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desultory-novice · 2 years ago

Note

What are your favorite Kirby boss fight osts? I think there are too few people discussing this.

First, you are absolutely right to want more discussion about Kirby boss fight songs because they are amazing! Whenever a "best of" discussion comes up, it quickly boils down to a debate between "CROWNED!" "Mind in a Program!" "Moonstruck Blossom!" and lately, "Two Planets Approach the Roche Limit!" which are all good songs (...we all know which one I'm biased toward) but there are so many others that get passed over in favor of the mega hits!

So, I'm going to take this time to look at almost all of the boss fight songs! And not just the last boss fights, but the major boss fights as well! (Sorry, mini boss battles. Maybe next time.)

As you can imagine, doing this will take a LOT of words. And it's also going to take more than one post. This post will be for the GB to DS era. I'll do Wii+ in a later post. A final note that I'm not really musically trained, in fact, I'm a bit tone deaf, so most of my reactions/descriptions will be based on feel!

[Kirby Boss Battle Music Breakdown Pt.1]

[24 Songs Total]

Kirby's Dream Land

[King Dedede]

This has to be one of the most famous songs in Kirby, next to Green Greens and Gourmet Race. And listening to it, you can hear why! Oh, it’s an incredibly short loop, with none of the fanciness that would get added to the theme later, but it’s still a bop, keeping you energized all throughout the final level, which it plays throughout. More than just a stage theme though, it captures a lot of Dedede's exuberant energy too! I mean, we're talking about a (self-proclaimed) king of generally indeterminate age but of a kingly size that gives him a definite weight-class advantage over our 16 pixel high hero! But this song isn't about a bully beating up a kid. It's about a big guy who's a big kid himself, at least at heart! The pure “rush” of this song (not urgency but vibrance) codifies that Dedede is Kirby's eternal rival, and it does so before the idea of a Kirby "franchise" was even a Twinkle (Popo) in NIntendo's eye!

Kirby's Adventure

[Nightmare Orb]

...Ugh, I don’t like this song at all. Partly because I hate this phase of Nightmare. I never manage to land quite enough hits on him and Kirby crashes into the ground while the orb escapes. It sucks. Also, this song is pretty one note. Or like...6. I guess it does its job of sowing the tension. I’d blame the NES’s sound quality, but there’s some really famously good tracks on the NES. Anyway, how much this song grates on me doesn't matter because...!

[Nightmare Wizard]

...Nightmare's actual theme is GREAT! Who said the wizard with the gigantic chin and no backstory was allowed to have a theme that rocks this much?! There's still that tense, fast-paced beat from before, but the song is much more meaty now. And that little...oh geez, what are those? Flutes? I mean, they're highly synthesized, this being the NES, but HAL's sound team of this era loved flutes, so I'm going to assume it's a flute! Anyway, it's great?! It injects a sense of whimsy into the battle and I'm not sure whether its there to represent Kirby’s presence or whether Nightmare himself has hidden depths...? (Dess keeps desperately looks for Nightmare's hidden depths, knowing I won't find much.) Anyway, Kirby's already set up its legacy of great boss tunes just two games in!

(I’m a little sad this song didn’t get more airtime in the concert, btw.)

Kirby's Dream Land 2

[Dark Matter Blade - “Duel in the Darkened Sky”]

I love Dark Matter Blade a lot, but this song is verrrrrry close to Nightmare Orb's theme in that it kinda bothers me to listen to? What saves it in the end is that it has some really interestingly "character" vibes going on here. (Also, it’s got a great title. It’ll be a while until we start getting those Touhou-esque song names that Kumazaki himself was so proud of, but this is an early example of a name that evokes a feeling.) Anyway, the element of character was missing from Nightmare's excellent bop, but its nicely present here, if lowkey, so that scores it points. I say this because Dark Matter Blade comes out of nowhere to be this weird alien space invader type of deal? And the song is just discordant enough that it matches that feel of "Wait, what the heck?!?" that I think DL2 was trying to get across with the introduction of the first of our Dark Matter bosses.

(And Dess’s favorite to this day. Blade! Woo, yeah!)

And that discordant, alien-invader, “what the heck?! are we in some kind of space sci-fi now?!" feel is continued with the very next notes of...

