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Saturday, May 12, 2018

Favorite Tunes #226: Mango

What does Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, Fantasy Zone and F-ZERO have to do with this week's Favorite Tunes? Yeah, that's a stupid question because I wasn't sure what to write for this week's intro. 

Omen - Final Fantasy VI (SNES)
Years ago, I relucantly rented Final Fantasy VI from Blockbuster Video (to give you an idea of how long ago that was) because they didn't have Mega Man 7 in. When I booted the game up and was greeted with this overwhelmingly powerful piece, I knew I was in for something special. This track  combines several themes into including FFVI poster girl, Terra.  

I think this is the third or fourth rendition of Guile's theme I've posted in Favorite Tunes. The Genesis sound chip does a good job of making the music sound a bit more like the CPS-I audio that the SFII was based off of, though Guile's theme does sound a key or two higher here. Still, this is a fine version of flat top's jam. 

Back in the early 1990s, the original F-ZERO was given a killer arranged album simply titled F-ZERO and like all the cool stuff, it was only released in Japan. While rock is heavily associated with F-ZERO music, this was a full blown jazz album.

How's the latest patch for this game treating you all? Maybe that's a question I shouldn't ask. Well, we've finally got a theme from DBFZ that isn't a character theme or a level track. Main Menu themes really don't get enough love. 

This Mega Drive version of Fantasy Zone was unavailable to gamers in the west until it was released on the Wii's Virtual Console. The soundtrack was not done by Hiroshi Kawaguchi, but rather Naoki Kodaka who turned in some really good Fantasy Zone tracks.  

Since we've reached the end of another Favorite Tunes, let's close it out with a staff roll song. Like the Tekken series, when the EX titles came home, they recieved a few extras not found in the arcade versions such as more modes and of course, remixed music. When it came to the original EX, the PS arranged tunes were vastly superior to the arcade tracks. However, the arcade tunes of EX2 are so good that they rival that of the arranged tracks. 

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