I scoffed at consoles until I met Sonic. You monster. As a one-time salute to the blue fuzzball, here’s some remixes of his tunes I collected from the web. And when I say web I, of course, mean YouTube.
To start off, the soundtrack to the Sky Sanctuary Zone in Sonic & Knuckles was one of the more epic Sonic themes out there, even if the level was pedestrian compared to what had gone before. For your Friday night ears only, here’s Jonathan Beil (Kanjika) letting the theme spread its wings with “Breathtaking Vision” from the free-to-download Project Chaos album (2006).
Let’s move backwards in time back to the Emerald Hill Zone in Sonic 2. The theme for this zone is given a dreamy treatment by DJ MAX-E in “Emerald Paradise”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf_s0Cjnl4k
And we’ll finish up with murphy341‘s inspired remix, taking Michael Jackson’s Bad and mating it with the Toxic Caves theme from Sonic Spinball.
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Sonic the Hedgehog was my first video game. I’m glad to have been on what’s historically the losing team of console hardware since it freed me from the silliness of the console wars.
Since game music was the first kind of music I really liked, I have reason to believe that it was the music from Sonic that led to me eventually listening to 80s music. (80s music and Genesis/Megadrive games both utilized FM synths).
I’d already been through the Atari vs Commodore vs Spectrum wars in the UK and by the time I reached the consoles I was over that kind of crap. I was amazed to find Usenet full of WHY SNES FANBOYS ARE STUPID. I stuck to the Babylon 5 newsgroups and all was good.
I did love my Megadrive although there are some games I don’t think I’d like to return to. Ecco the Dolphin has a very strange, empty atmosphere – oppressive – but in the end, it’s murderously hard due to its bespoke swimming controls. I can’t go back there again. Trying to reach the blue whale and find out the secrets of time travel again? God no.
I don’t think I ever understood the objective of Ecco when I played it. Doing flips on the surface was stupid fun as a kid, though.
Darn kids.
Oh, I loved Sonic and Sonic 2. Heady, youthful days with my Sega Genesis, seeking rings and freeing field animals. Talk about a franchise that didn’t make the transition to 3D very well…
@BeamSplashX: Darn kids indeed. Hang on, to me you’re still one of them darn kids. Get off my lawn.
@Steerpike: Yeah, I played Sonic Adventure DX and I know it has love from some quarters, but it didn’t have the same magic at all. While some of the gimmicks of the 2D platformer were there – running around at crazy speeds, doing awesome tricks and taking suicidal falls into who knows what below, the 3D-aspect made me feel like I couldn’t see or control what I was doing clearly enough.
I thought the first Sonic Adventure was great. The fishing as Big wasn’t awesome, but it reminded me of Sega Bass Fishing, the best fishing game ever/only fishing game I like. You could actually run on the walls with enough momentum- a concept the sequels gloriously failed to capitalize on. With Sonic Adventure 2, the story started getting a bit too far up its own arse and there were obstacles every-freaking-where.
Also, they completely ruined the music by adding awful lyrics. Someone should’ve compared those tracks against these and realized what they were missing.
God dammit, Sonic Team.
@BeamSplashX – Oh I absolutely adored this track from Sonic Adventure.
I thought the first Sonic Adventure did have some solid tracks. I remember the first time I heard music from Sonic Unleashed, I was quite disappointed- it didn’t have the Sonic sound at all.
Been meaning to comment on this for a while now. I’m not familiar with Sonic Spinball or Sonic and Knuckles but that Emerald Hill Zone track is sublime. I’ve been running a (very) steady feature on Tap called ‘Tapping down memory lane’ which highlights certain cover versions of vintage tunes. It’s not been an especially popular (or active) feature but hey, if somebody gets the same kick out them that I got from that Emerald Hill tune then my job is done.
The Sonic Adventure soundtrack certainly did have some solid tunes, even the cheesy guitar stuff like Azure Blue World and Windy and Ripply were breezy guilty pleasures. I’m listening to the latter right now.
Did you know that MJ (apparently) had a hand in Sonic 3’s soundtrack but he (apparently) wasn’t happy with the Megadrive’s sound reproduction so didn’t want to be credited? Google it, very interesting.
If only MJ had completed that final level in the O2 we would have heard his Sonic 3 themes, for reals. Sadness.
I didn’t know yo were doing a similar feature over on Tap, dawg. Don’t worry I won’t step on your toes with my one entry into the ring… then again, you’ve only done it – what – four times in the last year. YOWSER. Having a rifle through your posts, the tunes you’ve covered thus far are fairly, well, unknown to me. And you know how different “fairly unknown” is to “unknown” right? Totally.
I will watch out for your next “Tapping Down Memory Lane”.
Hey by all means, step on my toes, it won’t stop me tapping. Har har.
But seriously, there are loads of great vidya’ game tracks out there and some even better covers; the more articles like this the better.