SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs - Summer Smorgasbord Edition

Summer is here in North America, and with it comes blistering hot afternoons and muggy evenings and nights. As if you needed another thing to heat up your afternoon, SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs are here to do just that! Maybe you'll completely forget about the heat as you listen to these five wonderful VGM volumes.

We start things off with Metal Slug 2, debuting the Neo Geo system on SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs. We then head towards Pi'illo Island with Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Next, we get jazzed up with a special stage theme from Sonic 3D Blast on the Sega Saturn. Finally, we get hot and heavy with Ys Origin and Half Minute Hero. As the title of this edition says, it IS a smorgasbord of VGM goodness this week!

v906. Metal Slug 2 (NGEO) - Livin' on the Deck

Now HERE'S something special. For over 900 VGM volumes we've yet to see the Neo Geo get proper respect on SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs. That all changes with Livin' on the Deck, a jazzy song from Metal Slug's second outing. My first run-in with the Metal Slug series was with the Metal Slug Anthology, allowing play-throughs of seven Metal Slug games with some nice bonus content to boot. Nice to have you aboard the Favorite VGMs, Metal Slug!

v907. Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (3DS) - Break at Pi'illo Castle

Yoko Shimomura provides the soundtrack to Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, the longest game in this popular RPG series time-to-completion-wise. Nintendo announced at this year's E3 Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, a crossover between the Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario RPG series. It's looking to be as creative and as humorous as the other games in the series.

v908. Sonic 3D Blast (SAT, PC) - Special Stage

While the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive version of Sonic 3D Blast's soundtrack has some nice themes, it cannot compare at all to the greatness that is the Sega Saturn soundtrack. Composed by Richard Jacques, the soundtrack is absolutely divine, with creative and catchy melodies and an abundance of sensational rhythms.

v909. Ys Origin (PC) - Beyond the Beginning

The Ys series has some of my favorite music in gaming, and I just got into this long-running series a little less than five years ago! It amazes me what I was missing out on with epic music mixing hard rock with classical music, and tremendous action-RPG gameplay that seldom gets dull. I look forward to the next chapter of the Ys saga, which we'll hopefully see at this year's Tokyo Game Show!

v910. Half Minute Hero (PSP) - Main Theme

Half Minute Hero may not be a household name, but it definitely had its soundtrack composed by some great and well known Japanese video game music composers, such as Hiroyuki Iwatsuki, Yuzo Koshiro, Motoi Sakuraba, Koji Hayama, and Norihiko Hibino, to name a handful. A sequel for Half Minute Hero released in 2011 on Steam for PC.