Top 10 Video Game Cover Bands!

What are the best video game cover bands out there? Well, since taste is subjective and the true quality of music cannot be measured in any objective way, this will forever be a question left unresolved. However, I have made a list here of the bands that I think are the best video game cover bands on Spotify.

I actually had to drop a bunch of bands and I feel sort of bad for those guy, maybe I'll make another post like this if this one works out.

10: Entertainment System

Entertainment System starts of strong with 4 albums packed with rock covers of game tunes from the classics of NES to the more complex but equally good N64 era. I also did a quick blogpost about these guys when I first discovered them.





9: Armcannon

Armcannon comes in over Entertainment system because they have a very similar sound, but Armcannon does come in with some really good rethinks of some of the classical tunes.





8: Daniel Tidwell

Daniel Tidwell, a one man army of excellent cover music. Daniel has all his stuff on Spotify, and its a fair bunch. I love his Castlevania cover, but I already said that in my post about him.





7: Metroid Metal

Beating out Daniel is Stemage, and his sub-band Metroid Metal. While Daniel does great covers of many different games, Stemage has made an art piece with his Metroid Metal albums.





6: The Protomen

I am a fanboy of The Protomen and these guys would have won, if they only had all their stuff on Spotify. However, they are missing their first, self titled album from Spotify, and as such we only have half their genius available.





5: Bit Brigade

Bit Brigade comes in at number 5 based on the pure approach these guys have to covering the music. 1:1 replacement of the game music is respectable. No ifs or buts about it.






4: Random Encounter

These guys are great, I love the accordion sound they bring, but also the amount of fun they have with each cover.





3: Advantage: proGrammar aka The Advantage

I am biased toward these guys. This was the first Video Game Cover band I ever heard about. Must have got a pirate copy of their album back in 2005. Made a great impact on me and that is why they have such a high rating on this list. I was planing to leave these guys out, because I could only find the proGrammer version on Spotify, but now that I also found their non-vocal part, figured it was worth having them along.





2: The OneUps

Now we are hitting the really good stuff. The OneUps is the band I constantly go back to when I want some good game music. They are all over the place when it comes to genera, but every song is well produced and while wildly different from its original, still remains faithful.





1: The Megas

My guess is that this came as no surprise for anyone. The Megas is a band I have raved about before. The Protomen are great, hell, they are as good as the Megas even, but their Megaman output is lacking on Spotify, so they got bumped down a bit.

I regard the soundtrack to Mega Man 2 to be the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album of game music so any band who has given it this much attention deserves praise.

I want to put a special weight on the album Get Acoustic as this is perhaps the reason why I have put it above all others. The Annihilation of Monsteropolis now has the sad angry tones of Airman, who feels rejected and mocked by the other robots, because his only power is to push other people away.

In Promise of Redemption, Bubble man says "I realize something as I stand here waiting, That I'm the one who I'm really hating"

Flash man lets it slip "There's nothing there and there's nothing to me, I'm empty and I'm hollow!" in Blue Like You

Get Equipped had the same lyrics, but I guess I never really heard the lyrics until Get Acoustic, and that was the point when they became on par with The Protomen.

Combine Protomen and The Megas, it is like having watched the 60s version of Batman all your life, and then suddenly you watch The Dark Knight. Its the same, but so different, so much better.