List #2: 10 video game music tracks that sound like other music

You know, we really need a better way to describe music written as a standalone piece rather than being written for a video game, movie, etc. “Real-life music” doesn’t cut it, nor does “band music”. It certainly would have helped with the title of this article. The point is, have you ever noticed that sometimes certain pieces of music sound like others, even if the similarity was unintentional, and in some cases, even if the music in question comes from completely different genres and contexts? I have. And since I’ve played a fair number of video games and listened to even more video game music, I’ve noticed a number of music tracks from video games that sound like a song composed for a live band or performer intended to be played for an audience (see what I mean about how to describe that kind of music?). This isn’t even remotely an exhaustive list, but it’s some of the most familiar and striking ones I’ve noticed. (That is, not counting ones that are clearly a direct rip; for instance, Earthworm Jim 2 uses at least two movements of the Moonlight Sonata for level music.) These are ranked roughly on how much of each song sounds similar to the other and how great the level of similarity is (though I want to emphasize “roughly”; these kinds of things are tough to rank accurately).

10) Donkey Kong Country 3 (Game Boy Advance version) – Rockface Rumble/Lynyrd Skynyrd – Sweet Home Alabama

Here is the Donkey Kong Country track, and here is the Lynyrd Skynyrd song.

They admittedly don’t sound that much like each other (which is why this is only #10), but they have a similar cadence and feel, and they use the same chord progressions in parts.

9) Paper Mario – Huffin’ and Puffin’/Taylor Swift – State of Grace

Here is Huffin’ and Puffin’, and here is State of Grace.

I have two sisters who are huge Taylor Swift fans (though less so now than they used to be), and I remember hearing State of Grace and thinking of it as “the Taylor Swift song that sounds like Huff N. Puff’s theme”. Most of the songs aren’t that much alike, but the similarity of the percussion is very noticeable, especially at the beginning before the melody of each song comes in.

8) Yoshi’s Island grassland theme/The Four Tops – Loco in Acapulco

The Yoshi’s Island theme is here, and the Four Tops song is here.

Okay, so I kind of cheated on this one. I actually didn’t know about the latter song until it was specifically brought up, but listening to it, I can definitely hear the similarity. It’s hard to say whether this one should be higher or lower than the Taylor Swift one, because while the similar section in this one extends to more than just one line of instrumentation, it also is mainly just at the beginning rather than throughout the entire song.

7) Mega Man Zero 2 – Gravity/Led Zeppelin – Kashmir

The music from the Power Room, Phoenix Magnion’s stage, in Mega Man Zero 2 is here, while the song that is pretty much always the first song I think of when I think of Led Zeppelin is here.

Once again, the similarity is pretty much confined to a certain part of the song (at least, for the former track), but the chords are nigh-identical in that section, to the point where Kashmir was pretty much the first thing I thought of upon hearing the Mega Man Zero 2 track.

6) Mega Man X6 – Weapon Center (Infinity Mijinion stage)/Europe – The Final Countdown

Here is one of my favorite Mega Man tracks of all time, and here is a song from the late ’80s that, honestly, I know from my brother playing Just Dance more than anything.

Interestingly, I think this is the only pair of songs that are on here for their instrumentation and structure more than the sequences of individual notes. The synth brass in the two tracks sounds uncannily similar, though the percussion isn’t that far off, and they both have fast electric guitar solos.

5) Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex – Atmospheric Pressure/Edvard Grieg – In the Hall of the Mountain King

The fourth boss theme of the fourth Crash Bandicoot game can be found here, and In the Hall of the Mountain King is here.

Now here’s one with a classical piece rather than pop or rock. The rhythms in these two tracks progress similarly for much of the time, though it would admittedly be more obvious if they were at the same tempo. I vaguely remember hearing that the track from Crash Bandicoot 4 was actually inspired by the Grieg piece, but since I’m not sure if that’s actually true, I will leave it at this.

4) Super Mario Land – Muda Kingdom/The Beatles – Penny Lane

You can find the Super Mario Land music here and the Beatles music here.

Again, the main riff of the SML theme really reminds me of Penny Lane, though is it a bit faster. Of course, the track is so short that it doesn’t really even have time to mimic more than the refrain of the other one.

3) Mega Man X3 – Neon Tiger/Guns ‘n’ Roses – My Michelle

Neon Tiger stage theme here; Guns ‘n’ Roses song here.

