One of a series of TMBG covers I'd done after being inspired by someone else covering Dr. Worm on 8bitcollective. This one is very blatantly inspired by Super Fantasy Zone -- indeed, I stole the instrument data from it directly.
I first heard Mr. Me while watching the extras of the Gigantic documentary, and found it incredibly compelling. Its use of the doo-wop progression, high-intensity percussion (look up how those guys used to do live shows for a fun time), and alliterative rhyming wordplay give a nursery rhyme feel to a song that's not very concrete in its lyrics but might be the peak for discrepancy between a happy song carrying morose lyrics from the band, and there's a lot of competition in that regard.
Perhaps that's why I found the pairing with Sega's brutal cute-em-up series so compelling. That's also a game whose colorful, upbeat music belies a grim story, more personal in its tragedy than, say, Kirby, which otherwise matches tone and form but pushes more toward cosmic horror in its progression. The process of adaptation is not terribly difficult, as Fantasy Zone, especially Super Fantasy Zone, liked to syncopate synchronized bass and drum tracks to punctuate its melodies. Mango! is particularly in-pocket in this regard, though something like Fresh Melon matches the arrangement of Mr. Me a little closer. Note that about half of the original songs are based on doo-wop changes.
As an aside, Sunsoft was a smart co-developer choice for the game, as they were pretty decent developers of games in the general shmup idiom as well as cutesier-style games. The composer for the game's original music, Naoki Kodaka, was basically working in this style any chance he got.
Based on the last-saved date in TFM this file was last touched on the 24th Nov. 2010. It's purely 2612 FM -- while Super Fantasy Zone augmented its tunes with the SN76489 PSG, there weren't any good trackers with support for it at the time, so it sounds slightly less intense (the PSG noise channel was used to add a little punch to the snare sound, in particular, and the tone channels were regularly used for the main melodies of tracks). However, it's still obvious in its influence, and I have to say that I'm quite fond of how it turned out.
Here's the VGM file: https://mushroomhill.hopto.org/owncloud/index.php/s/aTG4ZgHs5ELncJu