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For the second year in a row, I bring to you another song for the Chill GaMetal playlist: Light of Nibel from Ori and the Blind Forest!

(Last year it was Cave from Willow.)

I don’t really have a whole lot of notes for this one, I just did my best to pick out and play what I heard going on in the original. The vocals heard in this arrangement are from the Vandria and Ethera libraries.

I did something a little different with the video: I ended this song with an acoustic bit, so I used it as the end card acoustic as well. Just thought it’d be a cool thing to do!

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This one was intended to be the 2023 premiere, but when Two Planets Approach the Roche Limit needed some more time in oven… it had to be this way.

This song has been creeping up the GaMetal Song Ballots from the past couple of years. In 2021, it placed at #25 overall, and helped bring the Metal Gear series as a whole up to the #7 most requested new-to-GaMetal series position. In 2022, it grew ever stronger, placing at #8 overall (song), and Metal Gear as a whole placing at #2 most requested new-to-GaMetal series (we haven’t gotten to #1 yet… maybe later this year!).

Most years, I put together a shortlist of songs to choose from for the end of year finales and beginning of year premieres. This wasn’t the first song I put on the shortlist (in fact it was probably the 4th or 5th), but when I was choosing what to do after Roche Limit, I knew I had to go with something extremely hype, and It Has To Be This Way fit the bill more than any other.

Even though it was probably the most difficult song to put together last year, I was really happy with how The Stains of Time turned out, so I was looking forward to putting this one together. It’s arguably one of if not the most popular song from MGR:R (thanks to, you know… the meme, lol), and is actually a far ‘easier’ (I say that very lightly as it still took a ton of work) song than TSoT. I didn’t add too much, just repeated the chorus section and sent the second chorus straight back into the ‘bloodstained sands’ section, but with the lyrics changed to ‘it has to be this way’.

Plus, I was able to provide you with this, and that’s always fun:

 

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Enter 2023! This song was intended to be the 2022 finale, but it ended up being much more complicated than I had anticipated (seems to be a thing with these Kirby final boss themes lately). Even though Two Planets Approach the Roche Limit is a lot shorter than Suite: The Star Conquering Traveler (Void Termina), it was a lot more tedious to cover/arrange because it hardly ever does the same thing twice, unlike Void which has that one melody it plays with in different ways throughout most of the song(s).

On the night of Dec. 30th, I was listening to my first draft and felt like it needed a lot more work to sound the way I wanted, so I decided to go ahead and move it to the 2023 premiere spot instead. Live & Learn had been doing pretty well, so I think the decision was for the best.

After sending news of the official delay, I took my time with it a lot more and came out with a far better product than what I had at first! This one is just about as prog metal as it gets, again, it rarely does the same thing twice.

My very early plans didn’t include A Full-Speed Farewell from the New World, but it felt sort of empty to end Roche the way that it originally ends, even if I had added an original outro, I felt like AFSF would’ve been a far, far better way to end the track. So that’s exactly what we did!

To bridge the gap between the two tracks, I used the first part of The Fate of Two Worlds (which is the same as Chaos Elfilis Intro, but the the TFoTW version adds a small loop of additional music afterwards), which plays in the cutscene between the phases/songs in the game.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land was a huge performer in the 2022 GaMetal Ballot (4 forgotten land songs placed in the top 10!), and although I was a tiny bit late to the party (as is my style 😜), I wanted to make sure you all got your fill of KatFL music as soon as I could get to it. We’ll get back to the forgotten land in the future for sure, but for now it’s a full-speed farewell and on to other games/songs!

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2022 is almost over… we’ve lived… we’ve learned… and now we’re hangin’ on the edge of tomorrow for today’s GaMetal arrangement: the highly requested Live & Learn from Sonic Adventure 2!

Coincidentally, Sonic tied with Mario for the #3 most requested series spot from the 2022 GaMetal Song Ballot. Requests were scattered among several songs, but the most popular request was everyone’s favorite Sonic jam, Live & Learn.

For this arrangement, I took a lot of inspiration from the recent Sonic Symphony version, which added… you guessed it, symphonic elements (Strings, Brass, etc). There are also a few small changes from that version that I’ve incorporated.

It seems a lot of people think I’ve done this song before but… I never have! I was still living and learning, apparently. I think this might be our first official GaMetal Mandela Effect.

I know some of you have requested this one for YEARS, so this one’s for those of you that continued to hold on to what if!

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Winter has officially arrived… so it’s time for another GaMetal wintertime special! This year, we’re visiting Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s “Northeast Frost Street”.

I saw a lot of folks talking about this song on the GaMetal Discord, so I gave it a listen and put it on my (very) short list of Christmas/Winter special contenders for the year. After much consideration, I decided to go with it.

