! We’ve also expanded into different console medleys over the last few years, like the most recent PSX and N64 Medleys.

For the last few years, there’ve been at least 13 tracks in the NES Medleys that always come from other people, with any extras being chosen by myself. Most of my selections these days come from the Patron submission pool that didn’t get chosen to be in the Medley, only occasionally being from something not submitted at all.

This year I added a few more extra tracks than I usually do, as mentioned I wanted this one to be a little more special being the ’10th anniversary’ of the NES Medley and all, so I threw in 5 tracks that were either iconic NES VGM songs or games that had yet to be represented in an NES Medley. These five were: the Kid Icarus Title Theme (not a single KI song in any NES Medleys till now), the SMB2 Character Select Theme (just a killer song that deserved some medley representation) the Boss Theme from Zoda’s Revenge: StarTropics II (StarTropics is an important piece of GaMetal history, being represented in the first GaMetal NES Medley. That’s why it had an acoustic track on the GaMetal album!), Detected! from Metal Gear (a personal favorite of mine that I’ve always wanted to put into an NES Medley but never got around to till now), and Zone J from Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers (a real VGM classic).

I’m a fan of all of the NES Medley song line-ups, but this one worked out spectacularly! I’m especially fond of the Amazon/Building Theme section. That might be one of my favorite sections in any NES Medley’s yet.

On a final note regarding NES Medley history… eventually it was suggested by a Patron (I can’t recall who exactly but feel free to refresh my memory!) to start calling these NEStalgia, which I thought was really cool, and has been the naming convention for these medleys and some others (SNEStalgia, Genestalgia) ever since.

My apologies to the folks that made the NEStalgia game. I hope you don’t mind! 😅

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🎃 Happy Halloween! 🎃 This year’s official GaMetalloween Special was…. Skull Heart Arrhythmia from Skullgirls!

I’ve had my eye on Skullgirls requests for a little bit, then this song came up as a Halloween suggestion, so we listened to it on a recent Patreon song-listening stream. I felt strong remix potential in this track, so it was one of the songs that I put into the yearly GaMetal Patreon Halloween Poll. Skull Heart Arrhythmia took the victory this year with 44% of the vote (the runner-ups having 39% and 17%).

So then, here it is, the first GaMetal Skullgirls remix!

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Silent Hill is back!! Let’s celebrate with a special remix from the Silent Hill 4: The Room soundtrack, here’s “Waiting for You”, featuring the vocal stylings of the amazing Lacey Johnson! (And maybe a little Keytar as well!)

Ok first off, it’s a total coincidence that we got a news-dump of Silent Hill news right before this remix of ours. I’ve had it on my to-do list and in the works for quite a while (months).

This song sort of bends our ‘game songs only’ rule a tiny bit: it’s not actually in the game itself, but an exclusive to the official soundtrack release. Regardless, it’s still a great, as well as the most popular, song from the SH4 OST.

I’ve been familiar with Lacey Johnson for a while, and I thought she’d be a perfect fit for this song, so I asked if she’d like to join me on this one. Thankfully she obliged, and I was right: she absolutely killed it. Be sure to show Lacey some love over at her channel and in the comments below! 

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(End card acoustic short coming soon!)

Someone call an exorcist, because we need an Exorschism!

I’ve been trying to get to Exorschism (also known as ‘Nightmare of the Cursed Ones [Secret Boss Fight]’) for YEARS.

For the past several years, I’ve ran a Halloween Poll on the GaMetal Patreon (be a pal and join us 😜 https://www.patreon.com/jonnyatma) to choose the honorary Halloween Special for the channel. I’ve had this song in multiple polls throughout the years, and it even came close to winning one year by taking another song into a sudden death round, but it never came to be.

Not this time!

We’ve brute-forced it into the lineup instead. It may not have been THE Halloween Special, but anything from the outstanding Bloodstained soundtracks fits perfectly into the season. 🎃

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It’s time for Jack to let ‘er rip!!

 

We are all pawns controlled by something greater:

Memes…

…the DNA of the soul.

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Mega Man! Again!

I’ve been feeding you a lot of mainline Mega Man series songs this year, so this time  we’re going to go even further into the mainline series with a song from the latest installment: Mega Man 11.

