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[LeviR.star]

On the second day of Sheet-Mas, my true love gave to me...


2nd/453rd

[GBA] Kirby & The Amazing Mirror - "Moonlight Mansion"

[ZIP]

Before anyone asks: yes, I know that this track is used for Carrot Castle as well. Excluding it from this sheet's title was a conscious decision.

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...

Update on this: yes, I finally beat the game 100%. Setting aside some time this past summer, I sought out every undiscovered room and treasure chest, and managed to find all but one of them without a guide. This game's one-way doors and confusing maps can be frustrating for sure, and they reminded why I quit playing the game in the first place. But despite the considerable challenge that this posed, finishing my file was very satisfying, and I had lots of fun doing so. While I can't say that I'll be replaying this game anytime soon, I'm not selling it, either; for now, it'll just rest underneath my bed on top of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland, and my Game Boy Player peripheral. I even got a new box to store it in through Etsy, at a fair price of $4: just look at that shine! I figured that even though these games can be easily emulated, they hold enough treasured memories (and hours of saved data) to stick around.

Not much to say about this sheet, aside from me being disappointed that I couldn't fit it neatly onto one page. I was soooo close, too; one less measure would've meant five systems could fit nice and snug on there. Oh, well, hope you enjoy my latest Kirby sheet! See you all tomorrow~

[LeviR.star]

On the third day of Sheet-Mas, my true love gave to me...


3rd/454th

[GB] Mega Man IV - "Title Screen"

[ZIP]

This title screen theme is awesome! Believe me, I've wanted to arrange this piece for years, and given the number of sheets I've made for the game already, it's a mystery as to why I haven't yet. That aside, I hope you enjoy this one; there's not much new for me to say about the game itself, but if I think of anything, I'll let you know the next time it comes up.

[LeviR.star]

On the fourth day of Sheet-Mas, my true love gave to me...


4th/455th

[ARCADE] Wonder Boy: Monster Land - "Dragon's Castle"

[ZIP]

Boy, oh boy, have I been sleeping on the Wonder Boy franchise! The first game in the series released to arcades in 1986, and from what I can tell, was nothing more than a run-of-the-mill platformer. For the longest time, I had it mixed up with the Adventure Island games, but to be fair, I had every reason to be; the original Adventure Island is simply a modified port of Wonder Boy made for the NES, with the main protagonist replaced by a guy named "Master Higgins." Hudson Soft handled this conversion, which is apparently why his design is a caricature of Toshiyuki Takahashi, an executive that worked at the company. From there, the Adventure Island series spawned sequel after uninspired sequel, refusing to evolve, as is tradition with this developer. But Wonder Boy, on the other hand, tried something entirely new for its next game, bringing the series into an entirely different direction.

Wonder Boy: Monster Land retains the platforming aspect from the previous game, but introduces a bunch of RPG elements into the mix. Instead of forcing you to race through each stage, gobbling fruit to keep your life meter up, this game encourages exploration, and allows you to purchase items like weapons and armor from shops, using the gold you collect from killing enemies. And while you're confined to individual stages in a linear style of progression, this game's sequel, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, lets you traverse through a non-linear world, free for you to explore however you please. I've been playing the third game's remake since yesterday, and let me tell you, it's the most fun I've had since my school year started. This game, unlike Alex Kidd's outings, holds up very well, and may just be my favorite game released for the Master System. as if that's a high bar to clear

And the music, holy cow, the music is fantastic. Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap's OST is like liquid gold flowing into your ears; the orchestrated arrangements are gorgeous, and turn what was already great music into some of the best music I've heard all year. Unlike Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX, no new tracks were written for this remake, but composer Alex Geyre made up for it by writing unique arrangements for the different dragons' lairs. And everything fits so well, I love this music so much. Please, for the love of Pete, listen to this music; with Pete as my witness, I promise you will not regret it.

This song was a pretty iconic track for the franchise, as it's been remixed many times. In order to recognize its legacy, I've decided to arrange the original version, not just my favorite. I hope you enjoy this sheet, and let's hear it for my 150th game!

[LeviR.star]

On the fifth day of Sheet-Mas, my true love gave to me...


