Game music of the day: The Adventures of Bayou Billy

Game: The Adventures of Bayou Billy

Song: "Street & Swamp Fightin'" (Stages 1, 3, 6, 8 BGM)

Composers: Atsushi Fujio, Hidenori Maezawa, Jun Funahashi, Shinkon Ogura

Above: "Street & Swamp Fightin'" from The Adventures of Bayou Billy

Brett's piece on Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow got me in the Konami mood, but I wanted to go for something that doesn't get enough love. We've always had a lot of Castlevania and Metal Gear Solid mixes at OC ReMix, but The Adventures of Bayou Billy (known as Mad City in Japan) also had an incredible, energetic soundtrack by Atsushi Fujio, Shinkon Ogura, Jun Funahashi, and Hidenori Maezawa (most famous for the classic soundtrack to Contra).

A thinly-veiled NES take on Crocodile Dundee set in New Orleans, the game features Bayou Billy whippin' punks, shootin' thugs, and dodgin' gators in the quest to rescue his lady Annabelle from the evil bastard Godfather Gordon. You can tell Gordon's evil, because his hat obscures his eyes AND he smokes (as all evil people do).

Tales of Bayou Billy's gameplay being hard as hell are legendary; it was so broken that I barely ever got past the first stage. But how can you hate a game with first stage music that awesome?

Above: Bayou Billy's music for Stage 4 is just as catchy

Above: What kind of ride would you cruise with to the Stage 5/Car Drivin' music?

Above: "The 'muy caliente' chorus in Bayou Billy's soundtrack just blew me away. I needed to remix this, badly." - Evil Horde

The most ignorant, hated criticism I've heard about OC ReMix is "it's all techno." That's entirely false. (Besides, you wouldn't mean "techno," you'd mean electronica. And that's STILL false.) Those who say that don't listen to all of our community's music. A great example of OCR's genre diversity is Finnish OC ReMixer Evil Horde stylishly melting your face off with his intense Bayou Billy jazz mix,"El Lagarto."When it comes to Konami game music, it's almost all worth a look. Crack the whip on anyone who dares to tell you otherwise.

Larry "Liontamer" Oji is the Community Manager and Head Submissions Evaluator for OverClocked ReMix. Founded in 1999, OverClocked ReMix is an organization dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of video game music as an art form. Its primary focus is www.ocremix.org, a website featuring thousands of free fan arrangements, information on game music and composers, resources for aspiring artists, and a thriving community of video game music fans.


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