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LeviR.star's Arrangements - Finishing Off Dragon Quest (NES) ~ 2 New Sheets

Started by LeviR.star, November 18, 2016, 04:33:37 AM

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LeviR.star

Why do I even bother?



65th (Re-Write)

e-RDR[GBA] Kirby Slide - "Music from Kirby Slide"

[ZIP]




For the uninitiated, Kirby Slide is a puzzle game for the Game Boy Advance's e-Reader peripheral, and it was only released in North America, made to promote the Kirby: Right Back at Ya! anime. As you'd expect for a game of this scale, the experience is very short, and by successfully unscrambling the promotional image of Kirby, the game will congratulate you, and offer two options: play it again, or leave the minigame. There's no stopwatch to keep track of your best times, no alternative puzzles with images of the show's other characters, nor any chance to try and solve a 4x4 or even 5x5 of the same image; that's all there is. And do you know what the worst part is? I went through the trouble of downloading a specific Game Boy Advance emulator, importing the e-Reader ROM and card dotcodes, and finally booting up the thing only to remember one crucial issue: I hate slide puzzles. It took only a couple minutes for me to lose my patience and give up.

The music is nothing noteworthy, either. A four-bar loop with a lone melody line (plus percussion), and they couldn't even manage to make it catchy. (I mean, Waluigi's Reign is catchy, ain't it?) I assume whoever wrote this music wasn't a composer, and instead, a random programmer at Nintendo of America. Again, though, I don't know the circumstances of this game's creation, so I'll try not to bash it too hard. Besides, I only ever originally arranged this for the meme, didn't I?

Kirby Slide, everyone! Enjoy!

P.S: Just a head's up, the "Puzzle Cleared" fanfare is inexplicably sped up on the MIDI and MP3 files, so if you want proper playback, you'll have to listen to it on the MUS or MUSX files.
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

LeviR.star

You know what? The original sheet here actually wasn't that bad.



112th (Re-Write)

[SNES] Kirby's Dream Land 3 - "Mini-Game"

[ZIP]




I think the main reason this one got a re-write was because, in terms of formatting, it's an unmistakable eyesore. Sure, the older template holds up fairly well, minus the outdated URL and excessive reverb, but seeing everything crammed into three systems makes me wonder how I ever thought it looked good. I also made sure to notate the left hand an octave above this time; there's a few too many ledger lines in that older draft. Aside from those things, the transcription had minimal changes made to it, so I guess that's one thing the original had going for it. Enjoy!

Good news: I've got four more re-writes prepared in advance for our daily PA update. Bad news: the re-writes are slowly becoming more complex than just simple formatting updates and transcription tweaks. Not sure if I'll be able to last until school starts on this routine, but I went back through the list and changed some teal sheets to brown. As it stands, my PA has 23 necessary re-writes remaining, and I plan to finish those as part of my New Year's Resolution. Count on it!
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

LeviR.star

Hello, all. This post will be separate from my sheet update for today.

The other day, I went through my statistics in the OP, and as it turned out, my numbers were not adding up. The overall total claimed to count 408 sheets, but when I added up the totals from each series section, the sum yielded a different number. So, I braced myself for doing what I hate doing, and manually counted every single one of my 400+ sheets; sure enough, the number was off. After an hour or two of verifying my count using Ctrl+F (and accounting for the mistakes I'd made along the way) I found my actual total number: 417 sheets (which excludes the deleted ones at the bottom).

What does this mean, then? It means that, starting with [SNES] Mega Man X - "Sigma Stage 2" (my first claim for the Replacement Initiative), my count will jump forward by nine, marking the new sheet as my 418th arrangement. I know this is annoying, and I'm not sure how I managed to screw this up, could've been long ago, but my counting system is more meant to keep track of the order in which I arranged sheets initially. My next plan for the PA's maintenance will involve re-organizing how I denote console-exclusive sheets. Thank you for your understanding, and I'll see you later today for a Kirby & The Amazing Mirror re-write.
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

LeviR.star

Not super happy with how this one turned one. But ya gotta do what ya gotta do!™



57th (Re-Write)

[GBA] Kirby & The Amazing Mirror - "Mirror World"

[ZIP]




What I would give to have been introduced to this game earlier on in my childhood. It didn't exactly come at a great time; my extracurriculars were picking up, the DS lite we used for Game Boy Advance games was showing its age, and I didn't have a Game Boy Player at the time. So when it came time to play the game, I was overwhelmed by the massive world to explore and the Metroidvania-styled gameplay, which I was wholly unfamiliar with at that age. Plus, and I had no chance at playing it with friends, because not only was that option incompatible with the DS line, none of my friends even knew what a Game Link Cable was. I did eventually beat the final boss some years later, but the idea of going for full-game completion was too ambitious for me at the time, so this game hit the shelf. It's a shame, really, because I think Kirby & The Amazing Mirror is one of the most creative titles in the whole franchise. Maybe someday I'll go boot up my Game Boy Player and try to finish it once and for all...