5th/456th

[Wii] New Super Mario Bros. Wii - "Enemy Course"

[ZIP]

Why does everyone seem to either hate this game with a burning passion, or love it as much as I do? It's only the second game in the New Super Mario Bros. series, and it's the first game in the mainline series to have co-op play, so why does half the Internet think it's so unoriginal? It not only draws from every 2D Mario that came before it, but it's arguably one of the most influential titles in recent years. Sure, its aesthetic became the standard for a lot of spinoff titles, notably Mario Party and Paper Mario, and I can't forgive Nintendo for that. But at the time it was released, it was the first traditional Mario side-scroller on a home console since Super Mario World, and that's surely worth celebrating. Now, with the next two games in the series, I think that originality criticism is completely valid, but they're still very fun, well-designed games. I guess that's the kind of reaction you can expect when you give Nintendo fans four similar games in six years.

The new remixes in this game are great, especially this one that I've arranged. Starting off, you've got the standard Hammer Bros. theme from Super Mario Bros. 3, looped again with an extra layer of brass, then it adds a whole new section of material to round out the song. The Tower Battle theme does a similar thing, and so does the Airship theme; I think it's a pretty clever way to improve off of the originals without straying too far away from the source material. Will I do any more sheets from this game any time soon? Probably not... most of the ones I would've wanted to do are already up on the site, we'll see what happens. Enjoy!

[LeviR.star]

On the sixth day of Sheet-Mas, my true love gave to me...


6th/457th

[PC] Annalynn - "Lava Factory"

[ZIP]

Annalynn is a neat little 80s arcade-inspired game I just discovered within the past few months. I haven't played it yet, since it's exclusive to Steam, but from what I've seen, there's a lot of charm to it. To sum it up, I read a comment about it once: "it's like pacman, but you can jump." That's pretty much the gist of it; you run around, collecting Pac-Man-esque pellets, and avoiding these four snakes that look like the Pac-Man ghosts. There's even Rubies, which function very similarly to Power Pellets, allowing you to temporarily defeat the snakes by running into them. The game draws from other classics as well: there's vines you can climb similar to those in Donkey Kong Jr., and these minecart mini-games straight out of Donkey Kong Country. There's plenty of other references, but I'm not going to go through them all. I tell you what though, should this game ever hit the Switch eShop, I'm definitely giving it a try.

As far as I'm aware, most of this game's music was composed by the developer himself, Cruise Elroy, but some of my favorite tracks were written by RRThiel, whom I found through his contributions to the Mega Man fandom. I don't have a comprehensive list that details who wrote each track, so I'm crediting both of them for any sheets I arrange under this game. Give this soundtrack a listen, it's lots of fun! And I definitely appreciate how faithful it is to the retro aesthetic; instead of opting for a simple 2A03 sound reminiscent of an NES game, it uses a Namco WSG sound instead, making the experience feel right at home with all the other arcade classics. Enjoy!

[LeviR.star]

On the seventh day of Sheet-Mas, my true love gave to me...


7th/458th

[GEN] Streets of Rage 2 - "Dreamer"

[ZIP]

Look, I don't care much for beat 'em ups; I think they're too boring and repetitive to keep me engaged. But I do care for Yuzo Koshiro, because man oh man, this guy's got some crazy good stuff! Far too often does Genesis's sound chip grate my ears, I much prefer the sampled instruments that the SNES hardware uses (even if they're a bit compressed at times). For select Genesis OSTs, though, I can make an exception, because done right, they can really pack a punch. Streets of Rage 2 definitely pushes the console to its limits in the sound department, from what I've heard of it, and it shows what a powerhouse Koshiro was when he first started his career in composing VGM. So much musical range, so much technical knowledge... I feel ashamed for only having scratched the surface of his output so far, with my minimal sheet contributions to ActRaiser and Sonic the Hedgehog on the Master System/Game Gear. Hopefully, I can make it a point to arrange even more of his life's work. Enjoy!

[LeviR.star]

On the eighth day of Sheet-Mas, my true love gave to me...


8th/459th

[SNES] Final Fantasy IV - "Golbez, Clad in Darkness" (Replacement)

[ZIP]

I much prefer the sampled instruments that the SNES hardware uses

Can we talk about this for a second? Man, the orchestral sounds Nobuo Uematsu brought to the SNES are amazing! Not all of them are great (I'm looking at you, imitation oboe from FFV) but it wasn't often that you'd hear such lush music out of games back when the Final Fantasy entered the next console generation. Composers for SNES games really seemed to love the xylophone and slap bass, probably because they were easier to sample and use for the music. The result often ended up sounding like... well, like this. Uematsu, however, was not only skilled in writing memorable melodies, but he knew how to get the best sounds out of the hardware. This organ sound is really high quality, too; sure, the Pixel Remaster version is arguably better, but I'll bet the original still would've made for a pretty convincing organ at the time it released. It really is something. Too bad you don't get nearly enough power from playing this sheet on a piano, but that's to be expected when you take the organ element out of the repertoire. See you tomorrow, and enjoy!

