Thursday 5 February 2015

Harmony of Heroes: "So this is Yoshi's B. This monkey wants to hug him"


Its of no surprise that I'm a fan of the Super Smash Brothers series. Smash 64, Brawl, Smash 3DS and currently Smash Wii U (will review later on) have brought me hours of joy that I wouldn't trade for anything, whether it was alone, with friends or in small tournaments I went to. And while I wait for Project M to get a PAL version (still waiting guys... yes I know I can mod my Wii, I don't want to risk that (not to mention its currently put away)), one fan project caught my eyes. I came across this while I was checking if Project M updated and gave it a listen... and seeing as where I'm posting this, it should give you an idea as to what I'm doing. To close out the (unintentional) "Week of Fan Projects", Harmony of Heroes and its expansion, Harmony of Heroes: Final Smash.

Harmony of Heroes is the sequel to another album series, Harmony of a Hunter (with the sequel being Harmony of a Hunter 101% Run). This is quoted from the site itself to give you an idea of what you'll find in these: "The name Heroes was chosen to describe the characters we choose in Super Smash Bros, the ones who help us reign triumphant in those epic brawls. They are our heroes. Our album is vast in content, covering the majority of franchises featured in these titles. While you can expect to hear iconic themes representing some of the game’s most notable additions, you may be surprised to find we have covered some of the more obscure ones too. In some cases, we haven’t been afraid to experiment a little, offering a fresh perspective to those who listen."

While there are some arrangements in the albums that I'm not a particular fan of, such as "You're Too Slow" due to its dubstep sections), for every song I don't like, there are 10 I do (take the video at the top of this post), all from different games that Super Smash Brothers has represented at some point. When they say diverse, they mean it (I honestly never expected to hear Snake Eater as a James Bond song... though then again, I've never herd the original Snake Eater...). The quality of the music is also amazing, the only thing that surprises me about these songs is that the albums aren't paid for. You can download the albums for free on their site which I do like, not because its free, but because it shows that the albums were done "for the love of the work", like Overclocked Remix and Turnabout Musical which I do appreciate.

On the site, you'll find a lot of artwork that has been made to go alongside the music (some of it being used here), and as with the music, my only complaints are nitpicks, just little details with my biggest nitpick being Lucina's face. I love the artwork for the site though, they aren't in the downloads so I'm genuinely surprised that they bothered doing them at all. They didn't have to do it, but I'm glad they did.

Incase it wasn't obvious enough, if you like Video game music, especially what's in the SSB series, GET HARMONY OF HEROES AND HARMONY OF HEROES: FINAL SMASH. You'll find something there to like, I guarantee it (if not, feel free to voice your complaints to me as it was my statement, not theirs). Until next week, as my own tribute to what has happened to the company recently, Sonic Colours.

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