Oh, the sheet, I forgot. Uhh... re-write or not, this sheet still sucks. Seeing as I couldn't incorporate the pizzicato strings or those heavenly chords, I imagine it'd work much better as a duet, so I plan to return to this song in the future and give it the treatment it deserves. On the bright side, this reduced score is a breeze to play, so if that's your thing, enjoy! (Here's the original.)

Remaining Re-Writes: 22
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

LeviR.star

And now it's time to give some other franchises the re-write treatment, starting with:



0th - 40th?? (Re-Write)

[SNES] Super Mario All-Stars - "Game Select"

[ZIP]




I think we take for granted how great of a package Super Mario All-Stars is, both now and back when it released. Four mainline Super Mario games, including a game that never saw international release before, with remastered audio and graphics, all on the same cartridge—that's incredible! (And much better than that crummy Ninja Gaiden Trilogy) Even better, this game was re-released a little later to include Super Mario World as well. With a package like that, you might as well throw away your NES (don't actually), because this was the definitive way to play the early saga.

That said, on the music side of things, I've never been a huge fan of this OST. Sure, it's all right, passable for sure, but even with the expanded orchestration, it doesn't feel like a proper evolution of the originals, at least in my opinion. The limited number of instruments may have contributed to this; they're mostly the same ones that we heard in Super Mario World, but these five soundtracks (save for Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels) are all very different. Perhaps they could've shone a little brighter with Koji Kondo's help, but I'll bet he was plenty busy with his other projects at the time. Let's just leave it at this: the remastered music is not flawless, but it is Soyo Oka's unique interpretation, and probably the best we could've hoped for back in 1993.

The new re-write is looking a lot better, if I do say so myself. Not only was the formatting on the initial draft lousy, but the rhythms were written out just terribly, and the octaves in the right hand part couldn't have been easy to play, either. This is just one of those older sheets of mine that needs a little simplifying, that's all. Enjoy, everybody!

Remaining Re-Writes: 21
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

LeviR.star

I hate to break up the string of re-writes with a new sheet, but this one's an important replacement!



418th

[SNES] Mega Man X - "Sigma Stage 2" (Replacement)

[TOPIC]



I love the music of Mega Man X, it's all very good. But as a piano arranger, my only gripe is that it isn't pianistic in the slightest. Did you know that we haven't had a new sheet accepted for this game in over 8 years? Not only that, but 4/5 of the on-site ones are ancient, and the fifth and only passable one isn't all that great, either. But can you really blame the members of our community? It's not realistic to arrange for two hands! Much like with the music of Mega Man 7 (which is suffering from the same problem on the site,) there's far too much going on for a solo pianist to take on. So with all that said, it's a miracle that one of the songs ended up being arrange-able. Had I noticed earlier how bad the on-site version was, I would've taken on its replacement years ago, believe me.

Not sure if this sheet was inserted into the Replacement Initiative project specifically with me in mind, but I'll gladly try my hand at a new one for each cycle, because knowing the Mega Man section, there's a lot of work to be done. Enjoy! The posting of re-writes will resume tomorrow.
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

LeviR.star

This here's the last re-write we'll be needing for my Super Mario section; the rest are mostly Kirby and Mega Man sheets.



0th - 40th?? (Re-Write)

[NDS] New Super Mario Bros. - "World 4 (Forest)"

[ZIP]




When I arranged this back in November of 2016, it was actually for a request here on the forums! Even though finishing it was a huge confidence booster for me, I would only go on to arrange one other sheet specifically for the requests board. You'd think I'd be doing more of these, but I dunno, the songs posted on that board don't usually strike my fancy. Either that, or they're far too difficult for me to make a sheet for.

Oh, and New Super Mario Bros. Love this game, it's one of the finest games the franchise has to offer, really good music too, blah blah blah... you all get it. I'm trying to get my sleep schedule back into routine for the upcoming Spring semester, and in doing so, I'm running on half an all-nighter's worth of shut-eye right now. If I can just make it to 10:00 PM tonight and sleep until 8:00 AM tomorrow... well, enjoy the sheet!

