P-Vock's Music Box: DO A BARREL ROLL
Hello and welcome back to P-Vock's Music Box. I love when I'm presented with a gripping narrative that makes me feel and challenges how I consume and think about media.
That said, I also just love some dumb fun that doesn't overstay its welcome while being simply a fun and digestible experience. When it's at its best (which it rarely ever is), I don't think many works of media capture this idea better than the Star Fox series.
While it could have been a melodramatic space opera (which it sometimes tried to be with a spectacularly high rate of failure), Star Fox shines brightest when it's just dumb fun and a lighthearted game about flying through space at high speeds and shooting stuff.
Not only is the gameplay great when it attempts this, but the music is often phenomenal.
The main theme of Star Fox is just so exciting. I just feel this sense of anticipation and fun anxiety whenever I hear it. It screams of the unknown and the joy of a new experience. For a series all about replaying a game over and over again while trying new things to get the most out of the whole package, I don't think you could have a better main theme to capture that thrill.
Here's hoping the music you hear when you actually paly the damn game also slaps.
The melody of the Corneria theme has stood for decades as one of the iconic tracks from this stupid medium and for good reason. It just has an undeniable and beloved amount of energy. It's so kinetic and the sheer amount of notes and things going on perfectly mimics the chaos of a high-octane space battle. What's even more impressive is that it achieves such a high intensity and volume without feeling cluttered or discombobulated.
All of this is not to say that this sort of media can't still have rather intense music.
GOD. The soundfont for the N64 just gives me sheer joy, and this track perfectly captures why. It's just compressed enough to be crunchy without sounding terrible. When you have an absolute jam of a theme with a melody I can't get enough of that is only enhanced by this soundfont, you have something I just cherish.
I love a good rival moment in media and, largely thanks to this theme, Star Fox vs Star Wolf is one of the greats.
It's just so bombastic. It's just so wild. It's so damn GOOD. It starts off so intense and almost intimidating, but shifts to something much more upbeat and optimistic, as if echoing the tug of war going on between these bitter rival teams. There is this driving sense of uniformity and rhythm that somehow captures both the calculated cruelty of Star Wolf while also reminding us of the camaraderie within Star Fox.
Just a total banger in the truest sense.
Simple fun. Sometimes, you just want simple fun. I don't really have much more to say than that, to be honest.
Star Fox is a terrific series that's always fun to go back to.
On that note, I hope your weekend is as rad as this music and as fun as this series.
Thank you, as always, for reading my nonsense and I hope to catch you back here next time with another suggestion from my Music Box.
Stay Brutal!