Monday, March 4, 2013

Game Scores: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)


Composer: Pseudo-Check
Emulator Hour Review: Check
Music: Checking




The music, composed by whomever it was that actually did it, is very good, considering it came out of  an 1989 era NES music chip, although other note worthy games with great soundtracks were Mega Man 2 and Dragon Warrior (1989 being their North American release).

The three tracks that I want to highlight are the "Overworld," "Mini-Boss Battle" and the "Title" themes.

Overworld:
Aside from the title music, this is the first in game music you hear, but unless you're there to listen to the music, you're only going to hear snip its of it in the first level as you're mainly in the sewers and not above ground a lot until the third level.  It's a great little ditty that got stuck in my head when I first played the game.  I've always wanted to drive around town in a van with this blaring.  It doesn't have to be in New York or with three other dudes (mutated or not), just a van and this music, because that doesn't sound shady at all.  Although Conklederp has a pseudo-van, so we might have to make this happen.


Mini-Boss Battle:
I actually like this piece of music better than the "Main Boss" music.  There's just something more driving about it.  And even though the song itself is only 20 seconds long, I feel it's one of those songs that can be repeated indefinitely and I just don't care.  And I think it's an easy song to sing/hum/whistle.  However, due to Youtube not wanting to allow me to embed the video I want, I will then just have to link it here: TMNT Mini-Boss Battle Music


Title:
Just listen to that MIDI electric guitar wail!!  I've heard some people (youtube "let's plays" mostly) complain about the music not being directly related to the cartoon, but if the cartoon music had been anything like this intro music, damn that'd be hot.  But, like I said, there's a riff that sounds an awful lot like the main riff to Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy."  That's one of the reasons why I wanted to know who the composer was to see if I could find out if they were influenced by Queen to properly attribute that one riff during the beginning of both songs to Queen.



With all of that in mind, I leave you with only three of 15 sound clips and songs from Konami's (pain in the ass) 1989 release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  However, because I like all of you who read our blog, I leave you with the best cover of the music that I've found.  It's by the NESkimos off their album "NESkimo Bloodshed" and the track is simply titled, TMNT.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Now Go And Scoop Your Brains Back Up.

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