(Does anyone even look at these?)

Remaining Re-Writes: 20
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

LeviR.star

I feel like this re-writing business is about to get a little harder... :-\



0th - 40th?? (Re-Write)

[NES] Mega Man 3 - "Stage Start"

[ZIP]




(Original for anyone that cares)

Hoo boy... Mega Man 3. Where do I begin? I think the game's phenomenal, if that's where you think I'm heading, but I'm not. I'm talking about our coverage of the game on-site; while many of its songs are arranged, a good number of them are not in great shape, those sheets being made by Commander6. That name, in case you weren't aware, is a bit infamous around here, because many of this arranger's sheets need replacing. But you know what? I believe that their contributions to the Mega Man classic series are honestly not that bad.

This game's OST is difficult to arrange for, but even so, the arrangements by Commander6 are decently solid in terms of both accuracy and playability, generally speaking. In my opinion, it's just the presentation/formatting that makes them appear worse than they are, and probably the reason people claim they need replacing, but don't actually step up and do it themselves. Don't get me wrong, I fully intend to replace several of those sheets before my time on NSM is through, but please, show respect for the person behind them! They still have forty-six sheets in the Mega Man section, and that's not even counting the ones later arrangers have, shall I say, "taken care of". If you ask me, we owe a lot of thanks to them for their work on not just this section, but on the rest of the site's collection, too.

So what's next for Mega Man 3? Well, I have unfinished takes on "Needle Man Stage", "Spark Man Stage", and "Dr. Wily Stage Boss" from a long time ago, but there's a reason why they're not done. The parts don't mesh well together at all, leading to some very thin-sounding textures. These sheets are so devoid of hope that they're not even part of any backlog of mine, they're just... there. I'd say that you can expect more from this game once my work on the Mega Man 2 section is through, but that's a ways off from now. Enjoy "Stage Start"!

Remaining Re-Writes: 19
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

LeviR.star

At long last, we're back at it with Mega Man II. Should I tell the story this time?

Yeah, I think I will.



47th (Re-Write)

[GB] Mega Man II - "Password"

[ZIP]




(Original Sheet)

For the people familiar with this story, I'd like to clear up something: this is not my favorite Mega Man soundtrack. It's not even my favorite one from the Game Boy pentalogy, and as a matter of fact, I think it's the weakest of that group. But that said, I think that the fanbase is too rough on it, and it really deserves more credit than it's used to.

The general consensus surrounding this game's music is that it's too high-pitched, about an octave higher than it ought to be. If you didn't gather that much from the embedded video above, take a listen to this. Or this. Maybe try this, too, in case you're not convinced yet. Most can agree that these tracks are very grating on the ears, and bordering on unlistenable. There is a theory that the game's sound programmer accidentally transposed the music up by mistake, and as far as I'm aware, it's been proven by a ROM hacker that attempted to "fix" the soundtrack. Also check out this video by Tpcool, who went the extra mile and rearranged it using Mega Man III - V instrumentation!

It's been said that this was the first and last Mega Man title to be outsourced by Capcom to Japan System House (as opposed to Minakuchi Engineering,) because the developers were very unfamiliar with the series at the time, and failed to deliver. But even though the game itself is riddled with glitches, sub-par graphics, and questionable level design, the composer, Kenji Yamazaki, very clearly did his homework. You can tell because several of the themes take noticeable inspiration from the OSTs of Mega Man 2 and 3:

MMII's "Wood Man Stage" sounds like MM3's "Top Man Stage"...
MMII's "Crash Man Stage" sounds like MM2's "Air Man Stage"...
MMII's "Get a Weapon" sounds a LOT like MM3's "Get a Weapon"...

... and so on. There's all sorts of tidbits borrowed from the NES tracks, from melodic licks to harmonic progressions. And while some of these songs almost borrow a little too much, they're very catchy melodies for the most part, and sound surprisingly normal when given 2A03 remixes. Check out my YouTube channel, I've got several! It is my opinion that this soundtrack would have a lot more fans if it wasn't for the glitch in the sound programming, and someday, I'll finish proving that.

For this sheet, I had the difficult task of merging the bass line and the accompaniment pattern, but it turned out fine, if you ask me. The right hand was brought up an octave to preserve the range of the original track, and besides, the left hand didn't sound so great down where it was. So enjoy! My next task for this game will be to re-write the "Get a Weapon" sheet, and oh man, I am not looking forward to that...

