Game music you love, from back in the day...

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 12:30 am

We were chatting the other night on the Chat about retro games, and that led me to listen to some old game theme tunes from Amiga games. I decided to create some MP3s for your listening pleasure.

I've done a little post processing on these: the original fake stereo has been merged to create a more modern stereo image (rather than 2 channels in the left ear, and two in the right), so these will sound a lot better on headphones (or even speakers come to that). I boosted the bass a little and cleaned up the top end too.

I'll post more as and when I create them, I might even take requests!

Enjoy!

http://friskdesign.com/misc/music/retrogames/

EDIT: These files have now been removed are are not available anymore. 2017-05-08

Tunes uploaded so far (Amiga):

Code: Select all

 1) Black Crypt
 2) Captive
 3) Cubulus
 4) Gods
 5) Knightmare
 6) RType
 7) Speedball
 8) Killing Game Show
 9) Shadow of the Beast 1 (All music)
10) Xenon 2

Post by **Ameena** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 12:42 am

Well, the only games there that I know are Magic Pockets and Gods...well yaaay anyway, I'm listening to the latter now

.
I have a thing for music...a lot of the tracks on my system are from computer games, though not many are from older games. I have a couple of Monkey Island tracks but I think that's about it for anything pre-PC.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 9:32 am

I remember assassin having a good intro music if you let it carry on playing instead of starting, and of corse cannn fodder's death screen wa ssad and chaos engine had soe nice thumping musc too.

Ah, good old Gods ...

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 12:21 pm

super cool gambit! nice
--------------------------------------------------------------
here is what I remember right know as being "good"

budokan * -- intro? and definitely when you go to the arena
bubble bobble * -- intro and/or endgame music
super wonderboy in monsterland * -- bossbattle
garrison -- intro (guitars again, probably not for everyone)
castle master -- intro
apydia
shadow of the beast 1
//xenon2 megablast
//turrican <---not sure if there was a Cd?
chambers of shaolin from Thalion

bloodmoney (probably not that good)
ninja spirit ?
(X-out)
(battle isle)

crystal palace (thundercats) -- not sure about this one
the bard's tale -- bard songs lol

zodiac -- (not a game, demo)
------------------

edit : wizball

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:08 pm

Most of the Psygnosis titles had good music. Shadow of the beast 1, 2 and 3. Killing game show. Awesome (what a name

). Lemmings.. All had good game music. I do remember Agony not having ALL good music.. some of it was annoying

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:33 pm

I'll try and get some of those titles into MP3 over the coming weeks...

MasterWuuf · Post by **MasterWuuf** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 8:02 pm

It's hard to believe how many games I missed out on.

The Black Crypt music was good.

Bard's Tale??? Oh yeah, that was a great game. I loved the 'berserker' room; 4 sets of 99 berserkers (hee, hee, big room, I guess).
Mega experience points. Loved using dragon fire spell.
Remember the Dork ring? Big letdown, when I finally used it. I wasted it in a battle, getting stomped for my trouble.

ian_scho · Post by **ian_scho** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:54 am

Thanks, Gambit. That's good work and I enjoyed listening to some of them.

Bit · Post by **Bit** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 4:29 pm

I know you talk about very old games, but the music I loved most so far was that of Unreal 1. I really should dig out informations about the artist and check if there is more.

Post by **Gambit37** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 5:07 pm

Yeah, that was cool. I did a mix of Unreal 1 and made my own CD, talk about nerdy! I don't have the bandwidth to share a whole CD though, sorry, and I can't share torrents or use DC++ anymore since receiving a warning letter...

You can however use XMPlay to play the MODS (For they are MOD files in Unreal 1) directly from the UMX files. Note that the some stuff will be missing though: the triggers that switch to action music in certain files don't get played, which is why my mix took quite sometime to put together...

Erik Bauer · Post by **Erik Bauer** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 5:11 pm

I loved the soundtracks of these Amiga games:
- Shadow of the beast 1-2-3
- R-Rype intro
- Chuck Rock
- Agony
- Superfrog
- Awesome
- Evil's Doom
- Black Crypt intro

But let's not forget also the singed Cannon Fodder intro "War has never been so much fun!"

Trantor · Post by **Trantor** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 6:19 pm

Turrican 2 is unequalled, but Turrican 1 is also awesome. I also love the intro music of Eye of the Beholder (Amiga version only, PC version blows).

LeCruel · Post by **LeCruel** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:26 pm

Good idea, I remember sega games musics: afterburner, space harrier, outrun...

From atari games music i liked:
- Rambo 3
- Turrican 1 & 2 sure

- B.A.T.
- Fire and forget 2
- Lost patrol
- Speedball 2
- Dune (it was on pc)

And many other i don't remember!

Post by **Ameena** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:19 pm

I can remember the Captain Blood music being quite weird, but I can't quite think of how it goes right now...reading through those lists has put the Chuck Rock music in my head (we had a short demo version of it on one of our zillions of cover disks from the ST-Format magazine my dad used to get).

Post by **Gambit37** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:35 pm

Captain Blood music was Ethnicolor by Jean-Michel Jarre, wasn't it?

OK, I've uploaded some more: Speedball, Xenon 2, R-Type, Knightmare and Shadow of the Beast 1. Note that some tracks are supposed to be looped in game, so I've faded them out after a few minutes.