[LeviR.star]

On the ninth day of Sheet-Mas, my true love gave to me...


9th/460th

[DS] Dig Dug: Digging Strike - "Island Theme 4 (Underground)"

[ZIP]

Have you heard of this game? Me neither, until a friend of mine on a Discord server recently told me about it. This game combines the gameplay from the original Dig Dug with that of its sequel, and pulls a bunch of references from other old Namco arcade games. I have to say, while I don't enjoy playing regular Dig Dug, that's a pretty novel approach to constructing the main gameplay mechanic. There's not a lot of info regarding this "Mikky" character, the composer, but this is a neat little soundtrack; not only does it have plenty of catchy originals, it's also got some sick remixes, including this really cool arrangement of the in-game music from Xevious. I've never been a fan of how repetitive it is, but now, with a whole new song slapped on top of it, it's a joy to listen to. My hat goes off to you, Mikky, whoever you are. Enjoy!

[LeviR.star]

On the tenth day of Sheet-Mas, my true love gave to me...


10th/461st

[TG16] Bomberman '94 - "Vexin' Volcano"

[ZIP]

It's time for more Bomberman! I've really come to appreciate Jun Chikuma's work on the earliest games in the franchise; it's fascinating to me how many time's she's transformed the original stage theme into more elaborate pieces, like this one, for example. And that's just one of them—this little four bar-long ditty is everywhere in the first few games. It takes real skill to be able to repurpose a melody like that without it getting annoying after a while, but Chikuma managed it just fine. Yes sir, these are some nice soundtracks, and I hope to listen to more of them in the future.

I'm happy with the state of this sheet, except for the very last measure, and it's a real doozy. Transcribing it was hard enough from the start; I had to isolate the channel from everything else using foobar2000, record it using Audacity, and then look at it careful in Paint. This example from an earlier rhythm should give you an idea of why I decided to do this—it helped me examine the sixteenths in relation to the eighth triplets. That's when I realized why I was having so much trouble interpreting it: it was two uninterrupted sets of eighth triplets offset at the beginning by half a beat. Now that's some crazy stuff to notate right there. With no real solution to the problem, I just broke the beams and called it good. With that wacky kind of rhythm, what more could I have done? I have no clue, but I hope you enjoy my sheet regardless!

[LeviR.star]

On the eleventh day of Sheet-Mas, my true love gave to me...


11th/462nd

[SW] Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection - "Crystalline City"

[ZIP]

There is nothing from my experience with Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection to reminisce about. Determined to get the good ending, I set the difficulty to the second-highest setting, but would end up regretting it not too far into my playthrough. You see, Ghosts 'n Goblins is a unique platformer in that the monsters never stop spawning, so it's pointless to stand in one spot, trying to stand your ground. I've found that I play platformers like Mega Man or Castlevania more defensively, stopping or backing up when I run into a mob of enemies so I can minimize the risk of getting hurt. That's about the worst thing you can do in this game, and I was livid to discover my go-to strategy would not work. I take it there's a fair bit of RNG involved when determining where enemies spawn, and because a lot of them rise up out of the ground, it's not as trial-and-error as you would imagine. Nope, Ghosts 'n Goblins is an extremely punishing type of game that spaces the checkpoints far apart from each other, and leaves very, very little room for error. By the end of the first loop, I had died dozens, sometimes over a hundred times on each stage, and no, it wasn't fun. By the time I unlocked the "shadow stages", I was ready to throw in the towel. This was just one of those games not worth 100% completion.

While this game is technically new, it borrows a lot of things from the first two games in the series, the second being Ghouls 'n Ghosts. The levels branch out into two separate paths, each based on stages from their respective game. So while most of the stage music consisted of remixes, a new theme had to be composed for Crystalline City, which used to share music with Stage 1 in the original Ghosts 'n Goblins. I quite like this theme; the stage it plays in was absolute hell to get through, but with a catchy melody, I found more reason to keep going. It doesn't exactly sound like it could've been composed for the first game, but I don't mind. The music fits the environment just fine, and I saw someone else comment that it sounded like Tim Burton—that sounds about right to me. So I hope you enjoy this sheet! It's pretty much my only winter-y sounding Sheet-Mas contribution this time around.

