Video-Game Music

Is there anything more awesome than video-game music originating from the NES days?

First off, I am a product of the NES. I grew up playing the NES and even played the NES well into the days of Super Nintendo and even Playstation. I still own one (well, a different system that plays NES games) that I have duct taped to my wall because the cords are too short, and play it pretty frequently today.

Mega Man 3 has perhaps the best video-game music I've ever heard and would even make a badass intro to any song. It's one of those songs where if you hear it you immediately think of a hero, carved out of stone, standing atop a large building with the wind blowing. With the way this song is written it sort of has a bit of a depressing tone to it, as if the hero has failed his own standards.. up until it hits the main portion of the song and takes off with a face-melting guitar riff, as if to say "Nothing is going to stop me".

OK, well it doesn't literally say that but if there was some sort of mixtape or video footage, that's what the music was built for. Hell, I'll go as far as saying I'm a nostalgic nerd and nobody else gets that kind of experience.

Many people have attempted to play this song, and most suck a big one because they can't get the awkward timing down or can't perform the song back to front while being a badass about it... except this guy. Watch and learn:

It is now clearly my objective to play this song as good as this guy.. maybe better! Alright.. maybe not. The face-melting portion is harder than hell to execute though and that will easily be my biggest hang-up. I've been playing for a while but never challenged myself to be that fast. This guy is awesome though and I assure you that if you love music and if you love video games, you'll have to watch that video more than once. Video game music doesn't get any better than that.

Some other songs I've been looking into learning and mastering would be a few songs from Castlevania 2, The Legend of Zelda Intro, Heavy Barrel's battle music, and I'm also considering the Snake Man Theme from Mega Man 3, a couple songs from Mario 64, The mansion music from Castlevania 2, and perhaps a medley of Zelda or Mario music. Older Mario music is a little too common, though, and honestly just not as cool or fitted for rock as the other songs I've mentioned.

I've actually been thinking for a while to start up a video-game music band, but honestly finding the people to do that would be a pain in the ass and I'd really rather record all of the instruments myself considering that I can play each of them (although I can't play bass well without a pick). I'd probably do it in a video style and record each part on it's own screen, then fit them all together, as I've seen done with other music videos, which is always really cool to watch. That won't be for a while, though, but it's definitely something I want to do just as a hobby.

If you can think of any music that you really like from a video game that I haven't mentioned that you think I should learn and eventually produce, leave me a comment, and maybe I'll consider it. Maybe.