07 January 2015

Episode 160: Adapted Music

The boizz are back in action and breakin’ the law for Episode 160 of The Legacy Music Hour.  The topic is Adapted Music.  What once was an illegal move for LMH becomes a solid episode featuring 8-bit and 16-bit arrangements of film, television, and classical music.  We also get to the bottom of F. Switch’s profound yet mysterious reasoning for his track picks from Episode 159.  Full track listing below.



Game - Composer - Song - Company - Console - Year (North American release unless otherwise indicated)

Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers - Mark Mueller, Harumi Fujita (arr.) - Title Screen - Capcom - NES - 1990

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game - Chuck Lorre, Dennis Challen Brown, Mutsuhiko Izumi (arr.), Miki Higashino(arr.), Y. Manno (arr.), Kozo Nakamura (arr.) - Fire!! (Scene 1) - Konami/Ultra Games - NES - 1991

California Games - Richard Berry, David Wise (arr.) - Title Screen (Louie Louie) - Milton Bradley/Rare - NES - 1989

Super Back to the Future II - Alan Silvestri, Hitoshi Sakimoto (arr.) - Round 2-1 - Toshiba EMI - Super Famicom - 1993

The Terminator - Brad Fiedel, Matt Furniss (arr.) - Introduction - Virgin Interactive/Probe Entertainment - Genesis - 1991

Hayazashi Nidan: Morita Shogi - Michio Miyagi, unknown (arr.) - The Sea in Spring - Seta/Random House - Super Famicom - 1993

Earthworm Jim 2 - Ludwig van Beethoven, Tommy Tallarico (arr.) - See Jim Run, Run Jim Run (Moonlight Sonata - 3rd Movement) - Shiny Entertainment - Genesis - 1996

Snoopy Concert - Vince Guaraldi, David Benoit (arr.), Minako Hamano (arr.) - High in the Treetops (Linus and Lucy) - Mitsui Fudosan/Pax Softonica/Nintendo - Super Famicom - 1995

The Flintstones - Hoyt Curtin, unknown (arr.) - Theme - Grandslam/Sega - Sega Master System (Europe) - 1993

The Flintstones: The Surprise at Dinosaur Peak! - Hoyt Curtin, Hideki Takahagi (?) (S. Takahagi) (arr.), M. Ogata (arr.) - Title Screen - Taito/Sol - NES - 1994

Earthworm Jim - Modest Mussorgsky, Tommy Tallarico - What the Heck? (w/ Night on Bald Mountain) - Shiny Entertainment - Genesis - 1994

Jissen Pachi-Slot Hisshouhou! 2 - Claude Debussy, Sizlla Okamura (Shizura Okamura) (arr.), Seeking Employment (arr.), Tsutomu Ookuma (arr.) - Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum - Sammy Studios - Super Famicom - 1994

WWF Superstars - Jim Johnston, David Wise (arr.) - The Ultimate Warrior (Unstable) - Rare/LJN - Game Boy - 1991

Kid Dracula - Claude Debussy, Akiko Ito (arr.) - Stage 2 (Golliwog's Cakewalk) - Konami - Game Boy - 1993

The Goonies II - Cyndi Lauper, Stephen Broughton Lunt, Arthur Stead, Satoe Terashima (arr.) - Good Enough/Main Theme (The Goonies 'R' Good Enough) - Basement - Konami - NES - 1987

19 comments:

  1. When I saw that this was an episode on adapted works I was a little disappointed, but I should have known better than to question the Boiz. Nicely done, sirs. Love that second Flinstones jam.

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  2. Nice episode, lots of good choices. The TMNT II track was the most borderline legal track for me -- only about half the track is actually adapted from what I hear. Both Flinstones tracks were nice. I thought the first had more of a hip-hop beat than rock, and I could see someone rapping over it.

    My favorite adapted piece that you left off is the Treasure Master title screen music by Tim Follin, which is adapted from Starsky and Hutch and is quite jam, as you'd expect from Tim.

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    1. Agreed! That and the Top Gun NES theme were the two I was hoping for/ expecting. Both were amazing.

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  3. Just listened to that Treasure Master track. It truly jams where no jam has jammed before.

