You thought I wouldn’t end 2022 with a bang? You thought wrong! Death Egg Zone Act 2 is here with a remix that I believe perfectly incapsulates what’s at stake.
Not much to say other than I stayed up until 4AM working on this. I never really thought Death Egg Act 2’s theme was really climactic, in fact, considering how this is the DEATH EGG, Robotnik’s prime base of operations and destruction, now powered by the Master Emerald which (if I’m remembering correctly) has LIMITLESS POWER! You’d think the song would reflect that, but it’s basically a slightly slower version of Act 1 with slightly different instrumentation and no more death metal kick drum stuff. Why? I don’t know why. In Act 1, it made sense. It’s all like “Hey, we got on the Death Egg. Let’s get to Robotnik now and stop him!” Act 2 is then identical to this and is all like “Okay, this is actually pretty easy, we’ve certainly already won.” I suppose that fits from a level design perspective, as Death Egg is pretty easy in S3K. I’d argue Lava Reef was harder, but that still doesn’t mean it can’t reflect the tone in the story like literally every other theme in the game. It’s pretty baffling I won’t lie.
This remix also takes HEAVY influence from the remix created by SpikeSensei (link to their’s: https://youtu.be/2rfVF_1tYvo). Pretty much every major thing (S2 Death Egg, the S3K Boss Theme, and the parts with S3K Death Egg being in G minor) is here. It’s different enough to where you aren’t confused as to which one is which (mine’s on the Genesis for crying out loud) and overall, I think they did a fantastic job with their’s.
FM instruments consist of S3K Death Egg’s bass for the bass (takes a person with a massive brain to figure that one out, I know), S2 Death Egg’s choirs and harpsichord (that one should fairly obvious given the next instrument), and S3K Boss/Final Boss brass. You’re more likely to recognize it from the final boss theme though.
Samples are all from S3K/S3DB and it should be obvious why. I changed up the percussion slightly by adding an additional kick after the snare as well as more variation in the patterns in the DAC channel. What I really want to mention here is the Sonic & Knuckles Collection hi-hats. They’re here and I have no clue why they were cut from S3&K’s interpretation of the song. They weren’t even in the prototype for some reason.
You’ll also notice that I’m using four FM channels for the same melody (different notes are being hit but the rhythm is the same with these two FM channels being echoed with the other two). I had to sacrafice some panning with moving the backing melody to PSG, but I’d say it was worth it.
Happy “The Earth Fully Rotated Around the Sun” Day.
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