Crypt of The NecroDancer - Konga Conga Kappa / Styx and Stones | Reacting To Video Game Music! 

In every level there's a shopkeeper and the closer you get to him determines the volume level of his singing. So yes there's even more versions of the entire soundtrack lol

Great guess on the ape boss. "Can't help but move once you hear it" Fitting, considering the game forces you to stop every 8th beat or you get penalized for that boss.

I love that someone snuck in a shopkeeper version

You could always give Crypt of the Necrodancer a try since you're already familiar with rogue-likes at the very least. Crypt of the Necrodancer is pretty much a rogue-like but with rhythm in mind. The stages each have their own song and once the song is over, the stage is over as well, and you fall to the next one whether you're done exploring or not. The only floors that don't have a song end are the boss stages, and in those either you win or you die. The enemies all have different patterns of attack that follow their own rhythms, but all of them follow the current bpm of the floor, pretty much. If you follow the beat, you increase a combo meter that can give you more gold from enemy kills and such, but if you miss a beat, enemies can move in the beat you miss. You go through floors getting items and making your build as good as you possibly can while trying to pass the challenges. That's kind of about it. (Also King Conga is probably one of my favorite bosses, such a fun song) Oh yeah, also as far as FamilyJules goes, the game has different OSTs that will play with different characters (each character has their own mechanics they have to follow) but you can also choose whatever OST you want for any character you want in the settings menu. That said, FamilyJules has his own OST in the game that has all metal arranges. Jake "Virt" Kaufman also has an OST that's more 8-bit styled.

Id LOVE more crypt of the necro dancer music!, one of my favourite OSTs in video games, both the danny b, and a-rival and joules.

"Down to earth game that respects its players" Oh no...

Another Crypt video, another comment from me, lol. Konga Conga Kappa is the theme for the boss King Conga, who you are correct about being a big ape. His minions are two conga lines of zombies, who you are supposed to defeat before you can damage the King. As you might’ve picked up based on the song itself, every 8th beat is special, because the fight’s gimmick requires you to do nothing on every 8th beat or else the boss will attack you. So just like all of the other bosses, there’s like 3+ layers to the puns and such, lol. Styx and Stones is less a reference to the band and moreso a reference to the River Styx from Greek mythology (which I assume the band is named after as well), which is the river souls must be ferried across to get into the underworld. The game and song names have a lot of puns relating to death, and this is one of them. Also, any song that mentions a specific level (4-1 in this case) is a specific level theme rather than a boss theme. Now for the shopkeeper, whose name is Freddie Merchantry and is in fact the one “singing” along. The shopkeeper is present somewhere on every level, so every level theme also has a shopkeeper version with Freddie singing along for when you are near him. These versions are the same as the normal song, simply with the vocal track added in. His voice is not actually a real person singing, it comes from (had to look it up) the Omnisphere synth library of sounds, specifically the “Classical Tenor Ah.” However, there is an alternate shopkeeper track which is voiced by a real person, being the real-voice shopkeeper Nicolas Daoust. He started out by doing covers of the shopkeeper tracks on his RU-vid, and was later officially put into the game as part of one of the DLCs, where you can now choose which shopkeeper you want to hear in the settings. As for a few comments about the game itself: the game is hard as hell. No sugarcoating it, this is a roguelike game where beating a run only takes 20-30 minutes, but you probably won’t beat the game for the first time for 10-20+ hours, and that’s just with the default character (who is basically the standard difficulty). The main way of playing also is a roguelike mode with no meta progression, unlike something like Hades where you can get upgrades between each run, so being able to make progress relies mainly on your ability to follow the music, learn enemy patterns, etc. Harder characters will take additional hours each due to their unique gimmicks, with the hardest character that is part of the main story taking me over 40 hours of attempts to beat personally (which isn’t even the hardest character). Very very fun and rewarding game, but also one of the hardest games I’ve ever played. Also, the game does have a feature where you can use custom music and the game will do its best to match the gameplay to the song’s tempo, which probably answers some questions about the relationship between game mechanics and the music. I think that’s all I’ve got for this novel of a comment, lol.

Let's not kid ourselves, Danny is a legend to pull off these kind of techniques and make these tracks so memorable and unique. Definitely DJ experience there, and an incredibly talented musician to boot. Every single track from this guy always amazes me. I mean damn! I love rhythm-based logic, but this game is super hard I have no words at how difficult it is and I did try. But its ok not all games have to be for everyone I guess. But I keep the music that's what I truly love here. :) And YES the shopkeeper in this game always sings like an opera and literally distorts the current level song when visiting him!! Talk about creativity !! You definitely need to hear the whole ost, no song is skippable and its the same with super meat boy as well, also scored by the same composer.

I'm such a big fan of the shopkeeper vocal versions. Really cool way to integrate finding the shopkeeper in the levels, too, with his voice getting louder or quieter as you change distance from him.

