Video
Game
Music

It's a very interesting feeling coming across your own works on this site. XD To whoever uploaded this...you're a little too early! I've been planning on re-releasing the EP with updated versions of the songs! (I was very inexperienced when making it at the time and it's general low volume has always bothered me.)

Y'know now that it's here, I might as well talk about the project.
Waaaaayyy back in late 2019, I had quit my job and was thoroughly bored. RIGHT around New Years I had been reminded about the Soviet Jump Game thing. I was, and still am a huge Game Grumps fan. I remembered the game, saw that it was free, and decided to take a spin.

2020 comes along. I played the game, kinda liked it. Thought the idea and concepts were good, just not the execution. I met some people on the game (before they implemented the bots). I started talking with them on steam and we become friends. They suggested I get Discord, because I didn't have it back then. He said there was a server for the game that it'd be easier to chat with people with. I said sugar it, made an account, and hopped right in. It was fun!

This was around...March-ish. I met a whole bunch of cool people. Most people I'm still very close friends with to this day. One of my friends had a birthday coming up, and I mentioned that I could probably write up a song for them as a present. They said yes and suggested it be something SJG related. I was intrigued, and got to work right away. Around that time I was still learning how to use the Yamaha MODX I had bought around late 2019. And wanted more of an excuse to explore what it had to offer, specifically it's FM engine. So I got to work on what a SJG track would be like through my style.

That song become the Jumping Legends track. It's a pretty primitive song, that was the first time trying out the "synth-rock" style. It's got a bunch of mistakes that I wish I could fix. In fact ALL of them have some huge glaring mistakes I'd love to fix. Anyways, everyone liked the track enough that I thought, "Hey...why don't I make a whole possible album like this? For fun!".

The Worthy Foe track came next, one of the few songs I actually played guitar on. I'm not much of a guitar player but I think I did good enough on that track. The guitar I used is a 1991 "Strat Plus" Fender Stratocaster. I inherited it from my late grandfather. Great sounding guitar! I also use it on the opening track. The next song Steel and Fire is definitely my favourite. It's pure hot metal. The drums, weirdly enough, were recorded playing along to the Jewel Man song from Mega Man 9. I then re-recorded the drums in a new tempo, and then wrote the song around it. XD An interesting way of doing things I guess. I like the industrious sounding Drumulator samples, thought it was a good fit for the theme.

The Chase Is On! is pure TMNT IV. Right down to the chords and orch hits. Also the first time I used that lead guitar sample I use alot now. Which was recorded by me with the strat I mentioned earlier. Makes for a great lead sound. Surfing the Wall was very much Judas Priest inspired. The riff might as well have been ripped from Painkiller. I like the energy in it though. Room For One more was inspired by a track Tim Follin composed for Time Traxx on the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive). I like the jazzy fusion sound. I wish I didn't make the triangles so goddamn loud over everything else in that track... XD The Unfinished and Unused track was just me messing around trying to get PPG Wave type sounds from the Yamaha. Nothing meant to be anything special but I do like that track. Some day I'll go back to it, flesh it out a little bit more. Turn it into something more real.

I'm surprised with how well the EP turned out as a whole as I don't feel like I really put in that much effort. I didn't even have a proper sequencer for the percussion. I used my Korg Minilogue's sequencer for all of that XD. It worked but it was extremely unreliable. I recorded all of the hi-hats and cymbals by hand cause I never felt like sequencing them on the Korg. I've since gotten an Arturia KeyStep Pro to handle all that stuff now. I also used an E-mu Proteus MPS, and a Roland JV-880. All fed into a Strymon BigSky. Everything you hear on the EP is played and recorded through it's hardware. I'm not really a software synth kind of person, but I've been learning a lot recently with it.

I've been wanting to re-release it without it's ties to Soviet Jump Game...mostly because of some...recent world stuff going on and I personally don't think it's connections to Soviet/Russian themes is of good taste at the moment. So the next time I release it, It'll be titled "Video Game Synth-Rock: Jumping Legends". I'll still mention it's inspiration to SJG, just not so blatantly. I'll also not be releasing it under my name. XD It's best not to use your name when doing things on the net like this these days. It'll be under my new stage alias "Malleyricon".

Do I like the EP? Yes! Absolutely! I still listen to it a lot! Do I think it's a GOOD EP? ...Not really, at least not in terms of execution... It has a lot of mistakes, and is very amateur. I've been wanting to go back and fix some mixing mistakes, possibly re-record some things, and release it as a proper EP for people to listen to and possibly buy. That all went out the window when I lost all of the files... The external drive I had containing all of the stems and recordings and files broke down and corrupted. It's all gone now unfortunately. I've been trying the best I can with post mixing, I'm trying to see what I can do to make it better with what I got. I'll put up the "updated" versions sometime this year along side the Retroactive Outrage!! album. Thanks for putting up the EP here! I hope people enjoy it, for what it's worth anyways.