Arrangement of the Week: Desert Castle Theme

One of my favorite things about searching for remixes and arrangements for videogame music, is that it often leads me to discover music from games that I’ve never even heard of. Today’s Arrangement of the Week selection led me to one such discovery.

The “Desert Castle Theme” is a piece from the Nintendo 64 game Chameleon Twist. The game is a 3D platformer that stars a blue chameleon, named Davy, who traverses the game’s difficult levels by using his incredibly long tongue. Despite owning an N64 back in the 90’s, I don’t recall ever seeing or playing this game. So it was a cool surprise to find a track from the game being covered by metal remix artist ToxicxEternity.

As with many of the other metal remixers on YouTube, ToxicxEternity performs the various parts of his creation on camera, with gameplay footage displayed behind him. Like the original piece, the arrangement opens with a few chord riffs before launching into the melodic material. The melody itself transfers quite well to the electric guitar and doesn’t receive a whole ton of embellishment, which I actually like in this instance. There are a few dramatic flourishes added during repeats of the melody, but each iteration sticks fairly close to the original “Desert Castle Theme” track.

Most of the build up and improvisation comes during the last section of the piece. Around the 2’03” mark ToxicxEternity turns his focus on the opening chord progression, with some rapid arpeggios building on top of the accompaniment guitar riffs. A few synth instruments come in as well around 2’55” before the arrangement starts to wind down. All in all, it’s a simple and well polished metal arrangement that highlights the music of a lesser known game soundtrack.

Have you discovered any cool game soundtracks through metal remixes, arrangements, or covers? Let us know in the comments below. You can check out more of ToxicxEternity’s metal videogame covers on his YouTube channel and you can support more of his work on Patreon and Twitch.