The OneUps have just released their seventh studio album, appropriately titled “Part Seven”. The OneUps are a video game music cover band that performs arrangements of a wide variety of music, oftentimes in variations of jazz and rock styles. Their latest album, released just prior to this past MAGFest last month, continues this trend with new covers in a funk rock style. It includes a nice selection of songs, including some fairly familiar ones and some less so. Read on for the full review.
Lately, we’ve been seeing a trend of reboots and reimaginings in the world of entertainment. It’s as if our childhoods consisted of nothing more than mere extended product shills and action figure commercials disguised as cartoons that are being revisited to once again have the same effect on today’s young. Video games live in a fairly synced world with the movie industry, sequels and at times loosely connected remakes are always around the corner and ready for the nostalgic mind to revisit. There have been a few successes; Bionic Commando ReArmed retained its classic gameplay and sound while mixing it with new mechanics and electronic sound. Street Fighter IV brought life back into the fighting arena with balanced combat and a competent, though forgettable soundtrack with some great arrangements of the old songs we remember from SFII, and Punch Out bringing back boxing in the best of Rocky fashion.
Then there’s Double Dragon Neon. Based on the sidescrolling beat-em-up classic, the game that birthed the whole genre in 1987, Neon is both a tribute and remake by Wayforward timed with the 25th anniversary of the original, rebooting the franchises while nodding to Technos’s legendary series of Double Dragon games releases over the years. Music has always been a memorable part of the long running series, and for Neon, none other than Jake Kaufman was put to the task of bringing all the classics back, and make a few of his own.
Find out if soundtrack matches up with its inspiration after the jump. (more…)
