Todays rip: 24/02/2024
Staff Roll (SM64) Fusion
Season 5 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume GS
Ripped by Emm Bee Sea Visuals by Brawlcats
Requested by crickqt! (Ask Box)
The show must go on, and we move now from yesterday toward a happier little tale. Wheras I grieved over not getting to know enough about R.L.99 in Through the F-F-Fire and the F-F-Flames, today's rip sort of explores the opposite journey. Because in the narrow view of the SiIvaGunner community that exists within its comment sections, it was impossible not to recognize Emm Bee Sea.
With videos as frequent as those on the SiIvaGunner channel, there's bound to be just as many different kinds of comment sections, each rip its own little hub of discussion. There's the funny ones, like the comments to :3 being filled with other people reciprocating the same kitty emoticon, there's ones from more recent rips wherin people are still trying to discern what the joke is, enjoying the music althesame, there's ones where people remark on and discuss the absurdity of the channel's lore like on A love letter to this wonderful community and my amazing friends...and honestly, Staff Roll (SM64) Fusion just so happens to hold a lot in common with that last example in particular. Amidst all these comments sections, you would start to recognize regulars, people who obviously knew their stuff from having watched the channel for so long - people like New Guy, and like Emm Bee Sea.
Its not even as if I can pinpoint any specific date that I started realizing how often Emm Bee Sea was showing up, but eventually she just became someone you expected to see, always wearing the same recognizable profile picture of Maki Love Live. And like, it obviously isn't a very substantial connection, but...there WAS a connection there, one that made the realization that she was now full-on contributing to the channel hit more than it otherwise would have. And even three years later, Staff Roll (SM64) Fusion sits pinned on Emm Bee Sea's profile as her proudest work. In my eyes, its easy to see why.
We've covered Fusion Collabs on here before - File Select Fusion Collab, Balcony Fusion Collab, Bramble Blast Collab - they're a mainstay of the channel put together as loveletters by a group within the channel. But by that metric, and indeed by its own title, Staff Roll (SM64) Fusion doesn't technically fit the bill - as you can see at the top of the post, Emm Bee Sea made the audio entirely on her own, covering one and a half dozen styles across the track's entire runtime. A task that's usually divided up across multiple rippers for projects like this was taken on by this one ripper alone - yet all the styles, from MOTHER 3 to Kirby's Dream Land 3 to Super Mario Sunshine, are incorporated so seamlessly, never feeling as if corners are being cut. It's effectively a tribute to both Super Mario 64 and the SiIvaGunner channel itself in that way, a tribute to the very idea of fusion collabs, set to the credits theme of one of the channel's most-ripped games.
Staff Roll (SM64) Fusion delivers exactly what it promises on the tin, as a befitting celebration to Super Mario 64's twenty-fifth anniversary, yet it's stuck with me in some special way for just how well the styles chosen all fit the source track. So many of them, from Mario Party to Ghost Trick to the Mii Channel, have a sort of silly, Bossa Nova lightheartedness to them, that fit the Super Mario 64 Staff Roll theme like a glove - althewhile taking such good advantage of all their unique soundscapes. It reminds me of a rip like Aquadial, where an otherwise so simple concept is elevated to great heights by just how immaculate the vibes become through the instrumental style chosen. It made me immensely happy to see Emm Bee Sea cherish this rip as much as I still do, and she's right to be proud of it.
