Smash Bros. Brawl Remixes

Super Smash Bros. Brawl has the most soundtrack of anything that's ever needed music. It was a gargantuan project, assembling pretty much every name in eastern video game composition into one project, to remix classic Nintendo songs. Pretty much any song I ever enjoyed from all across this companies franchises were represented, sometimes by composers I've admired and followed over the years.

Oh, and they got my favourite composer, Nobuo Uematsu, to compose the main theme song. Nothing that awesome and nerdy will ever happen again.

Here's my 10 favourite song remixes from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, in no specific order(not including original tracks like Final Destination, or songs that were included but not remixed):




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"Title", from Animal Crossing

For a game focused so much on balls-to-the-wall cartoon violence, this one is as strange as it is relaxing. Kind of like the game is comes from.

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"MGS4 ~Theme of Love~ (Brawl Version)", from Metal Gear Solid 4

This remix actually came out before Metal Gear Solid 4, if I recall. It's pretty jarring to hear the intended tone of the actual track, which is nowhere near as frantic in tone. Since of course, it wasn't specifically made for a crazy action game like Smash Bros. Even so, it was a pretty good introduction for Solid Snake's war-torn, frost-bitten stage. Not to mention some light compensation for the legal troubles that possibly kept the series' theme song from being featured. Since apparently Konami ripped off a Russian composer on that one.

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"Vs. Ridley", from Super Metroid

The only time Ridley's theme has been closer to perfection is when OCRemix's first album came out.

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"Jungle Level Ver. 2", from Donkey Kong Country

Motoi Sakuraba is probably best known for his work on the Star Ocean series' music, which certainly has its charms. Probably not who I would have expected to remix David Wise' immortal main theme to the Donkey Kong Country series, but he made it stomp all kinds of ass. Especially in the story-mode cutscene where it's used, where Donkey Kong himself stomps all kinds of ass.

It stomps asses twice.

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"Ashley's Song", from Wario Ware Touched

I don't even mind the english vocals. Maybe the Japanese vocals fit the rhythm of the song better, but I think it's an infectious song either way. Mostly for the instrumental accompaniment, which to me sounds like it would fit in some animated film with skeletons playing in a band or something.

I dunno. I like what I like.

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"Love Theme", from Mother 3

Heh, two love themes in a game about fist-fights.

This has got to be one of the most depressing pieces of music ever put through the Gameboy Advance's teeny-tiny speakers. Shogo Sakai, a regular composer for both the Smash series and the Mother series of games remixed his own track here, and made it a bit more upbeat... and then fucking B'AWW-inducing again about a minute in.

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"Fire Field", from F-Zero

What's amazing about this track is how awful the source material is. If I were told they were going to take one of the worst songs from F-Zero and make it into something this punch-tacular, I might not have believed it. Yusuke Takahama remixed this, and quite a few other songs that happen to be my favourite tracks in Smash Bros. Brawl. I'd never heard of him before, he only really worked on music for pinball games(which I doubt could be heard in the environments where pinball machines still exist). But he strived to be heard, and it shows. I'll be keeping an ear out for this guy's work from now on.

I hope he comes back for the sequel to Brawl. And I hope he remixes "Port Town".

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"Tunnel Scene (X)", From X

Oh, hello Guy I Was Just Talking About.

The day the official blog posted a minute-long snippet of this track, I think it became my homepage. I spent a lot of the time leading up to its release just listening to that clip of "Tunnel Scene" over and over again. Exactly the type of sound I was hoping would make it into this game in some form. Although I have to admit I saw the letter X at first, and for a split second I thought Mega Man X was going to in the game in some form. One of the sore points of Brawl was when they announced on Christmas Eve that Mega Man WOULDN'T be featured.

Turns out "X" is also the name of an obscure, Japan-only Gameboy game that functioned as a first-person space exploration type of game... Huh.

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"With Mila's Divine Protection (Celica Map 1)", from Fire Emblem

I am still sore that Lyn wasn't a playable character... That has nothing to do with the music here, just sayin'.

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"Main Theme", from Fire Emblem

I think this one remix represents everything Brawl wanted to be, what it tried to be, and what it almost was: a huge love letter to a company's back catalogue of childhood memories, brought to the centre stage for an ass-kicking reunion. One of the few songs to get a full orchestra/choir treatment, it perfectly captures the feeling of dozens of mythologies colliding. It represents not just Smash Bros.' entire point, but acts as a celebration of what Nintendo as a company was, before they decided they hate customers.

I'm glad we have at least one man like Masahiro Sakurai bold and crazy enough to make things like this happen. We need devotion like that in video games now more than ever, and I'm looking forward to his Kid Icarus project for the 3DS.

You can see this awesome pixel art poster at http://abysswolf.deviantart.com

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~A.H.