[Dark Matter]

I mentioned in a different post when fawning about “CROWNED” that there's this opening reveal sting that becomes ironic because Magolor is totally NOT what he wanted to become. And here we see the very first use of that "Shock and awe" opening sting in Kirby as the cool space warrior, Dark Matter Blade, takes off his clock to reveal...he’s a giant eyeball?! Anyway, this song downplays some of the elements of “Duel” that bothers me, and so is a little easier on the ears, even if it's more repetitive in the end...

Kirby's Block Ball

[Brobo / Boss Theme]

...Okay, okay, this is actually the generic theme that they play for any boss that's not Dedede, but Brobo gets forgotten enough in this series, so we're going to posthumously (...Did I just kill Brobo?!) declare this to be the Forgotten Last Boss’s theme! Anyway, it's got some funky robot-like vibes to it, especially that siren-like noise at the beginning, so it suits them!

It’s another short loop. But heck if this one isn't a lot of fun! It's not going to stick in your head for years and years, like Dedede's theme, but you could put it on one of those hour long loops while doing something repetitive and barely notice, I bet! It does a fine job getting the competitive spirit pumping!

Note: I know I've skipped over a lot of Dedede themes to this point from the various spinoff games and I'm going to skip over more! That's because you could make an entire post out of Dedede themes alone and while they're all quite good, I want to get this post over with before the end of the year! Haha!

With that said, we're leaving the NES and Gameboy era behind and skipping right along to the SNES and Super Star!

Kirby's Super Star

[Gourmet Race]

NOT TECHNICALLY A BOSS THEME but we weren't getting out of here without me giving at least a nod to the famous “Gourmet Race” theme! Question! How many of you first heard this in Smash Bros and as its orchestral remix and thought it was the theme of the Fountain of Dreams and not a silly mini-game in which Kirby and Dedede race to see who can stuff their faces the fastest?!

Anyway, this theme is classic. It's sooo good! It has been lovely parodied/remixed a dozen times and may continue to do so, just because of how darn lyrical it is! Without lyrics!! You can just tell that HAL's sound team have been having a completely great time with the SNES's expanded sound opportunities and Gourmet Race is a perfect example! And that little springy SPROING! noise whenever it gets started! I really wish I knew more about music so I could praise this harder. But yes. Gourmet race!

[Meta Knight - “Battle with Meta Knight”]

Meta Knight's Revenge, origin of the grammy winning masterpiece by Button Masher and The 8-Bit Big Band, probably gets more attention as regards songs from Meta Knight's Revenge, and for good reason. (It’s really good!) But while the coolest knight in the galaxy’s first outing in the boss battle arena (err, with his own unique theme) is more lowkey and underplayed, I do really enjoy how much is going on in the back melody (...use your words, Dess...) of this song. The bass (?) drum (?) line...? Whatever it is, takes up so much of the song, yet you've got these moments of stronger sounds rising up slowly from the background. Also this wild riff type thing creeping up out of nowhere...

:takes a deep breath:

What I'm trying to say is that this song is surprisingly perfect for the MASKED Meta Knight, whose complex backstory and secret motivations, as well as his love of battle are all "disguised" by that beat, but those slightly jazzy elements (no wonder they had him play the sax! It was there in plain sight all along!) peak through constantly during the song, just like how you get a glimpse of Meta's face when you beat him! ...It's meaningful!!

[Marx - “Meddlesome Marx”]

:cheers wildly:

Every song I've praised up until now? You guys are great and all but “Meddlesome Marx” is here and now we have a new high bar for Kirby last boss songs! I mean it. Even over King Dedede's expanding leitmotifs.

Meddlesome Marx is so amazingly good, I just ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. A-ahem. Not only is it beautiful to listen to, with HAL using the BEST sounds they've uncovered in their time with the SNES (that flute-esque sound in Nightmare's song has evolved to becomes this amazing little giggly woodwind here that is both gorgeous and haunting) and our key Kirby series composers just making something that isn’t just interesting, or “neat” but really pleasant too?!

