Welcome to Morning Music, Kotakuit is an ongoing meeting place for people who love video games and the cool sounds they make. Today we have a stranger: the soundtrack to a make-believe game for the Nintendo 64 hidden in the Switch version of Fire clock.
Yes, if you have the (told me, adorable) adventure game Fire clock on the switch, there’s a little old school platform game called Forrest 64 everything hidden there. It gained more prominence last week, when Cabel Sasser, co-founder of company who published the Switch version, spilled the beans in this incredible Easter egg that many people ignored.
Find the game’s secret N64 cart, take it to a certain place, and suddenly, you’re playing a platform game from the late 90s. As the “longplay” link shows, Forrest 64 (playlist / longplay / iTunes / Spotify) consists of three short segments: collecting tokens, collecting slightly more dangerous tokens, and winning a race against a UFO. Impressive for a hidden bonus created “just for fun” And it sounds like this:
Campo Santo / Panic (You Tube)
Sasser, the co-founder of Panic, composed these little songs especially for Forrest 64, starting with pieces of Fire clock by creator / composer Chris Remo Original soundtrack before throwing himself into cartoon madness. As placed by Sasser on Twitter, “What if I ruined @ chrisremo’s Fire clock music, but in a happily funny way? Two opening chords here, a little bit of Ol ‘Shoshone there … the rest is the history of the Nintendo 64 style ”.
(He is referring to the Fire clock tracks “Prologue” and “Ol ‘Shoshone. ”)
The main track here, “Forrest 64, “sounds exactly as you expect: generally pleasant, almost too much, totally familiar, although you’ve never heard it before. It is the kind of game music that is not spectacular, but also unpretentious, that you can look back on fondly, if it was linked to the first stage of a game that you ate when you were a child. Truly the most N64 platform music that ever appeared in an N64 platform game. As for “Forrest 64 Race, ”If you played Super Mario 64, you will find that the Sasser parody and bar tribute aims at the truth.
In addition to a pair of incidental win / lose tracks, this little OST for a non-existent N64 game is completed by two typically fun remixes of Jason “Xoc” Cox. They’re fun and almost playfully reverent, considering the stupid parodies they’re remixing, and leaving behind the intentional generic MIDI sound of the original tracks actually gives the melodies a little room to shine on their own merits.
Campo Santo / Panic / Xoc (You Tube)
No shattering the earth, but it’s fun.
Bonus round? Bonus round. Along with different lines, Xoc released an entire album of Banjo-Kazooie remixes, entitled Xoc ‘N’ Swop!:
Xoc’s previous catalog Retro remix is impressively expansive and plays on some lesser-known classic games, as well as unusual genre mash-ups.
If you’ve ever wondered what MetroidThe theme of Kraid’s lair would be sounds like a country song, Zelda II at the Beach Boys style, or uh, Chubby cherub as sung by the Ramones, they have you covered. And I have to say this rocky surf sonic‘s Marble Zone is to die for. I like the cut of that person’s jib, and it’s cool that I discovered his work through – tell me if you’ve heard it before – his contributions to a make-believe game for the Nintendo 64 hidden in a critically acclaimed narrative adventure whose PlayStation 4 theme user interface my colleague Ian really loves.
I know, a story as old as time. Anyway, this is literally everything in my brain about Fire clock, so I hope it will be enough. Xô, xô.
That’s it for today’s Morning Music! One question comes to mind: How would you describe the sound of the Nintendo 64? Is it distinct? The lack of a dedicated sound chip is notorious! Does this mean that there is less obvious hardware base to give an identifiable sound signature? (Ah, this is another whole article.) Something to ponder! So, how is your week?
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