I'm back with what is probably my biggest and most ambitious cover yet! I first played Xenoblade Chronicles a couple of years ago via the Definitive Edition that was released on Switch. After hearing about all the hype for years, I felt a little let down by the game, but I still enjoyed it. The soundtrack is excellent though, so it was only a matter of time before I covered something from it. I hope you all enjoy this one!
So a Decisive Battle / Boss Theme cover from Final Fantasy VI was going to be an inevitability, I suppose. Definitely a track that I knew I would get to eventually, but for the longest time I didn't have any inspiration to do it. Then the inspiration hit me all of a sudden and I didn't wait to get started on this one. I hope you all enjoy it!
After a brief hiatus from working on new content for my channel, I finally made my return with Dark King, the final boss theme from Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest! I know this game has its fair share of haters, but I quite enjoy the game for what it is, and everyone knows it has a rocking soundtrack! I hope you guys enjoy this one!
Well, it's been a while since I've done one of these! I was replaying Final Fantasy VII recently, and this track really stood out to me when it played in the game. I've heard it plenty of times while listening to the soundtrack on its own, but something about hearing it in the context of the game really made it hit that much harder. On the Other Side of the Mountain is already a pretty straightforward acoustic piece, so my cover is just a 1:1 recreation. Nothing fancy, no frills, just a quick playthrough of a nice tune. A little bit different from my usual metal covers, but I hope you all enjoy this one just the same!
Truth be told, I've only dabbled in Final Fantasy XIV a bit, and I'm not sure if I actually heard this theme in the game or not. But when Torn From the Heavens came up as an 8BBG track, I was really intrigued and was looking forward to working on it. I was working on my recently posted Those Who Fight cover at the same time as this one, so that's where most of my creative energy went during that time, so this ended up being pretty much a simple recreation of the original track. Nonetheless, I still think this cover turned out pretty decent, and I hope you all enjoy it!
Final Fantasy VII's main battle theme Those Who Fight has always been one of my favorite tracks in all of VGM and was one of the main tracks I wanted to cover when I started my channel. I purposely held off on doing it though because I didn't think I could do it justice at the time and wasn't confident that I would be able to make the cover I really wanted to make until I had some experience under my belt. So fast forward about a year and half later, I've improved and somewhat learned the ropes with making these covers, and I finally feel like I've 'found my sound' if that makes sense. The time finally felt right to create my own interpretation of a very important piece of music. Was it worth the wait? Yes, it was. I can confidently say that I made the cover that I always wanted to make. I still don't consider it perfect, but after delaying it and working on it for an extra week, I knew I would never be 100% satisfied with it. It's time to call it done and move on. It's extremely gratifying for all the ideas I had swirling around in my head for the last couple of years to finally come to fruition, and I really hope you all enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed making it!
Being a huge survival horror fan for decades, the Silent Hill series has always stood out to me for its amazing atmosphere, which the music plays a big part in establishing. While there are the typical moody and foreboding tracks which you would expect from the genre, Akira Yamaoka does a great job of including some really great and emotional tracks that stick with you long after the game ends. In fact, I remember Silent Hill music being some of the first video game music I ever listened to outside of the game itself. This cover is a bit different from my usual sound. I hope you guys enjoy it!
I've been wanting to get around to doing some full metal covers from Final Fantasy VII since I started my channel, and I finally felt like the time was right to start making them. FF7 has probably my favorite soundtrack from any game ever, so I really wanted to have some experience under my belt before tackling anything from it. Birth of a God plays during the Bizarro Sephiroth fight at the end of the game, and it's a really awesome track that I've always enjoyed. Expect to see more FF7 covers over the next few months!
I've been itching to get back to Final Fantasy for a while, and I've had an arrangement of this track sitting around for a couple of months, so the time was finally right to put my spin on this one! This is a track I've had my eye on covering since my Final Fantasy IV Zeromus cover from about five months ago. The Zeromus cover has always been my favorite, and, with both tracks being pretty similar, it just seemed inevitable that I would get around to this one eventually. I hope you all enjoy it!
Super Mario 64 is an old favorite of mine and is still a game that I enjoy going back and playing to this day. I've always thought this rockin' tune from the Bowser fights was cool, but after listening to the soundtrack recently I felt like I absolutely had to cover it at some point, and I didn't wait long to do it. I was able to break out the 7-string again for the first time in about 6 months, and it was cool to be able to use it again. It's hard to believe, but after starting my channel over a year ago, this is the first Mario tune I've done, and I think my first time covering a Nintendo track in general. I wanted to try adding some original stuff to this one, so the bridge section is pretty much my own original riffs, for better or worse haha! This cover was a lot of fun to work on and I hope you all enjoy it!
So I have a confession to make: As much of a phenomenon as it is, I have never played or really had any interest in Minecraft. This cover selection was made by others for a group competition, and upon first listening to it, I really didn't know what to do with it. Although I thought it was a nice piece, I always tend to gravitate towards more intense pieces like battle themes, and the very laidback and minimalistic tone of this one was a stark contrast to what I'm used to and also set it up as a blank slate to get very creative with. It was an interesting experiment for me, and although I'm pleased with the end result, it ended up being quite different from my usual style. Let me know what you guys think of this one!
One of my favorite series in gaming is Konami's long-running Castlevania franchise, and an endearing element of these games has always been the incredible music. That being said, it's hard to believe that in over a year of making VGM covers that I haven't tackled anything from this series yet. I decided to right this wrong with a killer track from Aria of Sorrow, one of my favorite entries in the series! The rendition of Heart of Fire from this game is a mash-up of the track of the same name from the original Castlevania along with a track from the arcade release Haunted Castle. I hope you guys enjoy this one, and I'm sure there will be more Castlevania tunes to come!
A couple of months ago, some fellow VGM cover artists and I formed a group called 8-Bit Battleground where we each cover the same track and listeners vote for their favorite. This track from Ori and the Blind Forest was chosen for our second monthly cover, and while it was an intimidating piece to work on initially, I'm really proud of the end result and think it's one of my best covers yet! I hope you all enjoy it!
My March started out kind of rough with some failed arrangements that never quite came to fruition. About midway through the month, I set those other projects to the side indefinitely and started fresh on this piece, and the inspiration hit me pretty hard and resulted in what I think is my best cover yet. Final Fantasy IV is a very important game from my childhood as it is to my recollection the first RPG I ever actually finished, and it is still an all-time favorite of mine to this day. The game and of course its music composed by none other than Nobuo Uematsu is full of nostalgia for me, so I was glad to finally get around to this one. Working on Final Fantasy music is always very gratifying for me, so expect to see more in the coming months!
Those of you who watched the progress videos for the 2019 RFGeneration NES Challenge may recognize this track as it was included in one of the medleys I recorded. This was always one of my favorite segments from those medleys, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before I revisited it with a full cover. I really enjoyed being able to flesh this one out a bit more, and it's really cool to compare the two recordings and see how far I've come in regards to recording quality and production values. I hope you guys enjoy it!
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