I hope that my recent habit of just launching into a recap followed by an introduction hasn’t been too jarring. It’s just that I find it a lot easier to start these posts off that way.
And on that note, there’s actually something that I forgot to mention with regards to yesterday’s pick, the Ver. OG of Rocks. Another instrumental version of Rocks appeared in the 3DS game Project X Zone, which had Haken Browning, Kaguya Nanbu and Sanger Sombold representing Super Robot Wars.
Not that you would know unless you played the Japanese version. Yeah, the first game whitewashed a few things when it came to localization. Luckily things went much better for the sequel. But I digress. Let’s get right into our next pick, a classic song from a very retro game.
Day 14: 8-bit or 16-bit Track – Getter Robo! (Getter Robo) (Super Robot Wars 2)
Do I really need to say anything about 8/16-bit tracks? Of the classic songs that have withstood the test of time, even in their original formats? The legendary composers such as Koji Kondo and Nobuo Uematsu, who used everything at their disposal to create those tunes? How 8 and 16-bit games are present-day genres being used by both independent developers and household companies?
I didn’t think so.
And Super Robot Wars is as old as those 8-bit consoles, though there aren’t too many of them, especially compared to how the series expanded on 16-bit consoles. But as my first taste of ‘classic’ SRW was the second game created, I decided to pick a song from that one. And my choice is none other than the 8-bit edition of the opening song to the original Getter Robo anime.
One of the forefathers of the Super Robot genre alongside Mazinger Z, the original Getter Robo anime follows high-school students Ryoma Nagare, Hayato Jin, and Musashi Tomoe as they are selected by Professor Saotome to pilot the titular giant robot, Getter Robo. Powered by the mysterious energy known as Getter Rays, Getter Robo is humanity’s only line of defense against the Dinosaur Empire, a reptilian race determined to reclaim the Earth for themselves as it was in prehistoric times.
There’s a lot of staccatto used in Getter Robo’s OP, which works well with the comparatively limited soundfont that the NES has to work with. And throughout the succeeding consoles, it continued to be a theme worthy of one of the most powerful Super Robots out there.
Sadly, we haven’t heard it or seen anything related to the original Getter canon since SRW Z. Something to do with legal complications with Ryoma Nagare’s VA, the details of which I’m not privy to. However, Brave Raideen, whose protagonist is voiced by the same guy, has recently debuted in DD. Raideen has also been absent from SRW since Alpha 3 for the same reason, so one can only hope that this means that we’ll be getting back Getter Robo sometime in the future.
And that’s all I’ve got for you today. Tomorrow we’ll be sticking with licensed tracks as we highlight a song from a game that’s exclusive to a handheld console. Insert obligatory “No the Switch doesn’t count for this category” here.
Okay, I’ll do it.