That’s the third Mega Man example on here…what is it with that series? The problem with this one is that it’s on here for the same reason as #8 was; I’d never even heard “My Michelle” before it came up in the topic of video game tracks that sound like something else. Beyond that, though, the main riff of both pieces is quite similar indeed, not to mention both of them are played with an electric guitar. Funny enough, I remember playing this game in the living room years ago, and my dad thought this stage theme sounded more like Genesis than Guns ‘n’ Roses (the band Genesis, not the console).

2) Yoshi’s Island world map theme/Enya – Anywhere Is

Here is the Yoshi’s Island track (a version of it that includes all 7 variations of the theme), and here is the Enya song.

This upbeat, nostalgic Nintendo overworld track and this pretty, atmospheric Enya song might have a very different feel to them on the whole, but the melodies are remarkably reminiscent of each other, to the point where, as with the Led Zeppelin and Taylor Swift examples, I tend to think of the Yoshi’s Island music every time (read: on the rare occasions that) I hear “Anywhere Is”.

1) Super Mario 3D Land World 4 map theme/Deep Purple – My Woman from Tokyo

The two variants of the Super Mario 3D Land overworld music are here and here, while My Woman from Tokyo is here.

As with #4, the video game representation here is too short to sound like more than a small part of the other music, but boy, that map theme really sounds like the refrain of “My Woman from Tokyo”, with pretty much the same melody line (and this time, the “this reminds me of that” feeling is the other way around compared to most of the others since I heard the Deep Purple song first). The version from the regular World 4 is similar enough, but the Special World 4 version sounds even more like it.

…and that’s about all I have to say about that. I hope this was interesting and entertaining.

So it begins…

“You shouldn’t make political posts on Facebook!” my sister says. “It’s embarrassing, awkward, and stupid!” All right, Miss Kvetchlord, I’ll make political posts on my own darn blog. Happy now? Besides, this post isn’t entirely about politics. And yes, the election was several days ago, but you know me: Neither rain nor snow nor Trump presidency will prevent me from procrastinating on projects that I should get done.

Now, about that election…well, about all I can say at this point is “yikes”. I didn’t really even pay attention to politics until a few years ago, and I’m kind of glad I didn’t. I already have enough anxiety and depression in my life as it is, not to mention lack of faith in humanity. I wouldn’t say Donald Trump himself is the biggest problem…I can’t stand the guy, though Hillary Clinton has a lot of detractors too. Personally, I would have liked Bernie Sanders, but he kind of got thrown under the bus. The real issue is what it indicates about our society. While half the people in the country probably aren’t racist, sexist, homophobic, prejudiced against disabled people, and the like, the fact that they didn’t consider all that a deal-breaker is suspect at best. So while my reaction to anyone who voted for Trump (I even know a few people) might not be “you’re an evil, hateful person full of prejudice”, it just might be “what the @#$%&!! were you thinking?!“. And then, of course, there are the people who actually do agree with all the hateful rhetoric and consider it perfectly acceptable to threaten and assault people for being different from themselves, who have been given a new surge of zeal now that the leader of the country at least appears to be validating their beliefs. I’d call it a sociopathic mentality, but that might be offensive to sociopaths, at least some of which are decent people despite their abnormal neuroanatomy. (And in the case of the people who are frightened of the changing times and would rather America be as it was in the ’50s, I’d call them a bunch of driveling old dinosaurs, but that might be offensive to the older folks I know, who are generally kind and open-minded.) I do still think understanding, solidarity, and a sense of why people would support such a slimeball is important, especially for the next 4 years, but…if your Glorious Leader has been happily endorsed by Kim Jong-Un and the KKK, and hate crimes in his name are already on the rise after his election, he just might not be your best spokesperson if you don’t want to come off as a psycho intolerant bigot. And to anyone who did vote for him despite not being a bigot, since you were the ones who had faith in his moral fiber, it’s mainly on you to let people, especially people in positions of power, know that that kind of garbage is unacceptable.

