The success music in Excitebike is oddly touching.

This seems to come mostly from the interval between notes three and four. Or perhaps it’s just the leap up to the third note, and the need to resolve that somewhere. Yet, what an unusual place to resolve.

To then resolve that measure into the syncopated riff of measure two — well. There’s something going on here.

After that point, Hip Tanaka just winds the piece up into a crisp, early-NES victory burble. That part is disposable.

The first part, though:

There is some sense of victory, or weak recognition of joy — yet it comes through a conflicted filter. Even winning is not enough to heal the deep emotional wounds our heroic racer has faced. Now it is time for him to walk off into fate and the sunset, his mission complete. We will never see him again — though sometimes, when the smell of nitro arrives on a summer breeze, we shall remember.

Someone remix it for me, please, and bring this quality out.