Also, while I HATE "Marx is just crazy, that’s it" as an interpretation of his character, this song does has that perfect little bit of musical "sanity slippage" where you expect the initial melody to repeat nicely and whoops! They slip in another pair of notes to drag it out unexpectedly! (Again, I don’t know music terms. I apologize.) If “Dancing Mad” wasn’t already used for another famous video game BGM of this era, I’d say it’d be a good potential title for this one. (...Am I the only one with likes-to-dance!Marx HCs...?)

But that hitch, it’s like Marx is basically waiting for you to get into a rhythm and repeat the notes verbatim and is now rolling over giggling when you inevitably trip over it. The song itself is saying, "Haha! I FOOLED you!" I gather there’s also stuff going on with time signature changes here, which are presumably pulling a similar trick to the listener. Which I love for a lot of reasons? It plays into the song being a “jest” but also “time” = clock(work) = Galactic Nova.

Not content to be just playful, it's also TENSE and has these moments of creeping dread looming up, fitting for a last boss fight with the entire planet at stake! While I don't necessarily hear any notes of “Green Greens” (?) it does have that triumphant bridge (?) that will be inherited in many other boss fights in the future - something to represent Kirby’s part of the battle. And that bridge (?) will usually have some bit of “Green Greens” or other classic Kirby song in it.

...I think the number of feelings this song evokes in me is why I'm never really satisfied with any remix of it? Nothing quite surpasses the original to me. Try to make it too creepy? You miss the point. Marx is a gleeful villain! His song should be about that rush of acquiring the power cosmic and the giddy feeling of your plan being soooooo close to completion! And if you go all haunted house vibes with it, you're losing the discordant elements that make him so haunting. The bright colors and the energy he brings to the fight! Again, I’ve seen people question why we Marx fans care so much about a character with barely any dialogue. He's got no backstory, no “character”...

But Kirby characters are defined by so much more than what they say, as we should hopefully know by now. (It’s not like the series is known for its massive amounts of dialogue anyway.) A character’s theme music is as much a tool to understand them as their pause screen lore is. And I'd count Marx's as one of the first to go all in on "his true story is in his music."

(...Something I'm going to not shut up about when I reach “CROWNED.”)

Kirby's Dream Land 3

[Dark Matter - Hyper Zone 1]

What they wanted and kiiiiinda missed the mark on with Dark Matter Blade/Dark Matter in DL2, they did a MUCH better job here! The otherworldliness? The space/alien vibes? All here. Yet with a much more interesting melody and a wider variety of fun instruments. There’s also a strange sense of divinity thanks to the crystalline instruments used. An excellent setup for the fact that we’re about to encounter what you might call the “god” of the Dark Matter.

Also, I love that little jingly noise mixed in there that gives you a strong sense of a starry sky. The Dark Matter you fight in DL3 presumably isn't the same one as Blade (unless we assume Blade to be re-absorbed/co-opted by Zero, which would be tragic...Poor Blade...Just wanted friends...) but I feel like the music trying to put us in mind of a starry sky is a nice callbacks to Blade’s fight.

Basically, this is a lovely “retake” of Dark Matter's theme, just like DL3 gave us a chance to fight Dark Matter in color! (And introduce them to a wider audience. It's sad when your best lore is tucked away in a Gameboy sequel!)

[Zero - Hyper Zone 2]

I really, really like the opening sting here! As much as I like Zero for the lore, I'm not 100 on the speed of this song though? Now, the whistling gives the song a really strong vibe of emptiness -- like the wind howling through an empty void. Get it, void? But I don’t know, the core part of the later bit of the song seems to focus on a heroic vibe: the presence of Kirby. While the heroism angle only surfaced for a moment in Marx's theme, it's slightly more present here for a longer period. Fair, because we're talking about a two stage boss, and by this point, you want to cheer the player on! I also like how those uplifting notes come in stronger at the end of the loop, showing that, as the two forces clash, Kirby's hope and positivity really is coming out on top. The care that gave birth to the love love stick (heh) shows that the loving heart will triumph!

Kirby Super Star Stacker

[Gryll]

Yeahhhhhh, Gryll!!

Sadly, this one has no flashy opening like in Block Ball, being just a solid, and sadly, an incredibly short loop! It's a really fun one though! I don't know how they pulled it off, but each time the phrase (?) in the song changes, it gets slightly more...claustrophobic feeling? An excellent choice in a game where the point is to save yourself from a rising tide of blocks before you're overwhelmed.