Now, I’d imagine at least some people are wondering why I’m so fervent about all this, considering nothing that I’ve mentioned really affects me personally. First of all, yes it does, because I have friends and acquaintances who would be hurt. Do you think I want my black friend threatened, my Muslim professor deported, my female friends and family assaulted, or my LGBT+ friends to have their rights stripped away? (Heck, I almost fall into the LGBT spectrum myself, though you have to extend the acronym out a few letters for me.) Second and more importantly, not caring if someone or something is threatening the rights or livelihood of another group of people because it doesn’t affect you is an extremely self-centered way of looking at things and not a mentality that I would condone. It’s easy not to worry about drowning when you’re on dry land, until the flood comes. Honestly, I’m not sure why any of this is so difficult. In this day and age, we can talk to a person on the other side of the world instantly and for free, we can fit entire collections of literature and movies into a space the size of a fingernail, we have entire buildings floating in space, and we’re developing robots small enough to travel through a person’s bloodstream…and yet, we can’t seem to accept a person who is trying to enter the country to escape a warzone, has a higher level of melanin in their skin, worships a supernatural higher power in a different way or not at all, or wants to marry someone of the same gender. Congratulations, human race; you fail at everything forever, especially priorities. (Seriously, forget being American; I’m not even sure I want to be Homo sapiens right now.)

As for me, I’ll just have to see how it goes. I’d say that the situation has made me lose a lot of hope for the world, but that would imply that I had hope for the world to begin with. I’ll probably be dealing with this highly adverse situation the same way I deal with most things in life: Copious sarcasm and smart remarks, supporting my friends and family as much as possible while getting support from them in turn, a bit of Weird Al and video game music (and video games, for that matter), and some Chocolate Brownie Thunder ice cream. (What? Chocolate goes well with nihilism.) I’d also like to remind everyone that we are all unique, and while a person in a position of leadership might represent a group of people as a whole, they pointedly do not represent each person as an individual. Just because we elected Donald Trump as President (and mind you, he’s not president yet), that doesn’t mean we all have to agree with him. (To be honest, as much of a narcissistic jerkwad as Mr. Drumpf is, I almost feel a bit sorry for the guy; the position is a big burden to bear (look at all the stress it caused Obama), and he clearly has a narrow, twisted sense of reality if he believes half the reprehensible and preposterous things he’s said.) Now, I won’t even bother saying that we all need to come together (considering that that would mean, in at least some cases, that victims would have to accept their tormentors), but we are at least not alone. I doubt I’ll get involved in any sort of activism, because I am a self-admitted humongous wuss who wouldn’t have the courage to protest against a social studies teacher let alone an entire governmental organization, but I’ll be there for moral support. I will support the continuing diversity of our country (which, if you ask me, is really what makes America great, relatively speaking); I will support my LGBTQIA, female, non-white, non-Christian friends and family and anyone else who needs it; and you bet I will be wearing my safety pin. Giving up is not an option.

The List of Limbo #1: Super Mario 64 – The standard for 3D platformers (unfortunately)

Here is something a bit new. While my rating scale for normal reviews has all possible permutations for level of quality by my personal opinion, I will admit that most of my reviews will probably be for things that I at least somewhat liked (or if I didn’t like them, if they at least went by quickly enough that I could put up with them). More importantly, I only ever review things that I’ve actually finished; I feel that if I don’t get all the way through something, I can’t really give a fair assessment of it. Now, what does that have to do with this “List of Limbo”? Quite simply, the List of Limbo is basically reviews for things that I might never do a real review of because I may never actually finish them for whatever reason, because of personal bias or preference against the genre, not enjoying it enough to want to continue, running into a roadblock, or whatever else. I even have a separate rating scale for the List of Limbo, as seen on the info page below the regular rating system, for how likely I am to ever return to that item in the future and do a proper review of it.

The first work of media that I’ll be looking at for this is Super Mario 64. It may be a timeless classic in a lot of people’s minds, but if it’s on this list, I clearly don’t agree. I warned you all that when it came time for me to review things, I might be stomping on some childhood memories along the way, but you know what they say about omelets, so…let the childhood stomping begin.

