There has been a very long-lasting rumour that Pink Floyd’s amazing Dark Side of the Moon album is laid out to synch to the events in the film The Wizard of Oz. Pink Floyd deny it (why would they do such a strange thing as synch an album to an old film anyway?) but the rumour persists.
The Angry Video Game Nerd (the original angry video game reviewer and still the best in the genre) knows about this rumour and, naturally, when he reviewed the SNES video game version of Wizard of Oz, he references this Pink Floyd synch issue by… synching his review of The Wizard of Oz to Dark Side of the Moon. I’m not kidding, he’s really gone all-out for it, as this video from NEXrosoft demonstrates:
The synch works if you begin playing the album on the third roar of the lion in the logo, like in the original rumour. After that, here’s a list of all the synchronisations I could spot:
- 1:29 The Nerd appears on screen in time to the first major chord of Breathe
- 2:20 The Wicked Witch appears in time with the music
- 2:45 Clouds appear when Roger Waters sings “air”, from the line “breathe in the air”
- 3:16 Close-up on a bird flying, in time with Roger singing “how you fly”
- 3:18 A tree smiling while a teardrop drops from a bubble, in synch with “Smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry.”
- 3:22 The Nerd is holding a clock and looking at it, in time to Roger singing “all you touch and all you see.”
- 3:29 The biggest clue AVGN was doing this on purpose: there’s a giant rabbit on screen when Roger sings “Run, rabbit run”
- 3:54 Roger sings “Don’t sit down” while a possessed chair is chasing Dorothy
- 4:02 “…but only if you ride the tide” is sung while Dorothy is on the river
- 4:14 Super Mario World appears on screen synched to the opening chord of On The Run, which is amazing and hilarious on multiple levels
- 4:24 During the bird call/weird sounds/airport departure announcement segment of On The Run, Dorothy is fighting a giant crow in a waistcoat and as the music intensifies, so does The Nerd’s anger
- 5:52 All the cuts in the scene with The Nerd and the Cowardly Lion are cut to time with the beat of the song.
- 6:10 The Cowardly Lion laughs at the same time as the laughter in the song.
- 6:27 The Cowardly Lion’s attacks are timed to the repeating of the oscillating sound on the song.
- 7:12 There’s a laugh on the song as the giant chattering teeth appear on screen.
- 7:15 The aircraft roar on the song coincides with the aircraft flying across the screen.
- 8:06 The alarm at the start of Time plays just as the giant clock appears on screen.
- 8:09 The all the cuts in the video now sync up with the regular ticking/beat of the clock in Time
- 8:10 Contra – the player jumps and shoots in time with the clock sounds, too.
- 8:42 If it wasn’t obvious to you yet that the cuts are timed to the music, the Scarecrow appears on screen just as the first major chord in Time plays.
- 10:13 The Scarecrow lands on the platforms in time to the beat of the music.
- 10:36 Dorothy arrives back in Kansas just as Roger sings “…in your home town”.
There are probably more points that. I missed but I think we can all agree that’s a pretty long list of synchronisations that absolutely show AVGN was going all-out to make this review of a pretty poor game would have that little extra to it for the fans. Well done, Nerd. Well done.