LogFAQs > #951979047

It's been a really long day, but I can knock ten more of these out. Spoilers; I'm about to nearly eliminate a single game in its entirety, and it's not 8.

170. Turbo Man (Mega Man 7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRodHnfPgAg

I'm gonna run out of things to say about MM7's soundtrack pretty quick. I actually LIKE MM7, for a few reasons, but the loss of the NES stylings were a bit of a tragedy for me and that's well on display here. This track has quite a few different instruments in it that are all very characteristic of 7's soundtrack as a whole and none of 'em are good. The call-and-response melody is corny. This one gets tiring fast especially with how often you'll be falling down that one particular pit and having to redo part of the stage.

169. Concrete Man (Mega Man 9)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbMmnNyCcBM

Speaking of corny melodies! Concrete Man's theme is really hoping that the simple repetition of its one motif will eventually make the whole thing come together. This track sort of reminds me when a Mega Man fangame just kinda ends up taking a demo track that someone had lying around - Concrete Man's an awfully weak boss both in his theming and in his stage theming and the music lacks any sort of unifying character as well, it's about as generic as it gets. The run of ostinatos in the C section are basically the last refuge of a composer who has already run out of ideas 45 seconds in.

168. Strike Man (Mega Man 10)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJHsrxAv-7Q

Let me start this by saying that Mega Man 10's soundtrack has basically the coolest gimmick ever - every robot master theme was composed by the principle composer of a past Mega Man game (except for the one you'd really want to return, MM2's Takeshi Tateishi, who was... well, I'll talk about him later at some point). And leading up to the game's release, they even let you try to guess who composed what theme. Cool! I ended up getting 6 out of 8 right, and this is one of the ones I got right - the happy-go-lucky attitude of this track really seemed like the domain of Mega Man 7's Makoto Tomozawa. This one's kinda like Clown Man where I understand the idea behind the character of this track, but it wears its welcome on me quickly. The whole 'cheerleading chant' thing is cute but loses its novelty fast and the rest of the track isn't too inspired and feels kinda empty.

167. Spring Man (Mega Man 7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TrP-kZHmjw

One thing you're probably gonna notice about my list is that Mega Man 10's rankings are all over the place - rather than being next to each other they mostly tend to get grouped with whichever composer wrote them. That's not me forcing some kind of purity here, it just sort of shook out that way. I like the uptempo beat of Spring Man, but, and maybe this is just because I imagine the sound of a million 'boings' being played over this, it's another track that's a little too happy for my vibe and wears me out quick.

166. Cloud Man (Mega Man 7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhGEQITcEPk

I keep getting this one mixed up with Spring Man, like, all the damn time. Similar tempo, similar tone, similar feeling of being worn down by the whole thing. Hey, here's a weird fact! At a whopping 1 minute and 43 seconds, this is actually the longest stage theme I can think of! Yeah, that didn't seem right to me either but that little downbeat tag at the end (which I like) doesn't happen until 1:36. If someone notices a longer track let me know because now I'm kinda interested in figuring this one out.

165. Magic Man (Mega Man & Bass)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID1Qk0c_kyU

It's Clown Man part 2! Captures the theming of the area it plays in perfectly well, but it's just not a theme that I fancy, and since this is my list that might as well be an unforgivable sin.

164. Dr. Wily 4 (Mega Man 7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_DGS2DlJxQ

Hey! So, if you were hoping I wasn't gonna eliminate like half of Mega Man 7 today, sorry to disappoint but I'm basically doing exactly that. This one... well, it's a capsule room theme, and I guess it's trying very hard to capture the dire feeling of being about to face the hardest final boss in the entire series but it kinda misses the mark for me.

163. Freeze Man (Mega Man 7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNRbJ-wLMjY

I like this one narrowly more than the previous few 7 tracks because I do appreciate that it's got a lot of different ideas - I think it's a well constructed track that uses its hooks well. I just don't want to listen to it for very long. I'm grumpy and all this festive cheer is getting in the way of me wanting to shoot stuff and listen to funky riffs in moody minor keys.

162. Junk Man (Mega Man 7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lK_bD7RyIU

Yeah I really wasn't kidding about that Mega Man 7 exodus. This is probably the hardest part of the list to get through because I just don't have a lot to say about this theme, it's just sort of... generic. None of this will have me humming later and none of it really speaks to the character of the level in any particular way. It's not terrible, it's just sort of there.

161. Dr. Wily 3 (Mega Man 7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbkkuF61x6s

I swear to god this is the exact same theme as Junk Man's. Am I crazy? I prefer this one a little bit but they remind me of each other a lot. The tone of this one's awfully weird for a Wily theme - it kinda sounds less like I'm fighting my way through his fortress and more like I'm trapped in Dr. Wily's fabulous game show. The melody of this track is so odd - :21 just hits me in a super weird way that I can't really describe. Yeah yeah I know, great writeup, "it's weird and I can't describe it." Maybe the next 10 will go better because at least some of them are from different games.