Music Monday: Dodgeball to the Death

I have always loved Super Dodgeball for the NES. Not having any console of my own growing up, getting to play while over at friends’ houses was always a treat. And since I was just piggybacking off of other people’s stuff, multiplayer games saw the most play. King among these for the NES, at least for me and my friends, was Super Dodgeball.

It was amazing. It’s an international tournament of Dodgeball to the death. It didn’t matter to us that the game was designed to break the NES’s sprite limit, making everything flicker constantly. The game was just awesome.

And the music matched. Kazua Sawa gave the game a killer soundtrack, with each country having their own theme. Here are a few of my favorites.

“U.S.S.R.”

The game, being released in the 1980′s, of course builds to a showdown between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Not only are the Ruskis one of the toughest teams to beat, but their music is great. It’s actually something of a remix of an existing Russian folk song, Katyusha.

“England”

Sure, the English team sucks. But at least they get a catchy Beatles knock off for theme music.

“Shadow team”

Beat the game without losing any member of your team in any round and you get to face off with the tough-as-nails shadow team, a mirror image (but black and white) of your own squad. It was a really cool way to end the game, and they have an awesome song too.

Anyone who likes these tracks might also want to check out No Balls, No Glory, a remix album from a couple years ago by The Bad Dudes. Good Stuff.