#spooktacular week

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 02/11/2023

Akumajō Lololo

Season 2 Featured on: The SilvaGunner Spooktacular Halloween Horror Special: Volume 8-Bit Beast

Ripped by JJokerDude

Requested by Memmy!

I'll phase out of the Spooktacular stuff now, given we're now officially wholly past the season...but I'll sneak in just oneeee more honorable mention, just because of how much it surprised me. This is one of those rips that's deceptively cool, and likely one that's slipped a lot of you by!

Akumajō Lololo is deceptively simple, but effective althesame - its a melody swap of Castle Lololo from Kirby's Dream Land, into the tune of Vampire Killer - the first level theme of the original NES Castlevania game. At least, that's what it first seems like! In truth, it's an arrangement that goes through six different tracks from Castlevania - the themes of each of the game's six stages, in order of appearance. Thus, Akumajō Lololo goes from being a simple melody swap, to being a full-on melodic walkthrough of the entire first Castlevania game, all still in the immediately recognizable sound of HAL Laboratory's Game Boy soundtrack.

There's humor in the concept already, on layers more than on surface level - Kirby's light hearted tone and appearance juxtaposed against the grim horror of Castlevania music, and to have the entirety of Castlevania 1 effectively play out inside "Castle Lololo" creates quite a fun image on its own. But the commitment to the bit is really what elevates it to new heights - though a wee bit rough around the edges (yeah, 2016 SiIva, whats new), all the pieces sound really damn good, PARTICULARLY Wicked Child at 00:48 and Heart of Fire at 01:32. In truth, its a testament to just how good the original Castlevania's soundtrack is that the atmosphere of the whole game is able to be condensed into just a 3-minute tribute piece like this.

And while, yes, I'm still not the biggest 8-Bit Beast enjoyer, its presence at the rip's end does tie it all full circle to the halloween event. Like with Sidelined Symphony, I remain immensely impressed with how creative people on the channel get with tying just about any rip to Halloween in some form - and Akumajō Lololo above all else is a fucking baller way to celebrate one of gaming's oldest gothic-horror legends.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 01/11/2023

Bloody Freddy

Season 7 Featured on: PROTONOMICON ~ The Cult of Proto Collection

Ripped by Sarvéproductions

Part of Spooktacular Week! Tentative rip name: When you're gone, I'll still be Purple Guy

Alright, so, well, the Spooktacular Week is technically over given we're past Halloween, past the 7-day timeframe...but I REALLY wanted to have a current-year rip be featured amidst all the Halloween classics. I scoured the recent uploads, which I'd been putting off from doing for some reason. There was TONS of gold here, particularly celebrating the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise thanks to the new movie coming out, yet...one rip stuck out. Bloody Freddy plays with its source material in such a fun, unexpected way, that I just had to cover it.

Though I'm not much of a FNaF-head, it was always a series that was fun for me to follow from a safe distance, particularly during that original run from FNaF 1 to 4. Part of it was the games, part of it was their story and atmosphere, part of it was the theories - and a HUGE part of it was the community and the sheer talent present within. The Living Tombstone's songs for the franchise, particularly the early few, are practically inseparable from the legacy of each game - I've even covered one of them before with Five Dreams at Night 1.16! And the one that started it all, the aptly named Five Nights at Freddy's, is the most iconic of them all - to some, it was even how they first discovered the game to begin with back in 2014.

Bloody Freddy plays with the legacy and iconography of that original song in keeping its distinct vocal style and instrumentation, whilst actually being a full arrangement/cover of Lady Gaga's Bloody Mary. Though the lyrics and vocals follow the same progression and rhythm as that song, they've been rewritten to include elements in reference to The Living Tombstone's original song, althewhile having a shockingly close sound TO that original vocal performance.

Paired with the karaoke subtitles and genuinely fantastic sound of the TLT song, and the halloween spirit surrounding the rip, it's just a genuinely great listen all around!

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 31/10/2023

28 Saves Later

Season 2 Featured on: The SilvaGunner Spooktacular Halloween Horror Special: Volume 8​-​Bit Beast Also on: SiIvaGunner: Starter Kit & Essentials

Ripped by wheel able Guitar performance by wolfman1405

Part of Spooktacular Week! ● Requested by luigibro! (Discord)

This rip. 28 Saves Later. With every Halloween that comes and goes on SiIvaGunner, every year going for something new, fresh, and oft immensely high quality - ESPECIALLY this year with Season 7 - I still return back to 28 Saves Later. I can't even remember how I found it, back in 2016 I could honestly not have cared less about Resident Evil and promptly skimmed past it in my feed. When I eventually did find it, it was still at a pretty meager view count - yet it's been climbing, slowly rising toward that juicy 100K. 28 Saves Later is, amidst a sea of excellent horror media tributes the SiIvaGunner channel has put out, the absolute best of the Spooktacular Halloween Horrors.

