Ah, dunno if I'd be comfortable with manipulating and sharing the boys' work so freely.  (They might grab a crate and straight put a dent in my face.)

I see what you mean. They'd probably leave your runnin' ass "Walken" like your name was Chris. OK, I'll shoot you an e-mail.

Looks like the boys are back together; they've got their reunion show set for May 7th.  Ahh, the prospect of Mega Man 9 being back in the cards has me super excited. 

Also, a roundup of the songs they've been doing up to this point.  Duane, at least -- not sure if BrandO has done many individual songs as of late, what with his hands full with Final Fantasy VII.

-Bad Dudes (Duane)
-Castlevania II (Duane)
-Ghosts & Goblins (Duane)
-Super Mario Land (Duane)
-Bionic Commando (Duane)
-Millipede (Duane)
-Dr. Mario (Duane)

Bad Dudes, Castlevania II, and Ghosts & Goblins are particularly excellent.

EDIT: It also looks like they're in the process of remaking the previously available music videos.  Double Dragon, Final Fantasy, and Mega Man II were redone with the LP of Devestation album takes, along with newly edited footage.  Zelda now has a music video for the very first time.

Thanks for the heads-up, Angie! This totally made my day! I just fell off the chair when I realized we might get to hear a follow-up to the LP of Devastation in the not-so-distant future.

Duane's new offerings are great, the production's a bit iffy, but if he gives them the re-mastering treatment together with BrandO, we've got some new winners here! Bad Dudes, Super Mario Land, and Castlevania 2 are my favs so far. Shit, if you came to f--- around, let me introduce your face to the ground. As I'm walking through the town, liars and cheaters are all around. Haha, the finishing hook of "The Silence of the Daylight" has never sounded sharper! Bad Dudes is also catchy as hell, the style of the game was just begging for the DnB treatment, I'm surprised they didn't get to it earlier.

And yeah, Mega Man 9 is just gonna burn down the house, can't wait for that one. The reunion has also rekindled my hopes of them finishing the EarthBound project sometime. And how about a go at Bubble Bobble!

Well, THAT was a quick reunion......

http://duane-and-brando.com/2010/07/29/ … s-no-more/

That Mega Man 9 preview clip was such a tantalizing tease.

WHA???!

I'm so sad. I thought they resolved their differences.

Now that's truly unfortunate. I really would have liked to see them work together again and put out some new stuff, but I guess if it doesn't work on a personal chemistry-level, there's no point in trying to force it further.

Didn't see it until now, but Duane made a video for all the Ghosts n Goblins EP tracks merged together to a single 7-minute piece. Onscreen lyrics, lots of gameplay footage from the arcade version, and clips from horror movies... Yeah, its a great video alright! Check it out if you haven't already, great guitar work by The Plasmas as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpsuypjnM1k

Warning for high amounts of over-the-top profanity... But that shouldn't surprise anyone by now, haha.

BrandO's got Castlevania III up. 

It's pretty great, but I've come to realize how much I miss Duane's vocals.   His voice really defined the gangsta element of these songs.

BrandO also did a take on the classic first stage theme from the NES Batman soundtrack. The CV3-track didn't stick for me right away, but its slowly grown on me, and now I like it very much. The fact that I'm so familiar with the source material probably helps a lot.

I agree that Duane's absence is felt, though. He's overall the better vocalist of the two, his delivery is more powerful. But on the other hand, BrandO is the better arranger/musician. He usually re-arranges and plays all the themes on guitar himself, while with Duane's new solo-stuff its more often than not the original game synth overlaid with generic beats or The Plasmas helping out. I still like their solo-stuff, but they definitely were greater than the sum of their parts when they worked together, they had different strengths that complemented one another. With some of the new stuff, I'm just not feeling that power and joy in creating that was there before, for example the Mega Man 6 EP Duane did with The Plasmas just left me cold. Its too long-winded, the vocals are too repetitive and monotonous, and it just feels weak compared to what they created together in the Mega Man 2 song.

I love the Mega Man 6 album, though your criticisms are all totally right.  I think it's mainly because I love the music in MM6 so much to begin with.  He is not exactly the most creative lyricist.

I think Duane is a creative lyricist in short bouts, and especially so when he has a sparring partner like BrandO. What I disliked most about the MM6 EP is that the dynamic interplay that was present in their Mega Man 2 song (as well as much of the other material on the LP of D) was not there. When you take just one half of that formula and stretch it out over 20+ minutes, it just becomes Duane using variations of the same curses over and over. The MM2 song had those brilliant rap-battle exchanges between Mega Man and the robot masters keeping it fresh and clever, they managed to pack an explosive amount of punch into a 6-minute song that I just never grew tired of it, but the MM6 stuff is just a drawn-out, watered-down shadow of that, in my opinion.

Right on the mark.  There are repercussions felt on both sides of the fence, which really does add to the sting from the split all the more.

Mega Man 6 clearly wasn't as strongly executed as Mega Man 2.  Let's hope the upcoming "MegaProtoMan 9" follows the same awesome template as the latter's.  I'm gonna miss Duane as Mega Man (the 'Mega' in the title secretly makes me hope he'll have a cameo somewhere), so here's hoping BrandO can carry through as the new titular hero.

On a side note, I used the word 'hope' three times in this post.  I really do have a lot of it for these guys.

Haha, well, it seems I have to eat those words now. Duane's new band, Action Adventure World, just released their third EP (after Ghosts 'n Goblins and Mega Man 6). Its called World 1 - 3 and is a compilation of some of Duane's different songs that have been up on YouTube for a while, but they've all been re-worked from the ground up. Musically, he's moving away from the rock/metal-style that he did with The Plasmas on the two previous EPs, this one is much more electronic-sounding. The music is definitely crisper and more well-sounding in 320 kb/s original mp3s than the muddy demo versions on YouTube. The vocals have been re-done as well, and just like the case was with the LP of D, I'm in the initial state of doubt over whether they're better than the demo versions or not, but this is most likely because I've gotten so used to the earlier versions. The best tracks are still Castlevania 2, Bad Dudes, and Super Mario Land, but all of it is good really, and I find myself even liking the few non-VGM songs this time around (especially "Vigilante")! There's also a bitchin' remix of Bad Dudes. Check it out if interested:

http://gamemusic4all.com/wordpress/gm4a … world-1-3/

Is hope such a bad thing? To quote the raven...

Playing catch-up with BrandO's latest project, Zelda 3.  The three episodes currently up are, as usual, excellent watches.  The banter between Zelda and Link in Episode 2 is particularly amusing. ;)

Episode 1: The Secret Passage
Episode 2: Hyrule Castle
Episode 3: The Chosen One