After a month hiatus, I'm back with yet another singing review. I only did one of the two games this week because honestly, that's all I had in me. The game I chose was City Connection on the NES. Don't get upset, as the only reason I didn't do Metal Slug was because I couldn't find any good .midi files for that game. When I use the game music as inspiration for the song, I take the midi files, chop them all to pieces, add a bunch of different sounds, and then write lyrics and a melody that goes over it. That's exactly what I did here.

This game is all right. The controls are loose, but feel right nonetheless. The music is so cheesy that it becomes fantastic. The core mechanic, part Donkey Kong and part Pac-Man, works really well somehow. Taken all together, I'm sucked in by this game's charm. 

Wow! Two games that I'm not ashamed to sing about. I loved Bases Loaded as a kid. Played it a lot. Somehow, miraculously, it has stood the test of time and is still completely playable. Enjoyable, even. In my enthusiasm for the game, I went a bit off the deep end with the song. I recently found myself in possession of a piano, and figured a baseball song would be the ideal place to introduce it into the Mushroom Singdom musical lexicon. 

Speaking of introducing new instruments, I'll be you didn't know that I played the banjo! Yoshi's Cookie really did make me hungry. Cookies falling, cookies everywhere, Mario in his chef outfit. Right after I finished this week's songs, I baked a cake. I'm totally serious.

To recap: Two great games, two strange songs, one great week in the land of the Virtual Console.

After a long hiatus due to world traveling, I am back with some more songs about videogames. This week in the Mushroom Singdom, we've got Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards for the Nintendo 64 and Psychosis, which was on the Turbo Graphix 16.

In terms of the songs, I find it funny because I spent literally ten minutes writing the Psychosis song that I thought came out really well. Especially compared to the Kirby 64 song, on which I spent the better part of an hour. Just goes to show you can never tell what's going to stick and what isn't. 

I wouldn't classify either of these games as a sure thing. Psychosis is one of the most by-the-numbers shmups Nintendo has released on the Virtual Console thus far. Just absolutely nothing original in it. Kirby 64 is all right, but doesn't even come close to comparing to the original game, or even some of the others that came before it. This was the first time I had played it, and even though I was enjoying myself, I felt somewhat cheated by the faux-3D nature of the graphics. Look at Mario 64 and then look at this. Yeah.

In what may be a rather obvious move, but hopefully entertaining nonetheless, I've parodied Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire", and made it about videogame history.

Now, everything's not totally in chronological order and of course there is a ton of stuff missing, but I think overall it came out pretty well. I'll tell you, it was a bitch to write and record. First getting all of these words to fit together correctly and then singing the damn thing. I wore out my voice several times before I was able to get the final take.

I only took it up through Super Mario Bros. 3 because frankly, I just couldn't write any more. I would love (read: LOVE) it if someone wanted to pick up where I left off and continue the song throughout the different console eras. It already clocks in at a radio friendly 3 minutes, but the original is actually more like 5, so we have some room.

What do you think? Are you up to the challenge? There's a lot of ground left to cover.  

Two words: Neo Schmeo. Having never played this console as a kid, I don't really have any nostalgia for it. Playing these three games only gives me a severe Street Fighter 2 knock-off head ache. Sure, Fatal Fury adds some interesting elements, but man, the two other games just sucked.

Of course, from a song writing perspective, it is an interesting challenge: Faced with three extremely similar games, I had to try to make each song as unique as possible, not just for the viewer but for myself as well. My favorite this week is Fatal Fury's song. While playing, I started to notice for the first time the array of characters watching the fight. The fist pumpers. The bouncing up and down-ers. And then there's the ones further off in the background who aren't even watching. There's this one guy just kind of staring off into space, and naturally I started to wonder what the hell he was thinking about. 

For the Art of Fighting, I took the line "It's imperative you don't wear shoes!" from the fact that this one fighter would remove his shoes before every fight. I thought that was really funny. Finally, in World Heroes, I wanted to go for a "You Got The Touch!" feel, that machismo faux-rock nonsense. 

I'm really happy with how this week's songs turned out. What do you think? 

For this song, I went down an electronic route, something I dabble in from time to time. Not especially my forte. I'm in Vienna right now doing an Artist Residency (as GameJew), and the apartment I'm living in is big and boomy, something I'm not used to in terms of recording. I had a hard time pinning down the vocals, and I eventually went with (what was supposed to be) a Bowie-esque warble. What do you think?

Sin and Punishment! I'll admit, I had never heard of this game, but DAMN! It's really fun. While I was playing, that funky ukulele hook and then the (brilliant, if I do say so myself) rhyme of "punishment" with  "guninment", just popped into my head and I rolled with it. I think this goes well with the picture, no?

Yay for Virtual Console games that don't suck!

Not a bad week in VC land. THE LEGEND OF HERO TONMA is fun and frustrating and it gets a regge inspired ditty (That's my favorite song of this week). Kirby's Avalanche is what it is as I say in the song, that type of puzzle game just works formulaically. And of course Streets of Rage 3.  I do prefer Final Fight, though that's probably just nostalgia talking.  I attempted to infuse this singing review with some  modern rock n' roll umph.

I really enjoyed Yoshi's Story. People on the Internets appear to be somewhat split on this game. It was the first time I had played it. 

And then there's Super Thunder Blade. Oi vey. But of course, true to form, this being the worst game means that I like the song the best. What do you think?