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  4. It's about time that "Fire!!" from TMNT II and Hitoshi Sakimoto's take on the Back to the Future theme broke out of their "illegal music" prisons. I loved every pick. Nicely done, boizz!

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  5. "Pluto Baby" rocked my world. I've listened to it like 5 times now. Great work by Keyglyph on a sweet Koshiro jam!

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  6. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that picture above is pretty much the definition of manliness.

    This episode actually resulted in a really cool educational moment of my own! I hadn't known that "The Sea in Spring" was a traditional Japanese song, but to my great surprise, I did recognize the tune. It was adapted by Miki Higashino in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters to make Kirai's first theme ("Kirai 1")!

    That kinda blew my mind, but it gets even better. Miki Higashino stuck some "heroes in a half-shell" quotes into her rendition during the dramatic part that Brent likes, which means we have a quote of an existing song nestled within an already adapted track. So as far as the podcast is concerned, that would make it doubly illegal!

    Makes me wonder how many other video games have used that tune to convey something about its characters or settings to a Japanese audience who would get the reference, while it sailed over the rest of our heads.

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  7. Was the first Earthworm Jim track the same one that was cut from a previous episode? I think it was cut from episode 22, Classical Music? If so, Rob has been sitting on that track for nearly 4 years.

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  8. Great episode but I'm amazed you didn't feature Parodius Da! in this one. Would have been perfect!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mut795RFlZc

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  9. You guys mentioned me twice on this episode without remembering my name! (Shoryukenny!) I was the one that asked about smooth jazz recommendations, and I'm the one that noticed the Snoopy song was not an original (which was a weiiiiird coincidence because I only knew from a random tape my grandma gave me ages ago that had the music to a specific Peanut's special that that song was on)

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    1. Who could forget "Kenny's Song"??!! Not me!

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    2. Ah! You'll be happy to know then that the mystery was solved during the year off! It was Puyo Puyo Tsu - Area C!

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3VMgyd_ncA

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    3. Listening to the Year in Review in episode 52 after seeing this revealed, I thought it was pretty funny that this tune and Splash Wave (which Rob insisted it was) were played back to back in the countdown!

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  10. I think you've been too tough on "Fire" from TMNT2, Brent. Yeah, it's a "take" on the theme song for the TV show, but come on, it's a crazy different take with lots of original parts. I would argue that the most memorable parts of that track are the parts that are original too.

    I played that game a lot when I was a kid and it had just come out and the parts that stuck in my brain and that I would think about and hum later were all the parts that are original in that track.

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  11. I loved how Debussy's Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum from Jissen Pachi-Slot Hisshouhou! 2 played in the background as Rob F. explained his selection of Lord of the Sword for the previous episode. It was sublime...

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  12. Vince Guaraldi's original rendition of "Linus and Lucy" totally does repeat that "da da-da, da da-da" part! http://youtu.be/x6zypc_LhnM Check it out from around the 50-second mark.

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  13. I have an adapted song track to share. It may be going beyond the scope of this podcast, but it is a tune I enjoy. It's from the PS1 title "Shadowman"; the track is called "The Playrooms." This piece is adapted from Johannes Brahms's Waltz in A-Flat Major and the first part of the second movement from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, second movement.

    In this section of the game, you're traveling through the nursery area of an otherworldly asylum, a place where the monster you've faced previously are spawned and raised. It's a delightful mix of childlike innocence and terror.

    Give it a listen...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsHA1DJ_ya4

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  14. Today I clicked the "Random" button on VGMRips.net and got the soundtrack to Tenseiryu: Saint Dragon for PC Engine/Turbo-Grafx 16, and saw the name "Sizlla Okamura" among the composers. The odd name "Sizlla" reminded me of the even odder name "Shitsla" in this episode. So I looked it up and saw your listing and theirs had "Okamura" in common. Sizlla is listed on vgmpf.com as having various aliases, one of them being a combination of kanji and hangul (Korean writing). I found a video of the game's credits on YouTube, and the Japanese/Korean version of his name was there. So I think Sizlla Okamura is probably the most accurate way to credit him (he still goes by this name on Twitter).

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    1. I just noticed his vgmpf page includes Jissen Pachi-Slot Hisshouhou! 2 among his credits, but with "Jissen" translated as "Combat" and "Hisshouhou" as "Winning Strategy."

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