It is kinda funny that I'm converting these tiny old mod files into big fat MP3s, but I thought it would be a more useful and accessible format for most people

Trantor · Post by **Trantor** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:40 pm

One great song by the best composer of them all, Chris Hülsbeck: The intro of M.U.D.S.

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 5:29 pm

cool stuff. mp3 works fine with me.
just how about california games or winter /world games ?
had these good music tracks? .. hhmm at least it would stir up memories for sure!!
edit: you could try out populous 1 soundtrack if you like, gambit

Post by **Zyx** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 5:41 pm

Dragonflight and almost any music made by Jochen Hippel (aka Mad Max)

Trantor · Post by **Trantor** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 6:49 pm

I agree with Zyx's statement about Jochen Hippel. The Amberstar soundtrack was pretty impressive! Back in the day, I considered Amberstar almost as good as DM; at least, it was one of the very few games that I felt were special from the first moment. Only DM and Resident Evil had a similar first impression on me. Sadly, Amberstar doesn't quite stand the test of time; the interface is a bit clunky, and the pace of the game is rather slow. Still, I'll treasure those memories very dearly, and the music always has a special place in my heart.

Erik Bauer · Post by **Erik Bauer** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 10:39 pm

Thank you for sharing!
Re listening to R-Type and Shadow of the Beast musics with your bass arrangement made my memories come back! Ah those were days!
And this still is good music!

Bit · Post by **Bit** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 1:01 am

Gambit37 wrote:Captain Blood music was Ethnicolor by Jean-Michel Jarre, wasn't it? *snip*

Yup - and you may put that thing into a museum of computer arts, but better not in a list of computer games... - weird as weird can be.

MasterWuuf · Post by **MasterWuuf** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 1:20 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnH-SW2K ... re=related

Loved this game in the arcade, back in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

The seat would shift when you turned and shake when you wrecked.
I went through the whole thing and won, one day, with our oldest daughter sitting in front of me (she must have been 3-4 years old.
The manager stopped by, while I was playing, and stayed until I finished.
He hadn't seen it finished before.
He said I won a 'black hole' cap for finishing the game.

That was a nice day.

Post by **Sophia** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 1:40 am

Gambit37 wrote:the original fake stereo has been merged to create a more modern stereo image (rather than 2 channels in the left ear, and two in the right), so these will sound a lot better on headphones (or even speakers come to that). I boosted the bass a little and cleaned up the top end too.

Back in the old days, I ran the output audio from my Amiga through one of these:

http://www.oaktreeent.com/web_photos/St ... er_web.jpg

It did essentially the same thing (via hardware, in realtime, of course) as you did to the mp3s, and it vastly improved my Amiga music-listening-to experience.

I have no clue where the thing actually came from; my dad had it and never used it. What a fine piece of technology though.

Banky · Post by **Banky** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 12:50 pm

Definitely The Bard's Tale.
My brother and I spent hours in the Adventurer's Guild of Bard's Tale 1+2, creating the perfect characters and listening to the enchanting tune.
I replayed both games on WinUAE lately and hearing the music again brought tears of joy to my eyes

Another classic of course is Defender of the Crown.
I also remember Xenon II and Ocean's Beach Volley to have some funky tunes. And the intro of Blood Money was pretty cool, too. There was this voice that sounded like James Earl Jones aka Darth Vader.
And let's not forget about the melodious "Pirates!" tunes by J.S. Bach and G.F. Händel.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 6:27 pm

finally dug in and listened to a few.. pretty neat to hear them not sounding as though they were recorded onto some kind of audio casset recorder in the middle of a room.. which is what most have sounded like.. hallow or muffled somehow.. The direct record method wins again

Daecon · Post by **Daecon** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 4:08 am

Wizball. The Atari ST version, not the C64 version.

I also vaguely remember that I liked the soundtrack to another Atari ST game called "The Viking Child" but I don't remember how it went.

Antman · Post by **Antman** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 4:26 am

Turrican II will always be my favourite, nothing comes close. But a couple of cool tracks that I don't think have been mention yet are Arabian Knights, the mines level especially, the Zool and Lotus games which I think used some of the same tracks, Lemmings 2 the Tribes and there's probably loads of others I can't remember. I think there's a site somewhere on the net dedicated to amiga soundtracks, can't remember what it's called though.

Sabreman · Post by **Sabreman** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 11:05 am

I'm a big lover and collector of videogame music old and new, but I especially have a soft spot for the C64 and Amiga, which are what kicked off the interest in the audio of a game being just as important as anything else.

Anyways, lots of the best Amiga stuff has been covered here, but my favourite soundtrack from the machine is from Astaroth by Jochel Hippel. It's a chiptune rather than a MOD, and it's glorious. A medley of the four tracks clocks in at around 15 minutes. 15 minutes of bleepy goodness

A few more favourites of mine not yet mentioned are the title tracks from Uridium 2, Silkworm, Pinball Illusions, IK+, and the amazing Ghouls n Ghosts.

Des · Post by **Des** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 4:51 pm

You might like the Nintendo samples here http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PN7DNY06 - MP3 format, sorry not ID3 tagged.

Post by **Gambit37** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:20 pm

I just uploaded the WAR! theme from Cannon Fodder and all of the Hired Guns music.

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Game music you love, from back in the day...

Game music you love, from back in the day...

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