From my childhood there are some very specific things that I can recall: the first time I had sex (in preschool I thought it was lying on top of girls and licking them), when I realized there was no Santa Clause (sorry if I ruined that for any of you), and when I received my NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). The first time I played Super Mario Bros. I was horrible: regular goombas killed me, getting through the first world was an achievement, and I moved the pad with Mario when jumping over holes. Over 14 years later video games have become cool and every aspect of them has increased in dimension. One of which of course is the sound, going from basic midi sounding noises to full orchestrations. Similar to punk rock or other minimalist kinds of art, music producers in the time of Nintendo didn't have the hugest pallet to work with, but they really made the most out of it creating some timeless songs. This could be attributed to a combination of early budget limitations as the video game industry wasn't nearly as big money wise as it is now, and the hardware limitations. Now The Advantage comes out of Sacramento doing Nintendo only covers, paying homage to genius of early Nintendo sounds. And although bands like The Minibosses have done this before, The Advantage doesn't do it like people with long hair would, with a rock-n- roll sound, The Advantage does it almost perfectly how it originally sounded with two guitars, bass, and drums.
What you get with the creatively titled The Advantage is twenty-six songs covering twenty different NES games. The first time I listened through it as quickly as the blood flowed into my cannon I quickly IM-ed as many of my video game geek friends and informed them of this awesomeness. Not only did The Advantage cover classics like "Mario 3, Underworld" and "Zelda, Fortress", but they also covered wonderful songs such as "Marble Madness" (which happened to be my first video game present). In a recent article in The New York Times about video games, one of the writers of some of the songs that The Advantage covers commented on how the songs that were written were never intended to be played by humans as it didn't seem possible. Not only do they cover the songs, but they do every part just as fast as the originals. The opening riff to "Bionic Commando, P.O.W. Camp" and "Megaman 3, Dr. Wiley Stage" are good displays of some fast playing. Although very small, I enjoyed the little clips of noises they put in between the songs as segues instead of just having straight up songs.
So yes, The Advantage covers NES songs really well. But upon my second listen of the album it immediately reminded me of a long-winded RPG. Yeah, it's awesome on the first play through, but playing it through again is only for the hardcore nerds. The best part about this album is the nostalgia it brings. I couldn't imagine someone who never played NES games getting into this, which makes me think that it's more of novelty purchase than something serious. When you're with a bunch of your friends and you really want to look tubular bust this CD out. Within seconds you'll become the coolest guy at the party and everybody will be talking about Nickelodeon, Hypercolors, Gremlins, etc. But I'm sure most of the people who read this website are old enough to have played Nintendo, so in the least, check out a few mp3s. And if that pumps your arteries, get 26 of them in CD format. In terms of future projects, I'm not sure how The Advantage can do better than this besides having more than 26 tracks, but this is the kind of thing you'll either get into or dismiss as a gimmick.