Super Mario 64, if you didn’t know, is the first 3D Mario game and a launch game for the Nintendo 64. For a lot of people, it is probably the game that codified the 3D platformer genre. This time around, I guess Bowser’s trapped all the Toads in paintings or something in his perpetual quest to give a princess both PTSD and Stockholm syndrome, and we as Mario must enter the worlds depicted in those to retrieve special stars and use those stars to return things to relative normalcy. There are 15 main levels in the game, each with 7 stars to collect, and there are a few stars elsewhere as well for a total of 120 stars. Each level needs a certain number of stars to reach by way of locked doors in the castle.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, I’ve been saying for a while that 3D platformers might be the only genre easier to screw up than RPGs, and Super Mario 64 is a pretty good example of that. Given that it was one of the first 3D platformers, it stands to reason that it would have some rough spots. The camera is pretty bad, for one; it has a marked tendency to position itself at awkward angles, and despite supposedly having a manual control option (I’ve actually heard that the Nintendo 64 controller was designed for Super Mario 64, the C buttons being one reason), messing with the camera using the C buttons doesn’t seem to work very well. And speaking of the controller, the controls in this game are actually kind of annoying. I’d imagine most people have probably heard about how janky the Nintendo 64’s controller is by now, but I will at least reiterate how crappy the analog stick is, and I’m not sure why this game even needed analog control in the first place. Really, I’m not sure why analog control in general is supposed to be so great; in every game I’ve ever played that had it, I could only think how much more accurate it would have been with a separate button, rather than having a control stick that you’ll inevitably end up pushing a micrometer too far in a particular direction, causing your character to run too fast right into an obstacle. Things like “use the analog stick to tiptoe so you won’t wake up the sleeping Piranha Plant” seem just as shoehorned-in to me as the Wii’s infamous motion controls. The presence or lack of good controls can really make or break a video game, and this one definitely tends to lean more toward the “break” side. Sure, it added new moves such as the triple jump and wall jump, but I felt like the basic controls just weren’t as accurate as they should have been, especially when swimming.

Both of those pretty significant problems, however, are still less important than the thing that really ruined this game for me: the gameplay. The levels, from what I played before I gave up on the game, are small and not generally organized or paced very well, and there are only 15 of them in the entire game. One might assume that that is rectified by the star system, but the levels really don’t change much. Whichever star you’re going for, you’re still playing basically the same level, even if you’re not taking the exact same path through it. The end effect of this is that it feels like rather than playing up to 105 short stages’ worth of content, you’re just doing the same levels over and over again, and at least some of the repetition is mandatory, since you need at least 70 stars to defeat Bowser. I’m not sure who thought this was a good idea or an enjoyable way to play a game. It’s as if worlds 3 to 8 in the original Super Mario Bros. were retreads of all the levels in the first two worlds, with the only differences being that some of the levels had a few blocks, platforms, or enemies added or removed. I guess one reason for doing this could have been to save cartridge space, but considering Super Mario 64 doesn’t come anywhere near maxing out the available space inside a Nintendo 64 cartridge (the biggest games ever made for the system used 64 MB cartridges, while this game is only 8 MB), that excuse only really flies inasmuch as it was a launch game and they probably hadn’t tapped into the potential yet, similar to how Super Mario World was squeezed into a 512 KB cartridge when later SNES games such as Donkey Kong Country quite easily went up to 4 MB (in fact, the ratio is the same).

One other thing that tends to turn me off Super Mario 64, though it isn’t the game’s fault, is its fanbase. Poor game-modding communities aside, I hardly ever hear anyone who likes Super Mario 64 describe it as less than not only the best 3D Mario game but the only 3D Mario game worth playing, or even the one that all other 3D Mario games’ design should be based on. There’s always some qualifier about, for instance, Super Mario 3D Land and World not actually being 3D games (looks like somebody needs to look up what “3D” means) or being objectively inferior to Super Mario 64 (keep that dictionary around to look up what an opinion is while you’re at it), or all 3D Mario games needing to be open-world and have star collecting to be good, or some other garbage. It’s fine to like the game even if I personally don’t, but it’s not fine to tout it as the be-all, end-all approach to 3D Mario games and disparage anyone who doesn’t agree.

Summary:

Problems: The way the levels are set up makes the game extremely repetitive, the camera is questionable at best, and the controls could have used some touching up.
Things that were okay: The music is decent enough.
Odds of returning to it: Low

I really tried to like Super Mario 64, but I think I’ve given it enough chances; I wasn’t really having fun with it, and I doubt I’d ever have much incentive to give it another try. The controls are screwy, the camera is even screwier, the levels frankly feel like a whole lot of blandness and repetition…and is it just me, or is a good portion of this game’s fanbase absolutely insufferable by Mario game standards? Super Mario 64 might have been impressive in 1996, but in 2016, not so much. There are some games from that era that have aged like fine wine (Super Mario RPG, Yoshi’s Island, the Donkey Kong Country trilogy, and possibly the Mega Man games), but Super Mario 64 aged about as well as a bowl of potato salad in Death Valley. There are good 3D platformers out there, but this, as far as I’m concerned, is not one of them.