Nine Lives' Arrangements

[NineLives]

I've been looking over the NSM Audit a bit and I thought I'd try tackling one of the M's I was less familiar with. The formatting could probably use a bit of tweaking before submission, but I felt I should at least have this out there before someone else starts on it too.

Illusion of Gaia
"Threat of Dark Gaia" | Files

[NineLives]

Not too long ago, I was looking around at the NES menu on the Nintendo Switch and noticed that some games had little icons on their covers to indicate that they were part of a series. From looking up stuff here and there, I learned that there were seven series that were created in North America that grouped a few of the, then newly localized, games together by genre. The labels were inconsistent to the point where not too many games used them during or a couple years after the NES's release. The Sports series was one of the last to use its icon with Ice Hockey in 1988.



I thought I'd try and arrange for the first two games created for the Sports series: Baseball and Tennis. There was quite a bit of reuse of songs for those earlier games. The title themes for these two were used again in Soccer, Pro Wrestling and Volleyball as well. I thought of tossing out what arrangements I had in Baseball out of Tennis, but I felt, since they're supposed to be a collection of all the songs from the games, it'd be more appropriate to just keep them both complete, reused music and all. Whether that'll change in the submission process or not, only time will tell.

Baseball
"Music from Baseball" | PDF | MIDI | Source
Tennis
"Music from Tennis" | PDF | MIDI | Source

[NineLives]

I decided to continue on the sports series and arrange Koji Kondo's contributions to it. Soccer has all original music, while Volleyball reused Yukio Kaneoka's "Sports Theme" and Soccer's "Game Set" theme, leaving its in-game theme to be the only original track. For that reason, I decided on singling out Volleyball's main theme for its own sheet.

Soccer
"Music from Soccer" | PDF | MIDI | Source
Volleyball
"Game Theme" | PDF | MIDI | Source

[NineLives]

Since I've been on a roll, I thought I should expand on my Ice Hockey sheet, so now it's a complete soundtrack deal as well!

Ice Hockey
"Music from Ice Hockey" | Files

[NineLives]

Recently, I learned about one of the forgotten Nintendo 64 games or, at least, I thought it'd be known by only a few. Chameleon Twist was one of those games around the time where 3D platformers were becoming the next big thing and plenty of companies were trying to compete with the giants like Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot. Unfortunately, this couldn't compete, as it was met with unfavorable reviews and didn't resonate with major audiences, even with its sequel that released the year after. If given enough time and money to be developed properly, maybe it could've become a hit title, but as it stands, it's a mediocre series with fun presentation, but undercooked gameplay. Speaking of the presentation, I took a liking to the soundtrack for the first game and had the motivation to arrange one of the tracks from it. I may do more from this series, but for now, here's my first one:

Chameleon Twist
"Kids Land" | PDF | MIDI | Source

[NineLives]

Since Game Boy games have been added to NSO, I've been playing through a few of them. I hadn't gotten to playing Wario Land 3 until now, even though I had it sitting around on my 3DS. Anyhow, I made a sort of mini collection with the day and night themes of two of the game's levels. Enjoy!

Wario Land 3
"The Peaceful Village, A Town in Chaos" | PDF | MIDI | Sources: "Day" | "Night"

[NineLives]

On the subject of Game Boy games, here's a song from one of Mario's many obscure spin-offs.

Mario's Picross
"How to Play" | PDF | MIDI | Source

[NineLives]

Been playing quite a few Game Boy games to see what I missed out on. Tetris 2 is interesting. It's much more like Dr. Mario than the original Tetris and has the addition of stranger block shapes. It's pretty fun and the music's quite cool too, so I arranged one of the themes. Enjoy!

Tetris 2
"A Theme" | PDF | MIDI | Source

[NineLives]

Been playing quite a few Game Boy games to see what I missed out on.

More of the same.

James Bond 007
"Marrakech Hotel and Casino" | PDF | MIDI | Source

[NineLives]

Just getting another arrangement done for the Star Fox project.

Star Fox
"Sector X & Sector Z" | Files

[NineLives]

I decided to get back to a sheet I tried arranging long ago and scrapped. In addition, I wanted to take a crack at another potential replacement sheet for the site. Both have taken some creative liberties that may or may not stick 'til the end, but I thought I did an okay job with the two.

Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Genesis)
"Marble Zone" | PDF | MIDI | Source
Super Mario Land
"Ground Theme" | Files

[Fantastic Ike]

Nice! Love Marble Zone, great track

[NineLives]

I had the ToeJam & Earl sheet sitting around in my personal folders for a while and I was gonna release it with the last track of the soundtrack as well, but I still haven't gotten to arranging that one just yet. In addition, I also made a replacement sheet for one of the simpler Mario Kart 64 themes.

Mario Kart 64
"Game Select" | PDF | MIDI | Source
ToeJam & Earl
"Alien Break Down" | Files

[NineLives]

Another tune I tried out before, but didn't get anywhere with 'til today. I sorta raised the song up an octave, 'cause I really don't find the chords in the lower register as appealing to the listen to.

WarioWare D.I.Y.
"D.I.Y. Shop" | PDF | MIDI | Source

[LeviR.star]

Ah yeah, I remember this one, I helped you with some Finale conversion back in 2018, nothing ever came of it for whatever reason.

Regardless, great job fixing this one up! It's a nice track from a neat little gem of a game.