Welcome to Morning Music, KotakuOngoing hangout for those who love video games and the great sounds they make. We have a strange one today: the soundtrack of a Nintendo 64 game directly hidden in the Switch version of Firewatch.
Yes, if you have the adventure game (I’m told, great) Firewatch on Switch, it’s called a little old platformer Forrest 64 all hidden there. It became increasingly important in the last week when Cabel Sasser, co-founder of company who released the Switch version, he spilled the beans on this incredible Easter egg that many people have overlooked.
Find the secret N64 stroller in the game, take it to a certain place and suddenly play a platformer from the late ’90s. As the related “longplay” shows, Forrest 64 (playlist / long game / iTunes / Spotify) consists of three short segments: collecting tokens, collecting slightly more dangerous tokens and winning a UFO race. Pretty impressive for a hidden bonus created “just for fun”. And it sounds like this:
Campo Santo / Panic (YouTube)
Sasser, co-founder of Panic, composed these little ones especially for Forrest 64, starting from bits of Firewatch the creator / composer of Chris Remo the original soundtrack before launching into the madness of complete cartoons. As he said Sasser on Twitter, “What if I ruined @ chrisremo’s Firewatch music, but in a funny way? Two opening chords here, a little Ol ‘Shoshone there … the rest is a Nintendo 64-style story. “
(Refers to Firewatch parts âPrologue” and “Ol ‘Shoshone. â)
The main piece here, âForrest 64, “sounds exact as you would expect: generic pleasant almost to a mistake, absolutely familiar, although you have not heard it before. It is the kind of unpretentious, but also unpretentious game music, which you could look back on, if it were attached to the first stage of a game you play as a child. Truly, the most N64 platform music that has ever appeared in an N64 platformer. How about “Forrest 64 Race“If you played Super Mario 64, you will discover that the parody-slash-tribute of Sasser is aimed.
Beyond a pair of accidental win / lose pieces, this little OST for a non-existent N64 game is complemented by two typical remixes Jason “Shock” Cox. They are fun and almost funny of reverence, given the stupid parodies they remix and leaving behind the generic intentional MIDI sound of the original songs gives the songs a small space to shine on their own merits.
Campo Santo / Panic / Shock (YouTube)
Nothing earthy, but it’s fun.
Round bonus? Round bonus. Along similar lines, Xoc released an entire album Banjo-Kazooie remixes, entitled Shock ‘N’ Swop!:
Shock back catalog of retro remixes is impressively expansive and touches on some lesser known classic games as well as unusual genre mash-ups.
If you’ve ever wondered what MetroidKraid lair’s theme would be sounds like a country song, Zelda II in the Beach Boys style, or uh, Cherub chubby as sung by The Ramones, they covered you. And I have to say this surf-rocky approach SonicMarble area is to die for. I love cutting off this person’s arm, and I was thrilled to find their work – tell me if you’ve heard this before – their contributions to a Nintendo 64 game hidden in a critically acclaimed narrative adventure of whose PlayStation 4 theme interface my colleague Ian really loves it.
I know, story as old as time. Anyway, that’s about it for my brain Firewatch, so I hope that’s enough. Shoo, shoo.
Ready for this morning’s music! A question comes to mind: How would you describe the sound of the Nintendo 64? Is it distinctive? Famously it lacks a dedicated sound chip! Does this mean that there is a less obvious hardware base to give it an identifiable sound signature? (Ah, this is a whole article in itself.) Something to think about! So what does your week look like?
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