Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: N/A
Credits
Music Composer: Ryoue Takagi, Necochimans
Info
Took us almost 20 games, but we’ve finally reached a bowling game! Thanks for bearing with me for so long to get to this point. There’s again no rip of this, but this game has a hidden debug mode, so all you have to do to listen to this game is load a patched ROM into an emulator. It’s just that easy! I’m normal.
The music is pretty decent, actually! I think this is pretty easily the best unripped VB game we’ve covered so far, so it’s good that it was also the easiest (for me) to listen to. Decent variety in musical styles, ranging from chill jazz to action themes that sound like Mega Man to electronic music, and the sound programming is varied with a few interesting bits I haven’t heard in any other VB soundtrack.
This game was apparently developed to some extent by TOSE, as Ryoue Takagi and several people listed in special thanks show up in sound roles in other TOSE games. Unlike Mario’s Tennis, though, most people aren’t listed under their real names, so there’s also the mysterious unidentified “Necochimans” in the credits. Most TOSE games from this time listed all their staff under completely fake names, so Mario’s Tennis giving real names was actually an exception; another exception was Kirby’s Block Ball (on which Ryoue Takagi also worked), which was also co-developed by Nintendo, so I’m curious if Nintendo insisted that the TOSE staff give their real names.
Recommended tracks:
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“Bowling (Standard Mode)” is a jazzy video game version of “Get Ready For This,” which is the official song of sports so they were required to include it in this sports game
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“Bowling (Tournament Mode)” starts off as this interesting NES-sounding tune before switching to a completely different song halfway through, way past the point you would ever hear this song in-game because it doesn’t take a minute to line up a shot
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“Staff” is a chill, cityscape-at-night jazzy tune with a nice little ritardando at the end of the loop
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Track 18 was my favorite of the dance tracks and has a nice choir-type pad at 0:18 I haven’t heard any other Virtual Boy game try to pull out
(track titles are unofficial)
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