The Music of Smash Bros. Needs MORE Words
I understand there are some VERY WRONG, DUMB, BAD criminals out there who have beef with the vocal theme in this new Smash Bros. game. As a matter of fact, we need more songs with words, and, lucky you, I am here to tell you about a few of the magnificent Nintendo bops and jams that you’ve been missing.
Let’s start with High Stakes In Mute City.
We’ve all heard the pulse-pounding tunes that keep Captain Falcon’s adrenaline up as his fingers blister around the steering wheel of his futuristic hover car, but what does the hero from F-Zero rock on his Walkman between races?
The answer, obviously, is a sad man cooing, “F-Zeeeeeero…” over and over again.
“Shulk? Who’s that?”
It was a common enough question way back when Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS were just beginning to tie the tongues of every unfortunate pendant who felt compelled to say their complete names. (Maybe that was just me.) Fortunately, thanks to the success of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, not to mention a number of re-releases and sequels, the Xenoblade franchise is now bigger than Glory of Heracles and Snowpack Park put together. But while Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2 are enjoying a fair amount of representation on the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate soundtrack (to say nothing of the Xenoblade Chronicles tracks already made popular in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS), Xenoblade Chronicles X seems to have been left on a whooooooole different plaaaaaaaanet.
Intelligent Systems is a studio known for clever, quirky, high-quality games. From WarioWare to Paper Mario, from Advance Wars to Fire Emblem, there’s hardly a clunker in the bunch.
Hardly.
For SOME reason, there aren’t many videos of Eco Shooter: Plant 530 on YouTube. I couldn’t find any isolated soundtrack uploads, which is a shame, because the opening theme is really this only good part of this garbage game.
And it is literally a garbage game. Not recommended for anyone, no matter how much you hate cans. But that opening theme is catchy!
Work Your Body from 1080° Snowboarding is a song about working your body.
If there was any lesson for us to take away from Excitebike 64, it’s that elephants should be sampled in music more often. That, and if your name doesn’t lend itself to an easy and career-relavent nickname like “Tricky” Ricky Stern or “Jumpin’” Jim Rivers, you can always settle on Bobby “Big Dog” Malone.
The World of Light’s got wonders to spare. If you dig enough, you’ll see that it includes spirits from Fossil Fighters, but if that series’ greatest contribution to culture is on the Smash Bros. soundtrack, I haven’t heard it yet.
Fossil Fighters: Frontier should have been a masterpiece. It’s a game about driving around in a cool Jeep and carefully excavating dinosaur fossils to clone into all-new super dinosaurs that must battle to the death in Pokèmon-esque fighting tournaments and petty disputes so you can raise money to soup up your Jeep and get better fossils for more crimes against God. Sadly, the fun peters out quickly after the opening video. Which is fine, really, because this song is worth the price of a full game.
While most people perusing the Donkey Konga discography would gravitate toward the obvious hits like BINGO or Diddy’s Ditties (a beautiful and life-affirming medley of Happy Birthday to You, The Itsy-Bitsy Spider, and Row, Row, Row Your Boat), I have instead opted for DK’s cover of Headstrong by Trapt, a powerful anthem* about finding strength not through violence, but by thinking your way through problems.
Now with digital bongos!
*Not to be confused with Good Charlotte’s The Anthem, made famous by Donkey Konga 2 and Elite Beat Agents. Remember, kids: Shake it once, that’s fine.
Yo. Yoooooooooo.
I’m not interested in eSports. You’re not going to catch me tuning in to professional Smash Bros. tournaments…but I’d be willing to reconsider if there were a chance I’d get to watch serious, trained competitors take the stage to make Jigglypuff and Mr. Game & Watch slap each other while blasting a song about mischievous spirits messing up your hair and hiding your socks.
Serious question: Why isn’t Super Mario Sunshine’s a capella take on the Mario theme in here? No, really, why would you put literally hundreds of pieces of Nintendo music in one package and ignore a perfect re-imagining of THE Nintendo song?
Odama is the kind of weirdo Nintendo obscurity that practically exists just so it can be referenced in Super Smash Bros., which is reason enough for its inclusion on this list, but listen to the song. You hear that? Do you hear “Nintendo” being rhymed with “crescendo”? Do you hear how long this woman holds the word “pinbaaaaaaaaaall” at the end? Do you hear MGM’s lawyers debating whether or not this is close enough to being a James Bond theme for them to have a real case?
There you have it. The top ten vocal Nintendo songs that should be added to Super Smash Bros. (Oh, uh, this is a top-ten list, I guess. Either that, or I just happened to pick ten songs and then get bored of writing.)
The end.
It should be, I mean.
But we still have to discuss one last song.
The DK Rap made it’s Smash Bros. debut way back in 2001 with Super Smash Bros. Melee, and it’s been around ever since. There’s a problem, though:
The Smash Bros. version is bad.
Sure, it starts off well enough. No, it’s not exactly like the DK Rap we all came to know and love from 1999’s Donkey Kong 64, but that’s fine. We’ve moved from cartridges to tiny GameCube discs, baby! Plus, the original said the H-E-double-hockey-barrels word, and that is a SWEAR. It’s a brave new world of higher fidelity and clean language! If you know the words, you can still put your hands together as we take you through the opening verses of this monkey rap, HUH!
But then something happens. Something sinister. We reach Tiny Kong’s verse, and… Well, I think it’s Tiny Kong’s verse. The whole thing is incomprehensible. It’s a mess.
You remember Ecce Homo, that poorly restored Jesus fresco we were all mocking back in 2012? Remember how that felt like it was only a year or two ago, and your finite time on this planet is perpetually slipping through your fingers, never to return? That’s the Melee version of the DK Rap. (The Jesus fresco part, I mean; not the existential dread of being faced with your own mortality. Although, uh…)
C’mon, Cranky! Take it to the fridge!
Jake Spencer is some idiot. You can listen to him talk about the joy of sadness on Of Horse: A BoJack Horseman Fan Cast. He writes Cool Spider-Man Comics for kids who like to have fun. He’s trapped on Twitter, and he really wishes he knew how to break free. His hobbies include writing bio paragraphs in third person and not knowing when to stop. Two sentences ago, right?