Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
I like this track
----
Curtis Schweitzer - (Experimental OST) Crystal Battle 1 - {Starbound Orchestral OST}
this track sounds a little like the second-area theme from Freedom Planet
also changed the title of this thread from "The Game Music thread." to "The Videogame Music thread."
I didn't know this as a kid, but really liked the music (despite not knowing how to play the game).
One notable feature of this track that I didn't notice at the time, but only did after listening to it by itself (out-of-game), is that it actually only uses TWO channels. The Game Boy can deliver up to four channels: two pulse wave generators, one channel for 4-bit samples (or presumably more chiptune instrumentation), and one noise channel. It's not uncommon for tracks to have three voices, while the game uses the noise channel for sound effects (this is done in Pokémon, which is why the battle themes have no drums).
Presumably because Motocross Maniacs uses both of the latter two channels for in-game sound effects (considering that they're used for music in the fanfares), this track uses only the first two channels, meaning it has only two "voices", compared to the usual three. So it was composed with even more limitations than usual. And what do you know? They did an excellent job with it.
Y'know, I've briefly looked into the SR soundtrack, and I'm slightly disappointed that this track does not appear in its glorious weirdness, even though it does kinda appear albeit in other weirdness.
But then again...how would you even arrange this? It's like, it is so strange that it almost feels impossible to arrange without either rendering the melody an afterthought (which is what the SR soundtrack's arrangement do, from what I can tell), but also without regularizing the rhythm by giving it a beat (which is what AM2R did). Unless of course you just stick quite close to the original, which might just do it. Like, I could imagine just playing this on an oboe, a piccolo, and a bassoon, and just leaving it very sparse and preserving the stark contrast between the oddly melodic tune and the silence surrounding it, with no texture to support it at all (much like having no backup to fall back on when you're exploring SR-388).
The only change I'd make is to slow it down so it sounds a bit less dorky and more strange.
It's like an even more extreme version of the problem that plagues Simon's Theme from Super Castlevania IV -- I haven't ever heard a satisfactory arrangement of it.
Edit: Something really curious I just now noticed about it. That high-pitched line that doubles one of the other instruments at a high octave? It starts out doubling the bass. Then everything moves together for a while, then when they split back up it doubles the treble instead. It's weird. Like everything else in this track. And that's why I love it.
Seriously, I was right. Nothing made today has a soundtrack ANYTHING like this game's. No one would greenlight or even dream of such a project. Not even its own remake.
A cool thing about this is that this now allows listening to stuff from one game in another game's soundfont, at least partly eliminating any soundset-based bias if one is trying to compare different games' soundtracks. And sometimes you even get tracks that sound cooler than their original versions.
Edit: Actually there are probably well more than two. Here's a third one.
It should be noted, however, that the Sega Genesis doesn't really have a soundfont per se, being an FM synth.
True, but I think they just used the Castlevania Bloodlines soundfont. Same goes with SNES; they just used the SCv4 soundfont.
is it just me or does the bass occasionally cut out on the right? this seems like it might be intentional
speaking of Super Metroid
have any other games used the weirdly muffled soundfonts of Super Metroid and Super Castlevania IV? Maybe Demon's Crest to a lesser extent?
FWIW The rest of the soundtrack -- which you can hear on that playlist -- also has quite a lot of heavy metal.
lolwut
http://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/pinball-revenge-of-the-gator-game-boy
and now check out "ヨタロウすっげい！" from the soundtrack of Arpeggio of Blue Steel. approximately 49 seconds in.
though that's probably a semi-common riff
See, there's a little known, Czech story- and character-driven RTS Original War. This is one of the tracks for the Soviet side. You'd expect something bombastic, like, military marching music or Red Army Choir. But you get this, folksy and whimsical. I like to think it's because the game was made in one of the former Soviet Bloc countries.
Frankly speaking, that accordion sound is something U.S. westerners would probably stereotypically associate with France, though the overall tone of this track sounds darker that one would expect of such an association.
Really? The instrumentation sounds, at the very least, vaguely Eastern European from the very start.
It's a pretty fun track, somehow it reminds me of Final Fantasy VI.
Well, here's one, sorta:
+ Intriguing that bit that uses the opening motif of the melody of Beginning. I didn't know you coild make that appear just by changing the octave of one of the notes in the original version's motif.
- What's with the swung 16ths?
A small sample:
There were some contenders, sure. Dicey Dungeons was real good, Outer Wilds and A Short Hike were both worthy of consideration, but I didn't think any soundtrack would break away from the pack, and rankings are subjective anyway, so that's okay.
i was wrong
i was so very, very wrong