Gradius Remixes

Up front, I should point out that I am not a big fan of dance club music. It just never caught on with me. Not even the very atmospheric Tempest 2000 was much to my liking. However, I figured if anyone could break the mold on this, it would be a game publisher combining game music with dance music. And who better to do that than Konami, whose games are renowned for their energy and kick?

That's what I figured upon ordering this, the third volume of the "Konami Game Music Remix Series". The basis behind the GMR Series seems that Konami contacts dance music DJs, feeds them musical samples from their popular games, and has them re-mix them into dance music. This sounds good and promising, as Gradius has a lot of potential in this area.

Unfortunately, most of the DJs left out a very important ingredient in their re-mixing - the Gradius music! Of the six tracks on the CD, I could only identify Gradius music on two of them. Track 2 is moderately inspiring, using part of a boss theme from Gradius III as its background. Track 3 is the star of the CD with its beautiful incorporation of the 4th Stage BGM from Gradius. If all the tracks could have been this good, then this might have been close to a must-have.

Once you get past these two tracks, however, there is little else to tie any music on the CD to Gradius. A sound effect here or there, perhaps, but the music just isn't present. In the CD's favor, though, there is a piece of music on Track 5 which sounds like it *might* be a piece of game music... run backwards. Admittedly, I have never been able to play Gradius II, so any slight music use from that game would be wasted on me.

The tracks are fairly long, from six to nine minutes each, but there are only six of them on the CD and they are incredibly repetitive, making the aforementioned Tempest 2000 look like a quicksilver composition in comparison. Besides, the size of the cake doesn't matter if your mouth is set on chocolate and you instead get raspberry swirl or something.

The end result of this CD is a product which could have been a fresh new look at some famous game music, but instead just teases you and leaves you less than half-full. If you simply must try one of the Remix CDs, however, I do recommend this one over the abyssimal Salamander Remixes.