Classic survival horror games such as the original Resident Evil series are memorable for many reasons, yet what always seems to stick with players most is that sense of pure...relief, attained upon reaching a Save Room. Away from the horrors, the zombies, the monsters, the demons, the Lickers and Hunters and heads of crimson or pyramid, you always have this one little chamber to return to. 28 Saves Later is, in the most simple terms, a tribute to that feeling - the feeling of being safe from the horror, yet knowing you'll have to go out there again to face the truth. It builds upon itself so masterfully, with an imposing percussion slowly building in volume, more instruments being added to the calming lead melody all emphasizing danger lurking in the shadows...althewhile using samples from Silent Hill 2, several numbered Resident Evil games, and music from the zombie post-apocalypse film 28 Days Later, one entirely about that wish to find shelter from the horrors of the world.

In the midst of all the silly shit that regularly occurs on SiIvaGunner, I think it's really important to note just how bizarre of a time the beginning of Season 2 was - mainly, because we still didn't quite know what it was building to. The channel was supposed to have ended, yet with no fanfare whatsoever, here it was back uploading rips just as usual, but with a new emphasis on the then-relevant Halloween season. As silly as it may sound, there definitely was a sort of fear-of-the-unknown lingering as we were left in limbo between the channel ending and continuing - as Chaze would later confirm, the plan WAS to have the channel actually end after the Halloween and Christmas events. And rips like 28 Saves Later, rips of such absurdly high quality yet drenched in such uncertainty, only aided in that feeling - yet created an absolutely palpable sense of atmosphere for the time.

I'm sure several of the blog's readers could've predicted this being today's rip, and I'm no good at hiding my feelings either. 28 Saves Later, even disconnected from SiIvaGunner, is just an absolute loveletter to the survival horror genre, to all the feelings and vibes they once instilled in us all, before its long period of hiatus that wouldn't end until Resident Evil 7 released in 2017. 28 Saves Later is amidst SiIvaGunner's most important, must-listen-to rips yet released, transcending tribute into just becoming a wholly amazing piece of music in its own right.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 30/10/2023

The Lost Rip - A SilvaGunner Christmas Comeback Crisis Side Story

Season 3 Part of: The SilvaGunner Christmas Comeback Crisis

Directed by Keeby10, SparkBag

Part of Spooktacular Week! ● Requested by crickqt (Discord)

I was debating with myself internally for a loooong time over if I should even cover this one...as I've let on a couple of times before, I am a huge SiIvaGunner lorehead, particularly with the Christmas Comeback Crisis, yet its also something I don't really want to cover too much in detail on here. The CCC is, really, just a good ass series, with genuinely well done drama, mystery, character growth, visual style and music, the whole works. Its not exactly something I want to spoil or exposit over on here, is my point - I want people to check it out on their own! But The Lost Rip - A SilvaGunner Christmas Comeback Crisis Side Story is so, so much more than just a side story - its a ten-minute long, ridiculously high-effort bit.

Uploaded on the day of Halloween 2018, the rip originally had a far more straightforward title - Comeback Crisis [Episode 13] - The SiIvaGunner Christmas Comeback Crisis, or in other words the 13th Episode of the main series. This was, as is evident by the title switch - a bait-and-switch, to immediately draw the attention of anyone subscribed at the time who had been waiting for the rip. Now, this wasn't the first time this had happened for a Christmas Comeback Episode (it'd happened twice before, if I remember correctly?) but this time was different - this time, the bait-and-switch was part of the side story's plot itself. In truth, there's a second bait-and-switch awaiting viewers in the episode - this isn't a mere side story or a gag, but a full-on SiIvaGunner Christmas Comeback Crisis *CREEPYPASTA*.

The presence of Nutshackwoodman34 in SiIvaGunner lore is still not something I wholly understand - he's depicted as a normal guy who writes fanfiction for the SiIvaGunner channel, and said fanfiction has then been turned into joke lore videos such as this one. I'm not sure if this means he has literal governing control over the SiIvaGunner universe, or if his content is completely and utterly non-canon (which would suck, I absolutely adore Unusual Circumstances). Althesame, The Lost Rip works so well as a creepypasta story specifically due to how it plays with how fans just like us perceive media: despite being made by members of the actual SiIvaGunner team, it truly does just read like a fanfiction, quite authentically. Be it the killing off of core characters for no real reason, the invention of a whole new lore material that instigates the whole plot, and of course more obvious stuff like the intense edginess of it all and the self-insert character getting to help save the world.

In the end, really, it was all just a prank played on us, and a prank that's not really to be considered canon. But everything about it - the immensely charming crude-on-purpose art, the genuinely really enjoyable voice acting (SparkBag is still my go-to favorite voice for Wood Man in particular), the riffing on all the different kinds of Creepypasta material out there. Hell, I hope sentence-mixed Joel gets to be the canon voice for Grand Dad whenever he shows up in the series! But until then - The Lost Rip is glorious, both for me watching as a fan and me watching as an enjoyer of all things dumb-internet-horror.