[LeviR.star]

On the twelfth day of Sheet-Mas, my true love gave to me...


12th/463rd

[PSX] Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - "Wood Carving Partita"

[ZIP]

Surprise, everyone! My first "Igavania" sheet! If you're not familiar with the term (named after producer Koji Igarashi), it's used to describe the Castlevania games that follow the format of Symphony of the Night, and are characterized by a nonlinear map with extensive RPG elements... yes, I've loosely quoting Wikipedia, leave me alone. If they've been a thing since 1997, why'd it take me so long to arrange from one of them, you may ask? Simple! They're too hard. Not "hard" as in difficult to play, I haven't played a single game in the series newer than Bloodlines. "Hard" as in they're not what I'm used to: arranging chiptune music from mostly the NES and Game Boy titles, with a few exceptions. These are looooooong tracks, too, and here I was thinking "Reincarnated Soul" was such an accomplishment for me. I think I'll let Castlevania aficionado Atcero handle the Igavania sheets from here on out, but you never know; I might just come up with another surprise if I'm ever feeling ambitious enough. Merry Christmas, all, and enjoy!

[LeviR.star]

Hello, all,

As you probably remember, I've "reset" my sheet count on multiple occasions in attempt to lay down the true number of piano arrangements I've created for NinSheetMusic. In fact, the last time I did this was about a year ago, so the notion of doing it again has been fresh on my mind ever since. Some time last week, I started putting together a spreadsheet of every sheet I've arranged, and boy, did it take a lot out of me. But now I have a pretty good list of all of them, in order of when I posted them to the forums. Here's a quick timeline to explain things:

- Sheets #1 - 5 were posted in a definitive order around the forums, before I had started this PA thread. Their dates are also confirmed
- Sheets #6 - 48 were added to the newly formed OP in an uncertain order, though two of them had exact dates recorded
- Sheets #49 - 467 have been consistently added to the PA along with a new reply to announce them, and every one of them has exact dates

You see, the problem here is my deleted sheets, ones with their own designated spot in the OPs. Before I started marking sheets as defunct when another arranger got their version accepted, I outright took them out of their sections, four to be exact. This worked fine for three of them, since they didn't have a designated number, but then I discovered that my arrangement of the boss theme from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link was not from numbers 6 through 48, meaning that if I wanted to have a definitive ordering of the sheets, I had to return them all to their original spots. Thus, the following arrangements are now "defunct" instead of "deleted":

- [GB] Super Mario Land - "Oh! Daisy" (Found in Latios212's arrangement of "Ending")
- [GB] Super Mario Land - "Boss" (Found in my arrangement of the short themes collection)
- [GB] Kirby's Dream Land - "Boss Room" (Found in Latios212's arrangement of the short themes collection)
- [NES] Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - "Boss" (Arranged on-site as "Guardian" by FierceDeity)

Even though you can find all of these on the site already, I'm keeping them for the sake of having an organized record of everything. That means I now officially have 467 sheets in my PA, and with the help of my new spreadsheet, this count will never have to be reset ever again. Will numbers 6 through 48 ever get properly ordered? Sadly, no, that would be impossible. But I'm happy to report that everything else is archived properly! In addition, I've moved the Legend of Zelda and Sonic the Hedgehog franchises into the Other section, because I don't foresee myself doing many more arrangements for them. Go check out the OP, it's been re-organized a little bit!

Now, on to my recent submissions (along with a special announcement!)


6 - 48th?? (Re-Write)

[GB] Kirby's Star Stacker - "Opening & Title Screen"

[TOPIC]

168th (Re-Write)

[MUL] Mega Man 10 - "Absolute Chill (Chill Man Stage)"

[TOPIC]


Great news, everybody! As of the start of this new submission cycle, my list of re-writes to-do is now complete, and there are no more brown sheets in the PA. Though I no longer plan on re-doing any of my sheets from scratch, if you check my arrangement spreadsheet, I've got a number of sheets labeled red. This color means that, while I think they're okay to have up for now, I intend to make some changes to them before I run out of time to do so; the sheets in gray have formatting issues not worth addressing before the red ones. Many of these red sheets are from the first 300 arrangements or so, and plenty are also on-site at the moment, so I'll have to get some help from the updaters in getting files replaced. I will be giving the red sheets what I'll call "touch-ups", that is, a less thorough re-write. So in the meantime, I will only update my PA to report on progress with touch-ups, instead of making a new reply for every new one. Thank you all for tuning in, and enjoy!