Remaining Re-Writes: 18
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

LeviR.star

My classes start this Thursday, so I'm gonna lose my daily streak here soon!



54th (Re-Write)

[GB] Mega Man V - "Neptune Stage"

[ZIP]




(Original Sheet)

Here it is, folks: the only classic Mega Man for the Game Boy with completely original stages, bosses, and music. When I was younger, I thought I'd love this game to death; problem is, I didn't. Why is that? Well, my main gripe is that this game suffers from god-awful lag, to the point where it detracts from the fun. Mega Man 3 has this same issue, but I can play that game lag-free in the collections it was later packaged with, and this game has only been rereleased on the bare-bones 3DS Virtual Console. And as I played more and more from this series, I came to appreciate the 256 x 240 resolution on the NES screen, which allowed much more room for fast-paced action. The Game Boy, however, only has a resolution of 160 x 144, and instead of compensating for the smaller screen with smaller sprites, the developers of Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge crammed sprites of the same size onto the tiny screen, making running, shooting, jumping and fighting slower than before; this trend carried on throughout the rest of the handheld's entries. That didn't bother me until the lag crept in starting with Mega Man IV, and then came in at full force with its follow-up. And it's a darned shame, because the game had everything going for it...

Mega Man Legacy Collection features a "Turbo CPU" option that completely eliminates lag while preserving the gameplay's speed, and it's so nice that I'm never going back to Virtual Console. If anyone who's reading this knows of a Game Boy emulator with this same option, please direct me to it so I can finally give Mega Man V the proper playthrough it deserves.

One note about the arrangement: most of what was changed pertained to the measure distribution, which is something I'm going to be adjusting with a majority of my older sheets, rather than re-writing them outright. Enjoy!

Remaining Re-Writes: 17
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

LeviR.star

Yeesh, after 165 sheets, how did I think posting the original draft of this was even remotely okay?

Don't answer that.



166th (Re-Write)

{JP}[BS-X] Satellaview BIOS - "Error Screen"

[ZIP]




(Original Sheet)

Some of you may not know, but there used to be this running joke around here about my obsession with the Satellaview, mainly because I pushed for it to be added as a console on-site, back when I first joined. While I agree that it was a little silly, I still think that it's a fascinating piece of Nintendo history. Let me give you some background:

The Satellaview wasn't a console of its own, but rather a peripheral made for the Super Famicom, and it remained a Japan exclusive. It connected the console to a satellite service (provided by radio company St.GIGA) and allowed subscribers to access a variety of games, though the games could only be played at certain scheduled points in the day. On the plus side, this gave players the addition of live voice-acting to enjoy with their games, a spectacle that hasn't been replicated since. The BIOS didn't just act as a means of accessing the broadcasts; you could also run around a miniature hub world with your customized avatar and do other things with your spare time, like enter contests or play minigames. Many of the service's selections were just ports of existing SNES games, but it also boasted plenty of interesting exclusives, like a remake of The Legend of Zelda (they called it the "third quest"). Sadly, the service came to an end on June 30th, 2000, rendering the bulky add-ons useless. Still, it was a wildly inventive concept at the time, and served as a predecessor to the Nintendo WFC and the Wii/DS-i Shops we'd see five years down the road.

Rambling aside, let's talk about the sheet. When I first arranged this, I recognized that the sustained harmonies were overlapping with the melody line. So what was my solution? Slide everything down into the left hand and call it a day. Big mistake; this created these super intense chords that detracted from the relaxed feel of the song, and they were awfully muddy, too. Don't worry, though, because I managed to rectify this! Instead of trying to keep the chords sustained throughout each bar, I just slapped them underneath some of the melody notes, and applied the drum track's rhythm to the bass note. Voilà! Now it's far more pianistic than it was before. Enjoy!