I imagine that, if you're unprepared, the possibility exists that you'll actually be right about the point of losing by the time the song has reached that part of the loop where it's beginning to crowd you! Each “bwoop” sound brings in another row. And another. And another!! A great way to bring tension to the game’s secret last stage and last boss that NEEDS ANOTHER APPEARANCE.

A-ahem.

Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards

[Miracle Matter]

We return to that Dark Matter-esque phrase I'm not completely in love with, but I absolutely respect the follow-through! Tbh, when I first started out on this, I thought I couldn't say much positive about Miracle Matter's theme, much like Nightmare Orb. But after listening to my boss playlist enough, I've started to come around on it. Especially when you take the whole "boss music as character revealing" thing into account. Because Miracle Matter's theme has this almost...bitcrush vibe to it! I'm still not sure we know anything solid on what Miracle Matter even is, which makes the heavily remixed-sounding nature of the song interesting. Perhaps revealing of the boss's hollow nature...?

It’s a very action/shooting game tune. Maybe the most we’ve heard to date? Not a last boss, but a stage boss. Which is interesting when we follow it up with...

[Zero2]

...Now THIS feels like the last boss of a side-scrolling danmaku game. Something like Radiant Silvergun or Ikaruga, just without Hitoshi Sakimoto at the head. (In fairness, this is actually a shooting game boss fight! Hohoho!) The opening sting is BRILLIANT. Love it. Mystical and powerful and really brings you into the game for this moment. This one boss fight. (I say as someone who was just kind of playing Crystal Shards by the numbers till I got till the end. Getting all those shards and avoiding the bad ending is a TASK and it wouldn’t be weird to be a little exhausted depending upon how much back tracking you have to do. But this song immediately refreshes you and reminds you of the stakes.

Okay, so, I still refuse to put it over Marx's theme, but we're back into the really great character themes now, of the boss’s nature being defined by their music. I believe there's a mild argument going on over whether the "Zero 2 can't feel emotions or not" is false lore? (I haven't looked it up myself) But even if it is a mistranslation (?) I can see why it continues to gain spread, because this song is SAD. It pulls at your heartstrings, especially the longer it goes on.

I complained about my issues with Zero’s theme being that it was almost too triumphant? Too speedy? “Beat the bad guy, beat the bad guy!” But it’s worth it to have that, dare I say, misinterpretation of what it means to battle Zero there just for the complete emotional turn around here.

Considering that what you're fighting is altogether likely the corpse of Zero, the shell potentially struggling to regain its lost innocence as a once upon a time pure-hearted Void Termina-esque being... (Confused lore or not, Void does share the Hyper Zone BG effect. That’s got to mean something.)

The consistent back beat that pervades all the other Dark Matter-related fights finally FINALLY takes a step back, again showing that Zero 2 is struggling to become something...or reclaim something of itself. There’s nothing triumphant here. There can be nothing triumphant. Only melancholy. A zero sum victory.

A really powerful song. Fitting for our last Dark Matter boss for a long while.

Kirby and the Amazing Mirror

[Dark Meta Knight]

Poor GBA sound quality. I feel like the chance to have some really expressive songs here is definitely hampered by the "hearing it through a pair of 10 year old earphones while also underwater" nature of the music. That said, Dark Meta Knight's theme still has some fun bits to it. There's the slightly discordant nature of it, which is a classic way of informing the listener "something is wrong." Then that crystalline sound in the back beat that comes in again stronger in the first bridge just shouts "mirror world" and I love it!

The rest of it is just good, classic dueling music. Honestly, even though I teased the sound of it in the beginning, I really do like it. Meta Knight’s battle music is all “masked” whereas Dark Meta Knight, once revealed, is all in-your-face. The beat is almost aggressive and even the crystalline mirror sounds, normally providing an otherworldly or softening vibe in other songs, feel like being stabbed with a shard of glass here! DMK is a bit of a stabby one.

Also, this song is my favorite part of the 30th anniversary knight medley.

[Dark Mind]

HECK YEAH DARK MIND!!!! So, Dark Mind is probably the mirror parallel of Dark Matter, somehow? ("mind over matter" as another clever user figured out) but having a human face aside, there's a lot of parallels with Nightmare from Adventure too, including them both having an unfairly good bop!