You instantly become 1/8th less productive when listening to konga conga The upside is that you get to listen to konga conga

I very much enjoy the Shopkeepers vocals in the context of gameplay where the volume of his voice helps you locate the shop on each level, but it doesnt sound very good to me for general listening lol.

Crypt of the Necrodancer has an insane amount of tracks: It has ~30 tracks composed by Danny B., and then there are multiple versions of each track remixed by different artists! There are like 6 different composers, which A_Rival, FamilyJules, Jake "Virt" Kaufman, Chipzel and OverClocked ReMix, plus the addition of Danganronpa and the recent Hatsune Miku tracks, so we're talking about 180 tracks, without even considering that almost each track has a shopkeeper version as well, doubling the amount!

Konga Conga Kappa is relatively simple track, but it's just such a banger. There are multiple version of the whole OST, the original Danny B and the FamilyJules versions being two of them. There are a bunch more and I think each version comes with a different player character, but you can set the game to use whatever version you want. All the different versions then have the shopkeeper variation on top as well. I would say the game is pretty difficult, but then I generally suck at all kinds rhythm games. It's a roguelike, so when you die you're back to the first level, but you can collect currency during runs that you can use to buy permanent upgrades, so it will get a little easier over time. You've played Hades, so you know the drill.

The game is really fun with movement controls that mimic using a dance pad, and its also entirely possible to just play using a dance pad. Highly recommend that you try it out, I think you will enjoy it! The music with the gameplay is such an awesome combo, and makes doing well in the game feel so much better than in many other games that are not so music based. Stay awesome, love your reactions.

Please play this game some day. You'll be delighted listening to the songs and understanding why they are there in the first place.

the devs made that game and a zelda based one (cadence of hyrule) on switch with the same rhythm principle btw, it was really cool to see the zelda soundtrack remixed that way

I was waiting for you to react to Styx and Stones for the longest time. Easily my favourite track in the game. The shopkeeper version is cool, but I kind of wished you had heard the the normal version without the singing as it stands very firmly on its own. Overall, great video.

So, the 4-1 is Zone 4, Level 1, basically. If I remember right (it's been a while since I played Necrodancer), every zone has 3 levels and then a boss level. And yes, you should totally try out Necrodancer at some point. Being a rogue-like, it's a very easy game to pick up and put down at any time, play as long or as short an amount of time as you like without much concern for needing to dedicate time to it.

so styx is probably as in the River styx, the river dead souls cross to get to the underworld

I’d recommend checking the game out if you like playing to a rhythm and rogue lites. It’s such a unique blend of genres they even got to collaborate with Nintendo and make a Legend of Zelda version! But I’d still go with the original game because I love the soundtrack so much.

It's still so bizarre to hear the shopkeeper versions of Necrodancer songs since while I haven't played the game yet, the soundtrack cd that came with it is the most played disk in my car and that only has the non-shopkeeper versions. I agree that the vocals basically overpowered anything else.

Hey man, I have a bit of an odd request for you. Not sure if you take patreon only, but there is a long lost game called "Lords of the Realm 2" and a track on it call "Scroll 1". Simply the finest piece of medieval music I've heard. I would be amazing if you decided to react to it. Maybe have a whole medieval video of different ones? Just a thought. Have a good one, brotato chip!

It's not really vocal manipulation exactly? The shopkeeper voice here is just a synth patch, as far as I'm aware.

The voice of the Shopkeeper that you heard in the second track is Nicolas Daoust. It's as you have said manipulated to sound like that, but he has a RU-vid channel (his full name) where he has some videos, where he tries to emulate it in one take for some tracks which is really funny and impressive to hear and watch how :D Also something something hope Cadence of Hyrule bla bla^^ Edit: Read comments below

Are you going to listen to Hades 2 music any time soon? If so, I think you'll enjoy "Coral Crown" and "I Am Gonna Claw (Your Eyes Out then Drown You to Death)".

Konga Conga Kappa will still screw me up. That pause. Ugh.

I'm pretty sure the "Voice" of the Shopkeeper is some kind of off-the-shelf sound library thing. There is a song in Splatoon 3 with it and it's very obviously the same sample. That song also has some fun voice manipulation in it, that just seems to be thing composers do when they mess with this sound library. Not to say that the Splatoon composers weren't inspired by the use in CotND as Nintendo is very aware of it, as in there is literally an official Zelda crossover game. As for Necrodancer itself, the game fades in the Shopkeeper vocals the closer you get to the shop.

I love the singing shopkeeper. It's been ages since I played the game but it was always fun getting near him and off he goes :D. I bought the soundtrack but I never got to the 4th zone so I didn't hear it in-game.

Maybe it's time to try Crypt of the Necrodancer then, to get into a new genre for you xD It's a roguelite though, so keep that in mind.