"Area 3 - The Jungle" from Dragon Spirit: The New Legend on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1989)
Composer: Masakatsu Maekawa
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Namco / Bandai
Developer: Now Production
Another great song discovered during the earlyish days of #AllTheNESMusic!
Now, if you are going to have a video game where you control a dragon in what is essentially a bullet hell airplane shooter a la 1942 where the dragon you control is able to spawn additional heads to spew greater fire and death upon your foes, you are going to need some pretty epic music to go with the cover art. Now, the majority of Masakatsu Maekawa's music for the game is not nearly as grand or epic as I was either wanting or expecting, but the music for the third area, The Swamp, for me is where it all shines!
This song, at least to me, sounds quintessentially '80s. Maybe it is just the beginning vamping intro? The only way I could see this song being any better, is if the intro harmony was incorporated into the melody during the second time the melody is played (around 0:41). But with the limitations of the NES sound chip, and it being 1989, maybe that would be asking too much?
And while I do not think that this song is particularly swamp-like, it is a pretty great song that does capture what it might feel like to be a multi head sprouting dragon trying to thwart the evil whims of the demon Zawel. Lastly, this is the first time that I have come across Masakatsu Maekawa's name, but I am interested to see what else they have composed.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
*I personally find this arrangement/conducting by Michael Kamen to be performed too slow for my taste. I much prefer Sir George Solti's conducting of this song.
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