Unlike some of the other great last boss songs up till now, it doesn't tell us a darn thing about the Eye of Sauron...Err, I mean...the giant flaming eyeball. Then again, we know so little about the Mirror World and Dark Mind, maybe it will turn out to be super informative down the line?

Regardless, the emotional emptiness of the song almost doesn’t matter it's so good! Though I do like that you can hear a similar...uh, BRRRRRING sound here to BWWAWINNG sound in Dark Meta Knight's theme, telling you they worked together. A musical call and response! Not much more depth than that. But what a strong note to end on!

...Oh...Right. It doesn't end there...

[Dark Mind - “Fighting Dark Mind in the Sky”]

Annnnd it is followed up with one that just isn't as good. Or at least, not as catchy. (It's even longer too, damn you.) Okay, okay. I don’t mean to be unfair. Perhaps there's stuff going on here I'm missing. Song callbacks that serve to explain the mystery of Dark Mind and the mirror dimension.

Maybe it’s beautifully timed. Excellent key changes. Great instrumentation? There is some cool techno-sounding stuff going on here, it’s true!

But to me, this song just feels a bit...hrgh... Look, it's not bad, really! I just don’t love it as much coming after Dark Mind's phase two! To be frank, It's the opening I really don’t like. I don't have full on synesthesia, at least not to a strong degree, but that opening bit tastes like a burnt meal to me... It just makes it hard to pay attention to what’s going on in the rest of the song.

Kirby Canvas Curse

[Drawcia Sorceress]

With all the times I've complained about discordant elements in these songs causing them to lose me, is it weird that I completely LOVE DRAWCIA'S THEME?! Well, for one thing, opening up with that strong gothic-horror, pipe organs and abandoned church vibes is SO good, even on the DS's not great sound. Coming off of the incredibly creepy “World of Drawcia” stage, it’s emotionally the right choice. (Now if only you fought her in a ruined church or something. Like the opening boss fight of Ender Lillies...)

But I'm glad that we finally get a gothic horror-y Kirby last boss track. To start with. But the main thing, and this is one of the reasons I love Drawcia so much is that she also goes straight for the "character interpretation via boss music" that you'd only really seen much of in Marx and 02 (and Dedede, a little) till now! And she's from a spinoff game! This is because being discordant is in Drawcia's nature! And the little, uh, how can I describe them except "pew pew" noises have this sense of slapping paint over a canvas (or hitting someone with a high pressure paintball gun) in the process of slowly painting over the word. Of course, Drawcia Sorceress is only one part of the package...

[Drawcia Soul]

Ahh, it’s back! There's that same "horrific reveal" note we first/last heard in Dark Matter's theme from DL2! Only this one has what I would describe as the audio equivalent of a VCR glitch. These two songs are excellent in show-not-tell horror. I mean, Drawcia Soul is a pretty creepy boss either way. One of the more creepy Soul bosses. Perhaps THE creepiest (....outside of Sectonia decapitating herself...) but the music is some jumpscare levels of horror! The fact that it drops low early on like it's whispering to you and then it has that section I can only describe as musical tinnitus. Alternatively, a SCREAM. And yet, it's not all distortion effects and jumpscares. There's a really good melody tucked away in there, that's swallowed up by that VCR effect again. A sign of the forgotten portrait's true nature, before it was corrupted, perhaps?

One of the least "listenable" songs in Kirby, but a really great one nontheless.

Kirby Squeak Squad

[Daroach - “Troubling Situation”]

Technically an all-rounder battle theme for the Squeaks in general, but it plays every time you fight Daroach too, so to the master thief, we bequeath this...wait, what's this?! He's already stolen the theme?! When did he-?!

Anyway, sad as it is to say, Squeak Squad's music is similar to the game itself. That is, it's not bad, but it gets outshined by the many truly sparkling entires before it. "Troubling Situation," which feels like an arrangement/variation/extrapolation on "Here Come the Squeaks" manages to carry the game's zany cartoon energy just fine. And a shoutout to the adorable squeaker chorus that's a consistent (but not annoying) presence in the background.