This one has a bit of a different feel from the last two winter specials (Cool, Cool Mountain and Frosty Village / Walrus Cove), while those two are a lot more cheery and upbeat, this one is far more laid back, and as some have called it, ‘cozy’ sounding.

There aren’t even any sleigh bells! A winter special first.

I hope everyone celebrating is having / have had an amazing holiday season so far. Cheers!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Dark Cave / Ice Path)

It’s not every day I do songs from games that JUST came out, but I felt like since it’s the season of giving and all… eh, why not?

Since the release of Scarlet/Violet, I’ve seen a lot of requests for the Team Star battle themes. All three of them… the normal, boss, and leader. So I decided to go with my favorite of the three: the boss theme. It’s this sort of fun mix of Pokémon, Xenoblade, and Splatoon wrapped into one song.

This song does have some sort of vocal track, but it sounds like indistinguishable bowser vocals random gibberish, so I just tried my best to sound similar.

I’m certain a song or two from these games will pop up around the top of next year’s GaMetal Song Ballot, but we at least got one of them out of the way!

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Over the years, there’s a question I always get whenever I do Q&As: are fan game songs up for GaMetal consideration? My answer to that question has always been: if a song were requested enough, sure.

Enter CutmanMike’s FPS Mega Man fan game Mega Man 8-bit Deathmatch and it’s amazing tracks “Thy World Consumed” and “For Everlasting Peace”, the two songs that make up the final boss fight. This one ended up #3 most requested on the 2022 Song Ballot, tying with Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s “Sword of the Surviving Guardian”, which says a ton.

There’s been a lot of Mega Man this year, and I feel like this is a great way to cap off 2022’s Mega Man GaMetal content.

PS: Get Mega Man 8-bit Deathmatch for free over here at the official site!

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We’re wreaking havoc in the sky with today’s remix from one of the greatest new VGM soundtracks of all time, here’s Panic in the Sky! from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge!

Getting to record the guitars for most of Tee Lopes’s TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge soundtrack is easily one of the highlights of my VGM career to date, and it was made even more special when he asked if I could do the vocals for a song. It was made EVEN MORE special when it was the song used in the official release trailer!

Panic in the Sky! was supposed to have that classic “fun rock song from 90s shows” feel to it, and I believe it encapsulates that perfectly.

You can consider this arrangement sort of an ‘extended’ version, with a repeat of the chorus section and a new guitar solo section at the end. Fun fact: the first part of the ‘new’ solo was part of an alternate unused solo I recorded for the original!

Sharing some early TMNT #ShreddersRevenge guitar stuff with ya! (with @TeeLopes‘ permission of course 😅)

When I track guitars for others, I sometimes record 2 different guitar solos and let them choose between them. These are the 2 original solos I laid for “Panic in the Sky!” pic.twitter.com/Ul1FHX0IEy

— Jonny Atma (@JonnyAtma) June 27, 2022

There are quite a few songs from this soundtrack I’d love to arrange, but this one has been the most popularly requested from folks since the game’s release (including Tee himself, who brought this song up first when I was discussing remixes with him). If you haven’t played this game yet…. do it! It’s an absolute blast, especially with friends, and the soundtrack is extraordinary!

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You didn’t think I’d FORGOTTEN about Kirby, did you?? Here’s the #3 most requested song from the 2022 GaMetal Song Ballot: Sword of the Surviving Guardian, the Meta Knight battle theme from Kirby and the Forgotten Land!

I couldn’t go the whole year without doing a KatFL song, could I? Of course not! Kirby music came back in full force this year with Forgotten Land’s release, Kirby’s first 3D adventure, with a soundtrack chock full of bangers.

For starters, we have this whole new Meta Knight theme! It’s an extremely clever mixture of three iconic Kirby Super Star songs commonly associated with Meta Knight: Vs. Meta Knight, Taking Over the Halberd, and My Friend and the Setting Sun.

There’s probably another reference or two snuck in there that I didn’t quite catch, but it’s all there. It’s also really nice to have a Meta Knight battle theme that doesn’t sound so much like Ridley’s Theme from Super Metroid.

This song already had a ton going on, but I did bring back some of that original Vs. Meta Knight for the solo section, I thought it’d make for a cool addition. But then it got compared to Ridley again. All my fault!

Any way, don’t worry, Forgotten Land songs will return. But when? Only time will tell…

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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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Download (End card acoustic short: It Has to Be This Way)

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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Download (End card acoustic short: Dark Man)

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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Download (End card acoustic short: Room of Close Associates)

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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Download (End card acoustic short: Magikarp Festival)

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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Download (End card acoustic short: Move Me)

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

Riiiiiiiiiiiidge racer!

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Download (End card acoustic short: By Your Side.)

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. 😃