Song of the Week for April 16, 2018

I promise this song isn’t a cover. This song makes me want to bang my head and motivates me to get stuff done.

Song of the Week: The Instinct by Mick Gordon

The first Killer Instinct was a video game from back in the days of Nintendo 64. It was known for having crazy combos (for the non-gamers, that’s when your character punches the other character a lot without them being able to stop you) and for its great music. Killer Instinct was made by Rare, whose other games included Donkey Kong Country, Banjo-Kazooie, and Battletoads, all of which had great music.

Fast-forward to 2013. Rare, previously a publisher for Nintendo, had been bought by Microsoft and released some real stinkers. Even their venerable series Banjo-Kazooie had been tainted by a new released. When they announced a new Killer Instinct, people were cautiously optimistic. And then the music hit.

This is a modification of the original song from 1994, like a different movement of the same melody. The composer, Mick Gordon, has worked on other major video game releases, like the new DOOM and Wolfenstein games. One of these weeks, I’ll feature a song from DOOM, I’m sure.

Gordon’s compositions would grace Killer Instinct’s stages for the first two “seasons”, or major content groups. By the third season, for whatever reason, he left to work on other projects (probably DOOM, which is a fine choice). Composing duties were given to Celldweller and Atlas Plug, who are both really good composers and I don’t have time to get into them right now. You’ll definitely be hearing a song from them eventually.