Four-Player Simultaneous Action
This originally appeared in The Declaration on 9 February 2006.
Maybe it’s the nostalgia. Maybe the primary colors fried our brains. Maybe we’re hiding from a geopolitical order in which everyone acts like they’re six-year-olds by remembering our six-years-old selves. Or maybe it’s the realization that we can’t play these new-fangled games with their four shoulder buttons and their analog sticks and their three-dimensional gameplay. For whatever reason, the original NES has been experiencing a cultural revival these past few years. Sure, the scope of that revival has ranged from the dorky (Nintendo controller belt buckles) to the kitschy (an emo band named after the Konami code). But the best part is all the attention being paid to those 8-bit soundtracks of our youth.
Because let’s face it: those songs were good. Limited to such a small range of options to make the background music—a handful of Midi tracks, and that’s it—the composers of the 8-bit era managed to make songs that the geekier among us still hum from time to time. Take the Mario theme, or the opening track from the Legend of Zelda. Awesome, right? Those short melodic hooks work so well that they’re still influencing game music today, even with the 32-bit sound that the Playstation and Xbox can throw out.
So what the Advantage do is take those songs and cover them with a live band. They’re not the only guys that do this; the Minibosses, from Phoenix, do essentially the same thing, have been doing it longer, and cover Ninja Gaiden. The difference is that The Advantage cover everything from Mario to Contra to Metroid to Double Dragon III, and they’ve got the guitarist from Hella (though he plays the drums). The Minibosses are a wee bit looser in their songs, giving their tracks a bit of a punk rock, let?s-crowd-surf-with-our-power-pad vibe; the Advantage replicate the songs more faithfully, with a couple of weird time signatures and a math rock accuracy ’cause, hey, it’s the dude from Hella.
Given that math rock is essentially making Nintendo songs with stranger time signatures, it’s amazing it took until last year for The Advantage to release their first, self-titled album. That one focused on the games that everyone played: the Mario themes, the Zelda dungeon (they had the decency to leave the overworld theme—quite possibly the best video game song of all time—well enough alone). The new album, Elf-Titled, takes quite a few of its tracks from obscure games you might not have played. But that’s fine, since the songs are still awesome. “Batman—Stage One” doesn’t sound like any of the Batman movies, but the bassline is so rocking that you won?t care. You probably never played The Guardian Legend (but you should), but “Corridor 1″ hurtles you through space just like it should. And I swear that “Duck Tales —Moon” was ripped off by Slash for “Sweet Child O? Mine,” but that’s probably all in my head.
Sure, the element of nostalgia counts for a lot—it’s great to suddenly hear the Kraid boss music from Metroid, for example, or level five of Double Dragon II. But that alone wouldn’t make this a good album. The performances are amazing, but good musicianship doesn’t make an album, either. It’s the songwriting that makes it rock, regardless of how much time you spent in front of the TV with a controller in hand.
The one problem with the album is that, depending on the mood you’re in, the songs might get a little repetitive. But it’s a testament to the quality of The Advantage that that rarely happens, even when the theme they’re drawing from is just ten or fifteen seconds long. And much more often, it creates the trancelike state that you used to hit with these games. It’s good for paper writing. Or for dancing like an idiot. Or for playing old-school video games with the TV on mute. Nostalgia for 8-bit music only goes so far.