But instead of a Robot Master stage theme, we’re going with something a little different!

Challenges is the theme that plays during Dr. Light’s Trial. I tried to give this arrangement a sort of ‘classic Mega Man arrange album’ feel by upping the tempo a bit and making it more rock-oriented than the originals dancey/edm feel. 😜

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Mario Kart recently had a 30 year anniversary, so I thought we’d celebrate by holding a special Mario Kart themed Request Battle in the GaMetal Discord. I had everyone submit their most wanted Mario Kart themes, then made the top 2 most requested songs face off in the final round of voting.

To many, the winner seemed obvious: Would it be Coconut Mall? Bowser Castle (MK8)? Maybe even a surprise attack from a song like Airship Fortress?

No.

Like the true underdog he is, Toad rose to the top and triumphed over all of the rest. And all he had to say afterward?

“I’m the best!”

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We’ve really been beefin up the Castlevania playlist over the past few years, and we’ve continued to do so with another key theme from the Castlevania series: Simon’s Theme.

No, not Vampire Killer. No, not Bloody Tears… it’s Theme of Simon Belmont. They even conveniently made it the title for us!

This remix is based off of the Arcade and SNES arrangements. I felt like the drive of the Arcade version suited rock/metal perfectly, but reincorporated some small elements from the SNES version. I wonder which you can spot? 😉

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THE FESTIVAL ARRIVES

The Legend of Mada Faka

Almost 6 years ago, a GaMetal subscriber left what most would write off as your everyday, run-of-the-mill request.

Some requesters might drop one or a few comments for a particular song, then either change up the song(s) in question and/or only comment every once in a while.

Then there’s Mada Faka. (lol)

This individual has been requesting Magikarp Festival on, from what I can gather, nearly every single video for the past 5 years.

(As you will see in the video, there are hundeds.)

Every now and then I like to reward people like this for their dedication and perseverance (so long as they remain respectful  😅), and a couple of months ago I decided enough is enough: it’s Magikarp Festival time.

Godspeed, Mada Faka.

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This remix is powered by Namco…. It’s Ridge Racer!

Riiiiiiiiiiiidge racer!

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OH HO HO HO! OMORI makes it’s way into the GaMetal universe with this remake of Sweetheart’s battle theme World’s End Valentine.

This is the first official ballot-influenced song choice of 2022! World’s End Valentine was the #10 most requested song from the 2022 GaMetal Song Ballot, also helping to boost OMORI to the #3 most requested new-to-GaMetal series spot. In the 2021 ballot, it placed slightly higher at #8, but it could’ve potentially placed higher this year if it weren’t for a certain game starring a pink puffball that came out recently.

Any way, awesome song, great soundtrack, great game! More ballot-influenced picks will be coming later throughout the year. 😃

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Back by popular demand, here’s another banger from the Bug Fables soundtrack: Oh No! WASPS!!

Bug Fables secured enough votes to get it into the top 15 most requested series from the 2022 GaMetal Song Ballot at #13, which may not seem that high, but when you consider everything above it is the likes of Mario, Pokémon, Kirby, Sonic, and so forth… it’s actually a very good placement.

And for good reason: the soundtrack, composed by Tristan Alric, is killer!

I’ve had this song on my Bug Fables radar for a bit. It was a really fun one to do, with it’s wacky time signature that mostly switches back and forth between 11/8 and 12/8, with a few instances of other timings later in the song.

Enjoy! 🐝 (Wasps are so universally despised that there are no wasp emotes 😕)

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Today in rare GaMetal songs is a remix from the Drone Tactics soundtrack: Intense Battle Theme in a Mechanized Land.

In Drone Tactics, you help some bugs from a different planet from the impending threat known as the ‘Black Swarm’.

Hey, it has an awesome soundtrack! You might be able recognize the composer immediately if you’re a fan of his. 😜

 

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The sun…. has risen! Here’s the long awaited GaMetal remix of “The Sun Rises” from Ōkami!

I’ve been getting requests to do this song for years. It’s had a bit of song-ballot presence over the years, topping at #15 in the 2020 GaMetal Song Ballot. It wasn’t until recently, when I looked outside and saw the sun coming up, that I decided to finally get it done.