Remaining Re-Writes: 16
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

Yug_Guy

Quote from: LeviR.star on January 18, 2022, 07:43:04 PMSome of you may not know, but there used to be this running joke around here about my obsession with the Satellaview, mainly because I pushed for it to be added as a console on-site, back when I first joined. While I agree that it was a little silly, I still think that it's a fascinating piece of Nintendo history. Let me give you some background:

The Satellaview wasn't a console of its own, but rather a peripheral made for the Super Famicom, and it remained a Japan exclusive. It connected the console to a satellite service (provided by radio company St.GIGA) and allowed subscribers to access a variety of games, though the games could only be played at certain scheduled points in the day. On the plus side, this gave players the addition of live voice-acting to enjoy with their games, a spectacle that hasn't been replicated since. The BIOS didn't just act as a means of accessing the broadcasts; you could also run around a miniature hub world with your customized avatar and do other things with your spare time, like enter contests or play minigames. Many of the service's selections were just ports of existing SNES games, but it also boasted plenty of interesting exclusives, like a remake of The Legend of Zelda (they called it the "third quest"). Sadly, the service came to an end on June 30th, 2000, rendering the bulky add-ons useless. Still, it was a wildly inventive concept at the time, and served as a predecessor to the Nintendo WFC and the Wii/DS-i Shops we'd see five years down the road.

LeviR.star

Quote from: Yug_Guy on January 18, 2022, 07:48:02 PM

Okay, I'll admit that I had that one coming. Good ol' Yug...



0th - 40th?? (Re-Write)

[SNES] Mega Man 7 - "Boss"

[ZIP]




(Original Sheet)

Even as a Mega Man fan, I can agree with the notion that there are wayyy too many games in this franchise. I mean, there were six mainline titles from the classic series on the NES alone! To do that, you'd have to churn out a game once a year (and that they did). It's no wonder the gameplay formula started to turn stale by the SNES era. In 1993, though, fans finally saw the revolution they had been waiting for: Mega Man X, an exciting new installment that reinvented the run-and-gun genre that the original Mega Man helped establish. Problem was, Capcom still had plans to continue the classic series, so they put out Mega Man 7 in only three months—that's a crazy tight schedule! And though it was one of the more inventive entries in the numbered series, it couldn't outshine the success of Mega Man X; ironically, the X series would fall victim to the same fate, producing six sequels in only a decade, the sixth of which ruined the games' reputation.

I really like this game, certainly more than the three that came before it, and I'll play it over Mega Man X any day. The level design is solid, the graphics are eye candy, and the music's a straight-up bop, even if some of the tracks tend to get a little... same-y. For my arrangement of the boss theme, the only thing I regret is not being able to incorporate the countermelody into the first four bars, but hey, you can't win 'em all. I'm just glad everything is confined to two staves now. Enjoy!

Remaining Re-Writes: 15
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

LeviR.star

Good evening to those in the surrounding time zones, and good whatever to everyone else.

I've made a fair bit of progress in my Personal Arrangements topic recently. On top of making it out of the 12 Days of Sheet-Mas alive, I also followed up with several other new sheets that didn't make the Sheet-Mas cut, uploaded a few that had been collecting dust, and initiated my efforts to re-write my absolute worst. With your continuous support, I managed to keep a daily posting streak for a total of...

36 straight days!  Or maybe less than that, if you discount the re-writes.

And while I had a lot of fun putting all of these together, it is with a heavy heart that I inform you all that I'll be ending this streak, starting today, on account of my Spring semester having just begun. However! Even though my posting will now resume irregularly, I still have big plans for the rest of the year:

- finish the remaining 15 re-writes and remove the brown ("bad") label from my PA key entirely
- touch-up the other arrangements confined to the PA from my first 3-ish years of NSM (estimated to be around 100-125 sheets)
- touch-up my on-site arrangements from, again, my first 3-ish years of NSM (estimated to be around 200-250 sheets)

It's ambitious as hell, but it's something I've always wanted to do, once I knew what I was capable of. The last few re-writes will be bunched together in the same posts, and the touch-ups will be released in waves periodically. And I'd like to thank the updater team for agreeing to help me replace my old on-site files, it's going to take a while. Once in a while, you may see an entirely new sheet, but don't count on it very often. Have a good rest of your day, folks, and as always...

... eeeeennnnjoy!
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

LeviR.star

Out of all the re-writes I've been doing lately, this one was probably the most overdue.



0th - 40th?? (Re-Write)

[NES] Mega Man 2 - "Flash Man Stage"

[ZIP]




(Original Sheet)

You know, it's funny. For as long as I can remember, the Mega Man 2 section on-site has hosted every robot master stage theme except this one. Why not this one? It's not at all difficult to transcribe, and it's just as well-known as the rest of the game's music. Ah, but it doesn't matter how long we've gone without it, because I'm going to be the one to submit it! Just you wait...

On account of my college workload, there'll be no essays about Mega Man 2 today; I'll save that for one of my later sheets. Enjoy!

Remaining Re-Writes: 14
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements