Nester’s Funky Bowling (VB, 1996)

Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: emulated audio, YouTube (single video)

Credits

Music: Eric Nunamaker, Brent Lambert

Info

We’ve finally made it to the year 1996 in Virtual Boy history, so let’s ring in the new year with [checks notes] more bowling. This one was developed by a western company though, Saffire, and the music was done by two company employees who I’ve never heard of before, Eric Nunamaker and Brent Lambert. Lambert only shows up in a handful of other Saffire games, usually in a pure programming role, while Nunamaker has had an extensive career doing game audio for a number of companies, so I’d assume he had the bigger compositional role.

The soundtrack tends toward bluesy funk (haha, Funky Bowling, I get it), with a couple of tracks branching out to other stuff like dance music. This is another very western VGM-sounding soundtrack, though for very different reasons from the last one; I’m realizing this actually kinda feels to me like the music from a random licensed GBC platformer based on a cartoon or something.

Recommended tracks:

  • Music A” has the groovingest rhythm section in the game

  • Music C” is the dance music track; there are some weird cutoffs on some of the melody notes that don’t sound particularly intentional

  • Unknown Song” approaches salsa town and has some funny dissonant voice doubling right before the loop

(track titles are unofficial)

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