[LeviR.star]

I have HAD it.

This whole arrangement thread SUCKS. This entire website sucks. Y'know what, the entire video game music COMMUNITY sucks.

I have been busting my ass for over six years, producing sheet after miserable sheet. Four hundred and sixty-seven of them, to be exact. And I never stopped to ask myself, "why are you wasting so much time around here?" or "did you really think anyone cared that you were doing this?"

So, after a bit of self-reflection, I realized, NO, nobody cares about this thread! The Bitly statistics don't lie, nobody's downloading my sheets. And good Lord, I HAVE been wasting a lot of time around here. Think of all the different things I could've been doing with all that spare time that was wasted! I could've been studying to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or astrophysicist or whatever the hell, but NO. I've been sitting, locked up in my room, making sheet music of music from games that literally no one cares about. All the wasted years...

And for what? They all SUCK. ALL of these sheets. Not a SINGLE one of them is worth playing, not even [Wii] Kirby's Epic Yarn - "Snow Land". I had been spending all these years aspiring to reach the level of arrangers like Olimar12345, or The Deku Trombonist, or even Bespinben, but how was I supposed to push my own personal boundaries doing all those hundreds of chiptune sheets?! No one gives a rat's ass that I completed the soundtracks of Kirby's Block Ball in my thread, or the original Mega Man on the site, because those games are GARBAGE. PURE GARBAGE.

I'll tell you right now what I'm gonna do: from this day forward, NO MORE SHEETS. That's right, none at all. In fact, I'm so angry with all this pent-up rage, I'm taking down the two original posts, so NOBODY can download ANYTHING from this godforsaken thread. I'm DONE.

Have a nice life, everybody; I know I won't.

[Yug_Guy]

[LeviR.star]

perhaps the real April Fools' joke was the friends we made along the way


468th

[ARCADE] Pac & Pal - "Music from Pac & Pal"

[ZIP]

For the whole playlist, visit this link here.

This sheet has been sitting in my Finale files folder for about a month or two now, and with the extra time I had last night and this morning, I finally got around to finishing it. Why did I put it off so long? Well you see, "Bonus Round" is a headache and a half to transcribe; even after I deduced that the track had a swing-16ths feel, I still couldn't manage to perfectly notate the rhythms from the first four bars. I mean, just look at this garbage!

le garbage

[close]

I ended up having to use the Note Position and Custom Line tools to indicate that those two notes are played at the same time; this wouldn't be a problem if not for those dreaded triplet quarters. That said, while I'm not entirely happy with how "Bonus Round" ended up, I'm satisfied with this sheet as a whole, and ready to move on.

While I'm sure you're not surprised that I decided to arrange the music from a game as obscure as Pac & Pal, I initially had no interest in this generic Pac-Man follow-up (believe me, there's a lot of them). I was familiar with the game and its main theme, but beyond that, I didn't think it needed a sheet. But I recently discovered that there's a surprising amount of depth to the composition of this soundtrack; like fellow Namco composer Nobuyuki Ohnogi, Yuirko Keino of Dig Dug fame wrote several of her OSTs with a certain cohesion throughout. This is one of the earliest examples of motivic development in VGM that I'm familiar with, and there's a lot to appreciate here:

- the bass line and scaling 16th runs are found in both "Main Theme" and "Bonus Round"
- "Game Over" recalls the "Game Start" fanfare, but in a slightly different form
- the two "Initial Entry" themes have their own melodies, but have the same tempo, swing feel, and are built on the same harmonic progression

... and the 1-Up sound effect uses the first six notes of the "Game Start" fanfare from the original Pac-Man, drawing reference to an entirely different game! For 1983, that's pretty cool, and demonstrates clear evidence that, like Ohnogi, Keino was a talented musician as well as a programmer. I'm fairly confident that Namco was ahead of its time in terms of VGM, so I think it's important to preserve and study their legacy. Anyway, that's all I have for today, so enjoy!