Go play Okami, it’s awesome.

(Shoutout to Zach D. who gifted me the Taishōgoto used in this remix!)

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Every year on (or in this year’s case, around) my birthday, I make a completely biased song choice to GaMetalize.

When I remade my old Forest’s Mushrooms cover a couple of months ago, I realized I’ve hardly done any full Super Mario RPG songs (not including the mega medley, of course), despite it being one of my top 3 favorite game soundtracks. So I decided to use my birthday pick this year to pick up that slack!

I was a little late this year (my bday is actually on July 1st), but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. 🙂

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….what were you expecting, Jurassic Park?

Covering this song has become a bit of a meme in the GaMetal community over the past year or so, and it finally came to fruition when it was added to the list during a recent GaMetal Patreon stream (come join us!).

It’s got a bit of weirdness to it, but there was definitely enough for me to work with and flesh out. There’s also a much longer demo version that is even stranger, but ah… I didn’t quite feel the need to drag this one out for a whole 7+ minutes like that one did. 🤪

Enjoy, dino-mates!

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Grab your rackets cause we’re headed to the courts for today’s remix: Tournament 1st Match and Game Point from Mario Tennis!

Mario Tennis (64, specifically) is a game that I sunk a huge amount of time into back in the day. My Boo was unrivaled.

There’s just something about this particular Mario Tennis entry that fired on all cylinders. One of those things is the crazy soundtrack, that some of you might be able to immediately recognize as a Motoi Sakuraba composed soundtrack. And if you’re not familiar, just imagine that this is a Golden Sun song. 😉

The original intention here was to only do Tournament 1st Match, but when I realized how well it could flow into one of my favorite MT64 songs, Game Point, I just had to include that one as well.

Serves up!

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We’re gonna be desperate… with this remix of Supporting Me …for Biolizard from Sonic Adventure 2! 

I first did this song as part of the Sonic Fan Medley I did back in 2014. This year, it was the #1 most requested remake from the Patreon May Madness ballot (tied with Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms), and has also been placing quite highly in the public ballot for the past few years.

I’ve always loved this song, even more so after doing it in that old Sonic medley. It’s usually overshadowed by the immensely popular Live & Learn, but I think it’s right up there with it in terms of SA2 music rankings.

I based this arrangement mostly off of the original version, with a bit of Generations version influence thrown in as well. The original has a darker feeling, which fights Shadow better. The Generations arrangement is a bit more upbeat (and fits Sonic better, who is the one fight Biolizard in Generations rather than Shadow). It does this by adding a lot more percussion throughout the song.

You can also hear that the Generations version pretty much completely strips the extremely heavy amount of effects that are on the vocal track in the original. During my song research, I noticed that people’s biggest gripe with the original was that the vocal effects could be a bit much at times, making it hard to understand what exactly was being said. In conjunction, people mostly appreciated the clearer track in Generations… but it perhaps was missing a bit of the magic the original had from the effects.

So I tried to strike a balance between the two, keeping the effects present, but not so much as to make the words indecipherable. Maybe… some people say they still can’t tell, haha, but I do believe they’re a bit more understandable in this remix.

Thank you for supporting me throughout all these years!

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Emerald Hill Zone is back! This was the second most requested song from the 2022 May Madness Remake Request Ballot, tied with both Cynthia and Solar Man, and the second most requested overall that wasn’t from a medley.

I first did this song in 2010, to celebrate my Green Hill Zone remix (which had come out a few months prior, I believe) hitting 1000 views. That was a lot for us back then. 😅

This song is often overlooked in favor of more popular songs like Green Hill Zone, but it’s still a bop. As someone who was obsessed with the original trilogy as a child, songs like these will always hold a special place in my heart.

Enjoy!

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Quick! What’s the most requested Pokémon Champion theme?

No… actually, it’s not Alder. It’s Cynthia! I know, hard to guess, right?

Cynthia has been one of the most requested songs-I-previously-did-in-a-medley for May Madness for the past couple of years, being one of the most requested last year (though I decided to hold off), and the #2 most requested this year (tied with Solar Man).

With those kind of numbers I had no choice, so here it is! And of course, Approaching Cynthia is also included. 😜

Enjoy!