#doctorm64

Artist: DoctorM64

Origin: Planet Zebes - Arrival on Crateria, Crateria - The Space Pirates Appear by Kenji Yamamoto

Length: 4:28

The second track of the first album is a remix of the music that plays when Samus lands on planet Zebes in Super Metroid and the music that plays when the Space Pirates ambush her after that. These are both sinister, dark themes, with the first being a nerve-wracking rainy ambience over low chords and the second using pounding drum beats and chorus chants to unnerve the player. This remix is fairly faithful, preserving the rain and upping the instrumentation to higher quality while emphasizing the drumbeat and bass notes, and at the end it fades out into dissonant high pitched synths. The result is very chill and a little spooky.

If the final result sounds like something out of the fangame Another Metroid II Remake (AM2R), it's not a coincidence: the artist for "Danger in Old Tourian" is none other than the brains behind AM2R, DoctorM64 AKA mister Milton Guasti himself. While Guasti would only contribute this one song to the Harmony of a Hunter project over the years, he was involved with the creation of the album itself (per comments in the chat at the Returns album's live debut), and years later, one of his co-conspirators on AM2R, Torby Brand, would contribute a track to Harmony of a Hunter Returns.

As for my personal thoughts -- this is a track that grew on me. The real draw in this track is the funky drumbeat and the eerie environmental noises that accompany it, as the main melody and instrumentation don't stray that far from the original. The segue into the next track is delightful, but the song has the problem the original had where it is very repetitive, without the reprieve of gameplay to complement it like the original did. That said, I still like this track quite a bit, and its placement between "In the Beginning..." and "Earthroot" transitions the tone excellently from low to high energy.

Rating: ⭐⭐

It’s high time I caught up with this fangame, it seems most people love it (except for Nintendo’s lawyers).

Happy 30th anniversary Metroid!!!

  The remake of the Game Boy game "Metroid II - return of Samus", has now been released for this special day, the 6th august 2016.

  This fan game is called AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) and this is an ambitious project which resulted today, after many years of development by DoctorM64.

  Congratulations and thank to the author for the enormous amount of work done to enable us to rediscover Metroid 2

  You can download the game AM2R V1.0 here:

http://metroid2remake.blogspot.fr/p/am2r-downloads.html

AM2R - Return of Samus

Developer: DoctorM64

Homepage: metroid2remake.blogspot.com