Rock out to Robocop and other arcade tunes with metal cover album Defenders of the City
Out now, Defenders of the City is a new album that takes classic game tunes and gives them a heavy metal makeover. It’s the latest studio album from group Super MadNES and it’s really rather excellent, especially if you have fond memories of playing these games back in the 80s or 90s.
Despite Super MadNES’s name, nearly every rack on Defenders of the City based on these game’s arcade incarnations. Right now, we’re filling our ears with “Robocop – The Future of Law Enforcement”, a cover of the theme from Data East’s brilliant Robocop game. It even mixes in ED-209’s disturbing screeches from that title, along with muffled speech from Robo himself.
The album also includes a cover of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle theme, the brief version that would belt out from Konami’s arcade machine. Just hearing it takes us right back to our youth (we’re as old as dust) when we put way too much of our holiday money into this four-player monster.
There are fourteen tracks in total, covering five games:
- Shadow Solider (Ninja Gaiden Arcade)
- Chasing Him Until the End (Ninja Gaiden Arcade)
- The Last Fight (Ninja Gaiden Arcade)
- Prime Directives (Robocop Arcade)
- The Future of Law Enforcement (Robocop Arcade)
- Part Man, Part Machine, All Cop (Robocop Arcade)
- Cleopatra’s Theme (Double Dragon III Arcade)
- Streets of U.S.A. (Double Dragon III Arcade)
- Cursed Magic (Double Dragon III Arcade)
- Double Dragon + The City Slums (Double Dragon Arcade)
- TMNT Theme (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade)
- Fire! (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade)
- The Technodrome (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade)
- Shredder + NES Theme (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade)
What’s especially cool about these covers is that while they’re metal as hell, if you strain your ears you sometimes can make out a faint chiptune trace in the background. Sadly, New Zealand Story doesn’t get a look in; we guess playing as Kiwi bird isn’t hardcore enough.
You can buy Super MadNES’s Defenders of the City arcade album from Bandcamp, where you can also order a tape or CD version. Let’s face it, it wouldn’t be an ’80s album if you didn’t get to rewind it with a pencil.
