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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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Download (End Card acoustic short: Intense Battle in a Mechanized Land)

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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Download (End card acoustic short: Here’s Some Weapons)

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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Download (End card acoustic short: Mario Tennis Menu Theme)

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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Download (End card acoustic short: A Ghost’s Pumpkin Soup)

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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Download (End card acoustic short: Emerald Hill Zone 2-Player)

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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Download (End card acoustic short: Battle Tower [Outside])

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!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Let’s Try)

Super Mario RPG’s most beloved song returns for the #1 most requested old GaMetal remake of May Madness 2022: Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms!

Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms placed #1 on both the public and Patreon May Madness voting forms, and by a fairly large margin at that.

I was actually pretty surprised to see this one voted so strongly at the top, but with Super Mario RPG being one of my favorite game soundtracks and all, I’ll definitely take it.

Most of this arrangement is based off of my old 2014 remix. The most major change this time around is a different intro, and I raised the key back up to the original.

Enjoy! 🙂

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Download (End card acoustic short: Sora’s Sacrifice)

At long last… Kingdom Hearts FINALLY arrives to the GaMetal channel, here’s The 13th Struggle from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories!

It’s been a long time coming. For the past 2 years of the GaMetal Song Ballot, Kingdom Hearts has been one of the most requested series that had not yet received a GaMetal remix.

To celebrate Sora’s inclusion into Smash (a little late, I know), I decided to finally get a KH song done. The requests for KH songs from both comments and the ballots has always been spread out among several songs, to where there wasn’t a clear outlier, so I chose to hold a GaMetal Discord Request Battle to narrow it down to one.

Like some of our recent request battles, I had everyone submit their most wanted KH song (up to 2), and pit the top 2 songs against each other. It came down to The 13th Struggle and Rage Awakened, so those 2 faced off in the official battle, with 13th taking the victory 81 to 67.

While this song originates in KH: Chain of Memories, this arrangement is based off of the Kingdom Hearts II version.

So… sorry to keep you waiting so long Kingdom Hearts fans, this ones for you!

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Download (End card acoustic short: The Boy Who Had Wings)

Falcom music, yay!

This is our second song of May Madness 2022 that first appeared in a GaMetal medley, a quite recent one actually. Valestein Castle from Ys III: Wanderers from Ys was a part of last year’s NEStalgia IX (NES Medley #9). When I asked what song from the medley people would like to hear a full version of the most, this one came up a ton.

And those of you who wanted a full version stuck to your guns and voted for it in the May Madness 2022 ballot, where it placed #2 in the Patreon ballot and #5 in the public ballot.

Just to be a little bit different from the awesome Oath in Felghana version, I instead based this arrangement mostly off of the NES and PC Engine CD versions.

Enjoy!

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Here’s our first song of May Madness 2022 that isn’t a remake of a previously full remix, but a song that was a part of an old GaMetal medley that many have wanted a full version of ever since: Solar Inferno (Solar Man Stage) from Mega Man 10!

This song had an appearance in my 2013 Mega Man Mega Medley. Ever since, I’ve had requests to do a full version, and as much as I love this song after hearing for the first time (specifically for doing it for that medley)… I never got around to it.

But this year, after nabbing the #2 spot in the public May Madness remake ballot, you’ve left me no choice… and I’m glad! This song is awesome.

I started this song off with a quick nutty tapping solo, inspired by EVH’s Eruption. Because you know… eruption… inferno… hehe haha.

Great tune and easily my favorite from MM10. We sure have had a lot of Mega Man this year, haven’t we?

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Download (End card acoustic short: Hyrule Castle)

Man, me and this song go way back.

You might know that I did Hyrule Temple (or Palace Theme, whichever you want to call it) back in 2013, and you might also know that was a remake of a version I did in 2010… which might lead you to believe this is my 3rd Hyrule Temple remix. But actually, this is one of the first game songs I EVER made a cover of, before GaMetal even existed. I’m talking -before- 2009, I can’t remember the year exactly, but it was sometime between 2005-2008. In fact, I still have it. It’s right here if you want to hear it.

So here we are, back at the Temple for the fourth time.

I was always really happy with the arrangement I made in 2010. So much so, I changed very little when remaking it in 2013, and yet again I’ve changed little here 9 years after that one. My original aim was to make a Black Mages style arrangement, giving it a sort of progressive metal feel.

I even kept a lot of the old synth sounds I used in the 2010 and 2013 versions, most notable the intro and synth lead break.

Aside from maybe a few minor changes to the guitar solo (and of course, hopefully, the performance and mixing being better 😅), not much else is different from my old arrangements.

Oh and since I mentioned it in the last two song posts, I might as well say it here too, this is another one I’ve been wanting to remake over the last few Mays, but it’s barely missed the cut each time!

As an added bonus, ZeldaDungeon.net’s Kora Burton recently posted an article about this remix, so much love to both ZeldaDungeon and Kora for the kind words!

I wish Nintendo would remake Zelda II already…

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Download (End card acoustic short: Glitter Gulch Mine)

Rusty Bucket Bay from Banjo-Kazooie returns as our second remake of May Madness 2022!

This was the first BK (Burger King) song I did, back in 2014. Like Cradle, this is another song that’s barely missed the cut for May Madness remaking over the last few years. This year, however, May Madness voting put this song in 3rd place on both the public and Patreon ballots, which was definitely high enough to earn it a confirmed spot in this year’s remake roster.

The most notable change I made this time around was scrapping the old intro I had made in 2014 (didn’t like how it flowed). Everything else is mostly similar to that arrangement, with the usual minor tweaks here and there.

