MIDI Week Singles: "Menu" - Greg Norman Golf Power (NES)

"Menu" from Greg Norman Golf Power on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1992)

Composer: Barry Leitch

Album: No Official Release

Developer: Gremlin Interactive

I decided upon this track for two reasons.

But, before I get to all of that claptrap, let us just take a moment to appreciate that this long, long song, is just the menu music to a golfing game.  The song plays for more than two and-a-half minutes before it repeats.  Granted, quantity over quality is kind of an issue here in that it sounds like composer Barry Leitch tried to cram too much music into what the NES sound chip could handle, but at least it is not an unlistenable mess.  Or at least I do not think so, but it probably helps having grown up listening to music on the NES.

So, the first for chosing "Menu" was that I was not expecting to like either of the two songs from Mr. Norman's Golf Power when it came up during my #AllTheNESMusic sessions.  I had this preconception because I felt, or at least recalled that golf games of old did not really focus too much on music (although I seem to recall that Golf on the Gameboy had some halfway decent tunes).  And to be honest with y'all, Greg Norman looks to be a bit of a square (but I could be very wrong on that front) who was not pining for some rocking tunes, so I would not expect some high quality Yasunori Mitsuda music to have been commissioned.  And from what I have gathered from various online sources, Greg Norman's Golf Power was not the best golfing game to come out of the NES era of games.

Secondly, and mostly influential, is the fact that I agreed to play in a charity golf game today, representing our office/company.  I used to play golf semi-regularly back when I lived in California but after moving up to the PNW, I have only played once in the last seven years.  And that one game was at a small 12 hole chip-and-putt.  The point is, because I am re-experiencing the game of golf again, I am going to share that with you all via some music from a 26 year old video game.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconain

It's All or Nothing at All