Norfair and Title Themes

Originally composed by Hirokazu Tanaka from Metroid for the Nintendo Entertainment System.


Game music, for all its variety and breadth of styles, is more often than not re-arranged by fans for guitar because, I imagine, that’s simply the instrument of choice as it has been the most commonly used instrument in popular music for over fifty years now. And of the children who played Metroid when it was new and have now grown into music-creating adults, many of them naturally do so with their guitars.

By virtue of not being a guitarist, any cover coming from me was surely going to be approached very differently. Rock and metal have become the most common styles used for video game covers, and one could do no better than Stemage’s amazing examples of this at Metroid Metal. However, as wonderfully as metal and game music apparently fit together, I’ve personally never thought of Metroid as being very “metal” at all and wanted to use some of the eerie, sci-fi elements of the game and its positively dense atmosphere to influence the sound of my mix and thus ended up taking it in a direction closer to what I thought that would sound like.

Title and Village Themes

Originally composed by Naofumi Hataya from Golden Axe II for the Sega Genesis.


Like all of the game music I cover, I chose these themes because I really enjoy listening to them and wanted to learn how they worked in the way that a curious tinkerer disassembles and reassembles a gadget to understand it. I also wanted to hear the music again for the first time as well as apply my own ideas and creativity to these already great pieces as both a tribute to them and as a challenge to rise to their level of awesomeness. If my versions are inferior to the originals, then I’ve failed in that respect, but still learned a great deal just the same. I’m definitely more than happy if my versions are on at least the same level as the originals though.

The Village is the theme to the first stage of the Sega Genesis game after the introductory story (from which the music at the beginning comes from, obviously) which takes place in a village. This presumably peaceful place has been overrun by raiders and evil minions and it’s the job of the player to drive them out in a 2D sidescrolling brawler format.