And of course, I kept the fast upbeat feel of my old arrangement.

Till next time, Banjo-Kazooie!

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Download (End Card Acoustic Short: Watch Theme)

It’s May, and you know what that means… GaMetal May Madness is here!

And if you don’t know what that means… well, every year in May, I go back and remake a few songs that I remixed several years ago (prior to 2015). Why? Well, my hope is that I’ve improved at least slightly over the last 7+ years, so hopefully I can make my old arrangements sound far better than they did previously!

This year we’re kicking it off with a song that’s been barely missing the cut for a remake over the last few Mays (and there’s quite a few of those this year): Cradle from the N64 classic Goldeneye 007!

I was fairly happy with my old arrangement, so there’s not much changed with the song structure here. The biggest change you might notice immediately is that I bumped the key back up to the original (E instead of Eb). Probably the next biggest change after that is several tweaks to the guitar/synth solo section.

I’ve always really loved this song and felt it fell under the radar as far as GE64 songs go. Doing this one really makes me want to do Dam sometime soon!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Land of Sorrow)

It’s another Fire Emblem collaboration! This time we’re joined by the wonderful Psamathes for a rockin’ version of the Fire Emblem Fates song Lost in Thoughts All Alone!

This song has become a bit of a meme in the GaMetal Patreon community (shameless plug, come join us!), as I’ve had it on the to-do list after it was pulled from a Patreon stream for a very, very long time. Eventually I stopped dragging my feet, reached out to Psamathes who I felt would be a great fit for this track, and finally got this one finished.

For the guitar rhythms, I drew a lot of inspiration from my inner Randy Rhoads, and tried to emulate a feel similar to the iconic Goodbye to Romance.

The vocal stylings of Psamathes, of course, are front and center and the most essential part of this arrangement. She did a phenomenal job and I couldn’t have asked for better!

So for those of you who knew this was eventually coming, apologies for keeping you waiting so long, but I hope this was worth the wait. Enjoy! 🙂

PS: Be sure to show Psamathes some love for this one!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Suspicion)

We’re taking on the Four Fiends of Final Fantasy IV with this remix of Battle With the Four Fiends (The Dreadful Fight)! This is a song I’ve been meaning to get around to for a loooong time.

Battle With the Four Fiends made a brief appearance back in the 2015 GaMetal SNES Medley, but that was just a small taste of what could be. I’ve covered a lot of the classic FF battle themes at this point, leaving only a few left to eventually get to. In fact, this song might very well be the most requested 2D-era Final Fantasy battle theme at the moment.

Well, you know I always have a blast covering Final Fantasy music. So I hope you have a blast listening to it!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Dialtone)

Ok ok, here’s the actual [Irresistible Deal] you’ve all been waiting for. 🤪

Deltarune Chapter 2 came out not too long ago, and with that, of course, came a flood of Deltarune requests. A little while after the game’s release, the world fell in love with newest addition to the cast, Spamton, and requests for the Spamton Neo fight theme, BIG SHOT, spiked to the point where it was arguably the hottest request of over the last several months.

In fact, this song has been so highly requested, it’s been the main reason for me holding off on the 2022 GaMetal Song Ballot. I knew this one would take the #1 spot, and I prefer a little more unpredictability just for the heck of it.

As luck would have it, a new Kirby game ended up being revealed and released within that small time span, which somewhat foils my completely unpredictable ballot results plan. Ah well. (Ballot goes live in May this year, by the way!)

Since Deltarune’s release and BIG SHOT’s rise in popularity, I’ve had a bit of an inside joke to refer to the song as the Fatal Fury Big Shot!, and had mentioned how it’d be funny to release a remix of that Big Shot instead of the Deltarune one.

I wasn’t exactly sure when I’d get this remix (the Deltarune one) done, but when it got closer to April, I decided there would be no better time to release Fatal Fury Big Shot! than on April Fool’s Day, with Deltarune BIG SHOT immediately following it.

Alright, actual song notes… this is a crazy song with a million different things going on, and it ended up taking me a lot longer to put together than I had anticipated.

It was pointed out to me that a lot of people have been passing up the opportunity to use NOW’S YOUR CHANCE TO BE A as an intro piece, so I made sure to do that. I only did about half of it (the ‘now’s your chance to be a bit shot!’ vocal section comes in normally where I transitioned into the actual BIG SHOT). I’ve seen some saying it sounds very much like Primus, which wasn’t my intention, but yes it absolutely does sound Primus-like, haha.

It was imperative to me that the vocals were included, it’s arguably one of the most important parts of the original track, including the hard to distinguish talking at 1:40, which many talented folks have done a spectacular job at isolating from the original track and interpreting (which was a HUGE help).

Now that this one’s done, I can release the 2022 GaMetal Song Ballot… soon anyway! As I mentioned above, it’ll go live in May, so keep your eye’s peeled and remember to [Like and Subscribe] for more [Hyperlink Blocked]!

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Download (End card acoustic short: Big Shot!)

At long last, the most requested GaMetal remix over the last several months is finally here… ladies and gentlemen: Big Shot!

I know! I was just as stoked as you all were when Terry Bogard was revealed for Smash Ultimate. It seems it took a couple of years after the reveal for it to process for us completely, but when it did, EVERYONE started requesting Terry’s infamous theme “Big Shot!” from Fatal Fury 3.

The flood of Big Shot requests really appeared to start last September, so I’m also assuming people were stoked for Fatal Fury’s 20th anniversary, which came up a couple of months later in November.

Apologies for being a little late to the celebration, but here it is. Enjoy!!!! 😀