Thursday, April 18, 2019

MIDI Week Singles: "Bonus Stage" - Balloon Fight (NES)


"Bonus Stage" from Balloon Fight on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1985)
Composer: Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka
Album: No Official Album Release
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo Research & Development 1





I promise you that I am not using another song from Hirokazu Tanaka because I am just going through his catalogue.  Most of the time with #AllTheNESMusic, I am not paying attention to the composer if I do not already know the game, so when I decided to use Balloon Fight, I was surprised, but not, to find out that it was "Hip" Tanaka who had written the music.

Now, I've played Balloon Fight a bit on various platforms (Arcade cabinet, NES, Ultimate NES Remix, NES Mini, NES Online), and while I find most of the music to be fairly standard early '80s arcade style music, although more developed than Donkey Kong, it is not until the music that plays during the short bonus round that I am more than interested.

Now, with the short length of the bonus stages, even if you manage to miss every single balloon, will only last maybe 30-45 seconds which is just under the length of the song before it loops back to the beginning.  And the last five seconds or so of the song too is where the awesome doop sounding drum/tom-tom solo is.  I don't know why none of the video game cover bands I am familiar with have not yet covered it, but at least there are like minded people who have gone ahead and made a cover.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

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