Set Side B

Sundry Sunday: Pugberto Dancing Universe

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

Not a Youtube link this time! Over on Bluesky (“blu-skee”) there exists the manifestly ludicrous account Pugberto Dancing Universe, in which a Photoshopped pug animated to various pieces of game music that, I’d say, greatly improves them.

Embeds don’t work as well from Bluesky as from Youtube, so I’m just going to have to link them and insist that they’re worth the clickthrough. Here’s the music from the first level of Super Bomberman:

Select Your Heroes (“I Wanna Take You For A Ride”) from Marvel vs. Capcom 2:

The jazzy “Corkboard” game select music from Kirby Super Star:

And the character select music from Metal Slug 3:

There, wasn’t I right about how great Pugberto is? There’s a lot more in that Bluesky feed.

Okay one for the road:

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Sundry Sunday: DOOM Music A Cappella

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

Been focused so hard on the Loadstar Compleat project over the past couple of weeks that my brain can burn ANTS with just the power of SUNLIGHT. So have a quick one minute video of some people performing the music to the famous first level of DOOM, but with just the sound of their mouths.

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Sundry Sunday: Parappa is Bad at Driving

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

It’s been ten years since a little line drawning animation called URappinBad! shows up on Newgrounds. Now its creator Kevin Fagaragan has gone back and not only made it into a full color animation, but shows it side by side with the original.

This is the new video (3 minutes), which has the comparison at the end, and its Newgrounds page:

And this is the original by itself (1½ minutes):

Be on the lookout for cameos by Parappa’s friends PJ Berri and Katy Kat, Cheap Cheap the Cooking Chicken, and UmJammer Lammy. Both videos of course feature music taken directly from the Playstation classic Parappa the Rapper, which still has one of the best soundtracks in gaming. They got the music stuck in my head all over again. “When I say boom boom boom you say bam bam bam, no pause in between! C’mon let’s jam!

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Sunday Sunday: Fanmade Music Video Starring Vibri

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

Vibri is from NaNaOn-Sha’s classic bring-your-own-CD rhythm game Vib-Ribbon. P. Carredo is a Youtube content maker who’s done a lot of videos starring the angular rabbit. And Roll Along is the last of the six playable songs in that game, notable for being difficult due to its fluctuating beat, which speeds up and slows down in a way that’s tricky to match.

Mix them all up and we have this music video. The second pink Vibri is her version from Vib-Ribbon’s sequel Vib-Ripple, which came out on the Playstation 2 and so has better graphic effects. (2 ½ minutes)

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Sundry Sunday: Pizza Tower Music Played On Stepper Motors

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

Stepper motor music videos have been a staple of Youtube for, geez, many years now. A sampling: Africa, Piano Man, All Star, Ghostbusters and, um, that song. Closer to home, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Still Alive and Megalomania. That’s just scratching a very deep surface.

Well a newcomer to this crowded field is this rendition of Pizza Tower’s “Lap 2” music, The Death That I Deservioli. (3 minutes)

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Nook (the music playing program)

I found out about this program that runs in the background and plays time- and season-appropriate Animal Crossing music. It’s free, there’s versions for Windows and Mac on the site, and I found a copy on the Arch depository so there’s obviously a version for Linux too. It even has a rain option.

Pretty simple today, but it’s free and fun and free. It’s freeee!

Nook ($0, Windows, Mac and Linux)

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Sundry Sunday: DK Rap Remixed by Kirkhope and Substantial

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

People remember the DK Rap, the theme song from Donkey Kong 64 back on the Nintendo 64. It’s certainly memorable, and arguably iconic, although most would agree it’s not great as a rap? It was written by George Andreas (who wrote and sang the lyrics) and Grant Kirkhope (who composed the music).

We’re referred to it before here in a Sunday Sundry about brentalfloss’ excellent (but very dark) 2018 parody version, which kept most of the music the same. Well here’s an update that’s changes the music and lyrics, with the music from original composer Kirkhope, and the words written and sung by rapper Substantial, and by all rights it’s a much better song. Hear for yourself (3 minutes), it’s (puts on monocle) remarkably funky:

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5 Hours of Halloween-Themed Game Music

Pretty light this time, but light doesn’t mean short. There’s a lot of good tunes in this, with Luigi’s Mansion both leading it up and being well-represented in the sequence. For fun, have this playing during the trick-and/or-treating hours!

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Chip Tanaka’s Fourth Album: Desatar

Chip Tanaka is the most recent pseudonym of one of the best, certainly one of the most influential, game composers of all time, Hirokazu Tanaka, a.k.a. Hip Tanaka, who made contributions to many NES-era games. His most distinctive soundtracks are probably Metroid and Kid Icarus, but he also worked on Dr. Mario, Super Mario Land, Tetris, Mother and Earthbound. After those he helmed Pokemon co-producer Creatures Inc. for 22 years, until just last year. His most recognizable contributions from an outside perspective, though, are probably still his musical works.

We’ve linked to at least one of his songs before, the Hammerhead Shark Song from his second album Domingo. Its video was animated by Toby Fox, the Undertale/Deltarune maker, and it does a good job of combining the charms both of Tanaka’s music and Fox’s art.

The new album Desatar combines chiptune waveforms with real-world instruments to produce a distinctive mixture. There’s a sampler up on Youtube (3 minutes, embedded below), and the whole thing can be heard on Spotify (though it requires making an account).

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4 in 2010: Crazy Taxi’s Crazy Box Mode With Live Band

Few games have as iconic a soundtrack as does Crazy Taxi, which boasts a memorable collection of Offspring and Bad Religion tunes backing its trademark atrocities of municipal transportation.

Word is that Crazy Taxi plays on Youtube are susceptible to copyright strikes because of all those licensed tunes. One solution? Have a live band play what the game would have been playing! That’s what this player, and three supporting musicians, do in this submission for the next AGDQ (14 minutes). You could complain that you never get to hear the whole song, but you never could do that in Crazy Taxi anyway.

The mode shown off is called Crazy Box. It’s a collection of 16 driving challenges bundled with the home versions of Crazy Taxi, and they’re all pretty, well, crazy. The highlight, I think, is the last challenge, which is simply to do a lap around the arcade city as if it were a traditional driving game, although with traffic turned up, because it’s not Crazy Taxi without a ton of traffic.

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Sundry Sunday: The Balatro Theme With Mother 3 Instruments

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

Prepare to get the Balatro music stuck in your head all over again, but with the Mother 3 “soundfont,” a word that I’m not thrilled with. I don’t hate it, it’s just that there’s already good ways to refer to that concept, like “instrument set.” Ah. Oh well. Anyway. Here it is. (4 minutes – wait, the Balatro music is only four minutes long?)

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Sundry Sunday: Proving Grounds of the Bard Fox

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

Taking a short break form gushing over Atari Games’ Rampart to bring you this fun, short animation, by Only Jerry, set to the battle theme of the Japan-only PC Engine version of Wizardry. It’s only a minute or so, so please enjoy!

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