For a brief period in the late 2000s, video game music mashups were all the rage. That energy is back in full force thanks to “UFO 50,000,” a wild two-hour mixtape that mashes up hip-hop songs with music tracks from every game in UFO 50. Yes, all 50 of them.
The album is a passion project created by Dan Vecchitto, co-owner of Trombone Champ studio Holy Wow Games. Vecchitto began mashing up songs from musician Eirik Suhrke’s UFO 50 soundtrack after receiving an invitation to guest on Eggplant (now The Secret Lives of Games), a podcast that had the goal of doing an episode about every game featured in developer Mossmouth’s retro-inspired game collection. He started by mixing a song from the game Onion Delivery with Dorrough's "Ice Cream Paint Job." That led to two more mashups. One year later, Vecchitto got an urge to create more and brought the number up to 20.
"Around a year later, the itch came back, and for some reason I hit a real hot streak," Vecchitto told Polygon in a text interview. "Before I knew it, I had something like 35 of the tracks remixed, and at that point the finish line was in sight and it felt silly to stop before doing all 50, regardless of how difficult the last few were."
The final result of that is “UFO 50,000,” which is available to stream on YouTube. It's a madcap delight from start to finish of its two-hour runtime. That's thanks in part to some brilliant mash-up choices, which thematically pair games and hip-hop lyrics. “Grimstone Road” pitch bends the vocals of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” to match a track from the old west RPG Grimstone. “Still Mortol” thematically plays on Mortol, a game about sacrificing your character’s lives to progress, with the Geto Boys’ appropriately morbid “Still.”
It’s impossible to pick a favorite, but "Can I Kick It Club?" is a brilliant mashup of the theme from soccer game Kick Club and A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?” “Velgress’s a Bitch” also goes hard as a jaunty mix of Nas and Velgress. Vecchitto’s own pick? “Waldorf Around,” a shockingly good rework of House of Pain’s “Jump Around” set to the music of walrus platformer Waldorf’s Journey.
“Like a lot of other games in the soundtrack, the main song from Waldorf's Journey has an inscrutable time signature, so it took a ton of chopping to fit it into a 4/4 structure,” Vecchitto said. “But the result for this one is somehow really beautiful and distinctly musical. I think mashups have value when they truly recontextualize a song and this one is a good example; the song changes from a fun party anthem to something dreamy & ethereal, and it's just really interesting.”
Beyond being a musical feat for Vecchitto, the project is a testament to Suhrke’s fantastic UFO 50 soundtrack. The collection called for a wide diversity of songs that still felt connected from game to game. Suhrke nailed the assignment, creating a varied soundtrack that feels authentic to the 8-bit era UFO 50 celebrates. “UFO 50,000” emphasizes that consistency by using the songs to fuel a cohesive mixtape that’s unpredictable and incredibly fun to listen to.
Even if you don’t have two hours to spare, it’s worth clicking on some timestamped song titles that catch your eye and see what you find inside. Coincidentally, that’s one of the best ways to play UFO 50, too.