Auricular Discovery

Take music from one of the most light-hearted, colorful games ever made, slow it down, grunge it up, and you’re left with this. While I’m a fan of The Neskimos, I can understand why they don’t get the kind of attention that The Minibosses do. Neskimos just don’t have the kind of clean, predictable arrangements most casual listeners want. They’re less about bringing back nostalgia, and more about toying around with the actual music. It’s just a shame they seem to be nonactive in recent years. Also check out Metroid – Norfair Tenement Blues. It’s their only track with vocals, and probably their most experimental song. It’s not for everyone, but I think it’s very unique.

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Forgotten for a reason, this is the Street Fighter that wasn’t a Street Fighter game. In fact, the only connection it has to the series, is the character’s name is Ken, and that’s only true for the English versions, where certain ridiculous liberties were taken with the translation. That aside, I grew up with and enjoyed this game very much. The action/platformer mechanics were pretty impressive for the NES. It had some creative combos as well as wall climbing/jumping and backflips. And being the eternal rule of Capcom, the music was at the very least, decent. ScrewAttack has a funny Vault overview of the game. The difficulty was a bit overstated though. It’s certainly no Battletoads or Solar Jetman. Or to stay on topic, let’s just say Street Fighter 4′s Seth would eat this thing for breakfast.

01/17/10 Edit: Guys, listen to this album immediately. If I hadn’t already picked Danimal’s track, I’d have definitely posted Stairway to the Light.

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For the few tracks that Kevin “Lorenzo” Sisk put out back in the day, he quickly became one of my favorite mixers. He doesn’t go crazy with the effects, or try inserting drastically different tones. Instead, he excels at taking 8-bit and 16-bit tunes and sprucing them up without removing the retro vibe. Lorenzo hasn’t been mixing as of late, due to his upcoming voice role in the mega-hyped Source engine mod, Black Mesa, which will remake the original Half-Life experience. I owned this game as a child, and I am certainly not suggesting anyone play it. It was garbage then and it is garbage now. This will torture you enough. Except for the music of course, which was composed by Tim Follin, who’s made quite a track record. Lorenzo has given me permission to share more, so here’s two other tracks I love, which most likely came from VGMix before the restructuring.

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