"Speeder Stage" from Battletoads on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1991) Composer: David Wise Record Label: unknown Game Developer: Rare
Battletoads: a blatant TMNT ripoff that was still a lot of fun. Arguably it's the better game. It does feature some catchy tunes, and none more so than the Speeder Bike theme from the third level. This level is infamous for its difficulty, and for many gamers, the fun stopped here. But despite it's incredible difficulty, the speeder stage was a ton of fun. And who doesn't love a good, upbeat racing theme, perfectly crafted for endless looping?
It is worth Noting that this track was composed by David Wise, previously featured here for his work on Donkey Kong Country 2, another game from developer: Rare.
Yay, we now have a logo for this series! What of it, I like logos. I also like Legos. I used "Lockjaw's Saga" in Wednesday's MIDI Week Singles article and that song got me to thinking thing that 1) I had not posted a Game Scores article in a while (since April of this year) and 2) that I should do a Game Scores article about the music in Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest because I love the music from that game. Let us start off with the music from the opening Rare logo and title music, both of which do great jobs with setting the tone for both the rest of the soundtrack as well as the rest of the first area.
Now that is quintessential pirate music if I have ever heard it before and because of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, everybody has heard piratey music. Keep in mind though that this game/music/soundtrack came out eight years after this, but the sea chanty in one form or another has been around since the mid-16th century, so let us not go into a "Who did it first" discussion. Normally, I would have included "Lockjaw's Saga" in this list, but I have already highlighted that song two days ago. So let us move onto another chanty-esque song with "Jib Jig."
Even though the songs are pretty different, and apologies for drawing on Klaus Bladelt's score for Pirates of the Caribbean again, but this track reminds me a bit of what the cello part plays at the beginning of "Fog Bound," except here, it is a MIDI violin/fiddle. It is just a great piratey (there's that word again) little diddy (eh!?). Maybe even a little reminiscent of the Chieftain's score from Treasure Island? For me, there is also something about the wind sound effect and blowing leaves in the background. I want it to be October and ready for Halloween. Speaking of Halloween, "Haunted Chase" is the next song I wanted to showcase.
Yes, "Haunted Chase" uses the theme from "Night on Bald Mountain" by Modest Mussorgsky / Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, but the "Haunted Chase" uses the main theme sparingly but is comprised of specific elements. Instead of being a direct rip-off, the song takes pieces from such Russian pieces as Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" with it's pounding percussion beats. What I take from this song is to recall musical triggers that the audience has associated with both danger and the finale from Disney's Fantasia. Taking all of this into account, the music is played during Haunted Hall, one of the (thankfully few) mine-cart sequences in the game, which I do not find to underscore the amount of danger and stress induced by both the level design and pounding sense of terror. Lastly, according to David Wise' last.fm page, "Stickerbrush Symphony" is a favorite of his listeners as it is a favorite of mine.
"Stickerbrush Symphony" is just one of those mellow songs that is calming and relaxing to listen to. The level that the song comes from however, Bramble Scramble, is anything but calm and relaxing. The song reminds me a lot of the "Aquatic Ambience" from the first Donkey Kong Country. Coincidentally, both songs have been covered by online acapellist SmoothMcGroove as well as othermusicians in variousstyles. So yes, this song is easily a fan favorite. Have a happy Friday all. ~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian Engage the Laser Beam
Today's musical selection comes to us from the SNES of 1995. That year we saw the release of Chrono Trigger, Earthbound and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. 1995 also saw the second installment in the Donkey Kong Country franchise headed by Rare and Nintendo.
From the first time I heard this music in the "Lockjaw's Locker" (Level 1-4), I fell in love with the song, and for me personally, it is one of the highlights on the entire soundtrack. The epicness of the music is on a much higher scale that what is actually going on in the level, even with the sounds of water sloshing against the side of wherever this song was recorded. (Yes, I know it's digital music created in computer and not really recorded on a pirate ship overrun by a crew of anamorphic crocodiles). I do imagine the drums in the song being someone pounding on hollow wooden crates in the bilge of massive schooner in order to create that reverberating sound.
Another thing I love about this track, is that it is named after a minor minion named Lockjaw. Lockjaw is an orange fish somewhat reminiscent of an Angler Fish and it is not even a single one-off fish, but a type of enemy that appears frequently in underwater stages. Lockjaw is not even a boss nor is there a larger boss version. But damn it, Lockjaw has its own saga* apparently and this is the music to said saga*. Very appropriate I think.
Actually, I love this soundtrack as a whole and will probably do a much needed Game Scores article about it on either Friday or Monday. God damn this is great music!
*Since this game, song and soundtrack came out 17 years before Candy Crush Saga was a twinkle in the pot, King can take their saga-sueing due to saga-copyright infringe-saga-ment and shove it.
"This is the first entry in what I hope to be a series of posts about composers/programmers of music in video games. And not just any composers, but composers that we either don't know much about or have miss-attributed soundtracks to. What do I mean by "miss-attribute?" Okay, when you think of the music from the Legend of Zelda series, who comes to mind? Right, Koji Kondo. Except that he didn't write the music for Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. That soundtrack was composed by Akito Nakatsuka. Who is that you ask? In short, he also wrote some of the music for Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!"
The above was my going into what was originally planned as a series of about nine to ten posts, focusing on individual composers and why some soundtracks are miss-attributed to them. As an avid collector of soundtracks, I had thought that knowledge of video game composers would be about as prevalent as knowledge of film music composers. Granted I only know of a couple by name, and those're some of the big guns: Nobuo Uematsu, Koji Kondo, Koichi Sugiyama, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Yasunori Mitsuda, Robin Beanland and David Wise.
As it turned out, this happened to be one of those instances where when you grow up with a particular thing, like a dad who collects and chops/cuts and stacks firewood, that you think that all dads do that. Turns out a lot of dads do not drive out on county roads looking for felled trees or asking people who have had trees cut down if they would mind if their wood was taken out of their gutter. Who knew that wasn't normal? Turns out knowledge of who the composers of video game music are and what games they've composed for is not common knowledge.
I found this out when I put up a survey seeing if 1) If people knew who wrote the music to a particular video game and 2) If they knew, then they were to put down their answer by name. My theory was for example, that if someone would think that because Koji Kondo wrote the music to Super Mario Bros. that they might think he wrote the music to Dr. Mario. Or, as in the first mentioned example of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!.
In the following post I will give the results and my initial analysis of the data that I collected from the survey (which when I last checked was only 20 people). So with this in mind, I will now leave you with a couple youtube-ified tracks from various video games soundtracks that I absolutely love:
Tooth & Claw by Robin Beanland : Killer Instinct
Overworld by Koichi Sugiyama : Dragon Warrior
Sacrifices by Yuzo Koshiro : ActRaiser
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian I Can Just Hear It Now P.S. If you would like to take the aforementioned survey, here is the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XSYPF3N And please do not look up any information before taking the survey as I am/was trying to find out people's existing knowledge. Thank you.