It works as a boss theme, but as my boss fight music review should have made clear by now, we're several entries past "very serviceable music." Really, Daroach...or Dark Daroach, at least, should have gotten his OWN theme. Daroach isn’t lacking for character, thanks to Mass Attack, but the (lack of) music in this game is not doing him any favors, when it could have elevated him even higher as a character. Alas, it's at the end of the journey that Squeak Squad always stumbles. Speaking of a lackluster end game... The Starfish...

[Dark Nebula]

Dark Nebula's theme opens strong, giving us these intergalactic vibes that let us believe we're onto something big and COSMIC! Considering this game takes us through the Gamble Galaxy and into space (rare, when our games have been rather Popstar focused for the last few entries) it’s a nice aural-gameplay tie-in treat! And while the sounds of the main melody come really close to sitting shoulder to shoulder with the best of their SNES work, they just fall flat somewhere? I feel like the music could punch up so much higher, but it doesn’t finish strong. That, to me, is the flaw here. There's that nice bit at the end of the loop, but even that seems to give up at the end like "Oh, wait! I've got something good going here and uh....wait, I think I lost it." Ahhhhh, I hate to rag on this theme or any Kirby theme, really, but it lacks follow-through...

Super Star Ultra

[Dyna Blade & Wham Bam Rock - “Battle with the Enormous Boss”]

As if Super Star wasn't packed with enough good songs on its own, they come back with some treats for the DS remake, including giving us this tune to elevate Dyna Blade and Wham Back Rock into fittingly chapter ending bosses!

Err, that said, nothing really amazing, here, and its shared between the bosses, so we can’t even say it gives us many character notes, but at least it's a solid song all the way through, with a nice note of heroism + the journey's end vibe.

Sometimes it's good to have a song without world-ending stakes or an undercurrent of sadness and misunderstanding!

Sometimes, you just want to beat up a giant rock...!

[Masked Dedede]

Just because I wasn't going to cover all the additional Dedede themes didn't mean I wouldn't cover any of them! And Dedede’s theme has grown so much, receiving a glow-up, becoming a more robust song to fit with the series going forward! There's more character in it, a few notes of, gasp, majesty injected into it in the beginning too before it breaks out into pure energy.

(There's also a bit of a battle arena feel to it, which helps characterize the self-proclaimed king that builds a wrestling ring in his castle just for whenever Kirby should arrive.) But, after years of loss, we also hear a strong determination worked into Masked Dedede theme! He’s lost plenty of times (...every time...) before, but he’s remaking himself! More powerful, more of a presence! It works well with his new, scary battle mask and rocket-booster (!?) hammer!

It’s honestly great that Dedede’s theme grows, because character growth is going to signify Dedede in the games to come! (Especially since he’ll be a playable hero shortly!) So this remix on the old theme is the place to see the way he’s becoming more important to the games going forward!

[Galacta Knight - “The Greatest Warrior in the Galaxy”]

What's this?! (Synthesized) electric guitars in my Kirby game?!

Err, and oh gosh, I hate to end this post like this, but I'm not a huge fan of Galacta Knight's theme, just as a piece to sit back and listen to, that is. It’s the pseudo-synethesia thing again. It’s a little...grungy-sounding? To me, Galacta Knight's song feels a bit like...

......kitchen mold.

I'm so sorry! It's not meant as an insult!

Anyway, that kickass opening riff aside, what I most want to point out about Galacta's theme is how DIFFERENT it is to everything we've had so far. Whether it's because Galacta is from a time forgotten (the age of rock and roll, clearly) or because the sealed warrior is just in a class no one can hope to touch, their theme stands alone as well! I'm glad for it!

We never have gotten much about Galacta’s character. Almost as if its being avoided on purpose, but you can definitely detect the same “character” in this music of the knight who turns around and destroys Star Dream the second they’ve been summoned. This song also has those same “masked” elements where so much is hidden behind the rapid beat that Meta Knight’s battle does.

It’s truly fitting for them...!

And that’s it for now. No, I didn’t forget Mass Attack, but due to release dates, I’m saving it for the inevitable part two...

..Wherein I talk obsessively about “CROWNED” and how amazing it is! A-and a bunch of other really good songs too....!

(That said, part two is not going to be up immediately after this, just due to general business/intensity of writing these. It will happen though!)