We are delighted to highlight Shiryu Music, a Portuguese musician who has been making and remixing digital music for over twenty years. His work includes themes from what he calls the “Triforce” of his favorite Nintendo franchises – Star Fox, F-Zero, and of course, Metroid!
Shiryu Music
There have always been two constant passions in my life: Music and Video Games. Sadly for as long as I can recall I was told I would never make a career out of either in my home country of Portugal. Yet I somehow managed to live out to this day by never giving up on either and continue to indulge in both passions whenever adult life allows it. Not only do I maintain my (mostly retro) gaming YouTube channel since 2006 with daily updates, and freelance on whatever work needs doing at Nintendo Life and Bitmap Books, I also keep releasing new music for free at a somewhat regular pace.
Shiryu Music was born by chance, from a dare back in 1999 when friends told I would never release a full music album. Twenty years later that number is well over one hundred self-published digital releases. I do find myself reminding people that I am not a professional musician and I was was never meant to be one. Just a bedroom producer who is always having immense fun producing electronic music out of mashing loops together or covering video game music in exciting new ways.
Along with F-Zero and Star Fox, Metroid is a part of the ‘Triforce’ of my favourite Nintendo franchises. Make no mistake about it: Nintendo is the reason why I still play video games nowadays and I always like to pay due tribute whenever I can. Metroid Legacy: The Samus Aran Chronicles started small, with a test to see how the original NES/FDS ‘Metroid’ soundtrack would sound by replacing all instruments with Vangelis’s Yamaha CS-80 most iconic presets. The result of this humble goal produced such a great result and feedback I chose to continue forth and cover every Metroid 2D outing soundtrack. The result was a seventy track, five disc album released to very little online fanfare on September 19, 2017. Soon after that the project also became something unexpected thanks to byuu’s incredible MSU-1 custom Super Nintendo multimedia chip, I was able to use the tracks from disc three to make a PCM music pack that can be played along with Super Metroid, Satellaview style! It remains one of the hardest working projects I have ever produced and it is extremely satisfying to discover new people stumbling upon it by chance. Mea culpa on that – I’m always so busy on new projects I hardly ever take the time to properly market them to the correct audience. Hope to improve on that.
Our Thoughts
RoyboyX
Shiryu Music is a hidden gem. He has taken on the iconic themes of the Metroid franchise and created a transformative symphony that stays with you. I listen to his remixes, and picture them over the game cutscenes in vivid detail. The Fusion score in particular fits the intended atmosphere, I would say, even better than the official score! Shiryu’s musical perseverance in the face of naysayers is truly inspiring. I for one look forward to hearing any future projects he releases, especially more Metroid remixes!
Videos
For more of Shiryu Music’s works, please visit one of the links below:
Homepage
Patreon
Bandcamp
Soundcloud
ShiryuGL
ShiryuMusic
@ShiryuMusic