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What's your favorite game intro or song?

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barythrin

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Per's thread (I know.. shocker..) sounded like an interesting topic. Perhaps it'll get some folks to look at some of these games. I'm really torn on this and accidentally thought about it too much heh.

So, one of the impressive ones I remember was coming from a PC and primarily PC speaker environment and seeing off of a 800K floppy the intro to Cannon Fodder on Amiga. TV style intro with music and lyrics off of a floppy. Blew me away.

But honestly the one I was going to write about for my favorite song is Ultima VI during character creation
 
To Be On Top for the Commodore 64. It had some of the coolest computer music I heard at the time. My copy of the game was buggy and didn't play, but it would play the music which was enough for me :)
 
barythrin said:
But honestly the one I was going to write about for my favorite song is Ultima VI during character creation
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That is a great theme, but the cheesy Adlib version totally pales in comparison to the gold standard... the Roland LAPC-I version! You can download an MP3 of it here:

http://www.dor-lomin.com/archive/ultima//musicarchive/u6/

My personal favorite is from a game I've actually never played... "Monty On The Run" on the C64. The main theme is great, but I like the high score / credits theme even better.

Here's the original C64 SID version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OT3SP8tvLc

And the re-arranged version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRJEIUz1CVM

Other musical favorites of mine:
Super Mario Bros. (NES)
One Man and His Droid (C64)
Pitfall II (Atari 2600 with custom Activision sound chip in the cartridge!)
Frogger (Atari 800/XL/XE disk version with full music)
Tetris (NES)
 
Phew, that's a tough question actually, since all the Sierra and Lucasfilm adventures had very catchy intro music, but I think I'll go with Laura Bow 1 (PC).
 
I'm most used to listening to C64 music. I could mention a number of songs, but will limit myself to a few:
Trap by Ben Daglish (see also related remake)
Tetris by Wally Beben (song is actually twice as long as the YouTube video is)

It should be noted Wally Beben's Tetris has nothing to do with the Russian cover musics used by Nintendo. You can find a high quality MP3 recording at SOASC but beware 25 minutes of music equals 40 MB of data to download.
 
pontus said:
Dune 2 wins hands down! It blew me away when I first saw it and I've watched it many many times and know it by heart.
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Did you know that Frank Klepacki, the composer of the music of most Westwood games (including Dune II), has a Flash player applet at the bottom of his web site, through which you can listen to most of his creations?

http://frankklepacki.com/

A couple of times, I actually had his site open or minimized on my machine at work, while listening to some of the goldies with headphones on. :D

Also, I bought a Roland MT-32 last week. I was looking for one, and I found one on Marktplaats, a popular Dutch on-line marketplace that is now owned by eBay.

I bought that thing out of nostalgia: I really want to hear all the intros and in-game music on older games, the way they were meant to be heard. After all, the MT-32 was the module of choice for most game music composers before General MIDI became commonplace.

I can't hook it up yet, because I'm still waiting for a MIDI/USB adapter that I ordered from Hong Kong through eBay.

The LA synthesizer inside the Roland MT-32 (and the LAPC-1, which is basically an MPU-401 and an MT-32 integrated on a single ISA card) is surprisingly hard to emulate. The Munt project comes close, but requires a lot of CPU power, and still can't get it entirely right. Also, it requires dumps of the original ROMs, of which the legal status is currently uncertain.

I can't wait to hook that puppy up to my Macbook Pro, so I can try it out with DOSBox and ScummVM. :)
 
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digger said:
Did you know that Frank Klepacki, the composer of the music of most Westwood games (including Dune II), has a Flash player applet at the bottom of his web site, through which you can listen to most of his creations?

http://frankklepacki.com/
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I didn't :) Thanks for pointing it out. The Dune2 Medley is really neat. It sounds very different from my old PC experience, he obviously plays it on much fancier midi hardware compared to general midi.

/P
 
pontus said:
I didn't :) Thanks for pointing it out. The Dune2 Medley is really neat. It sounds very different from my old PC experience, he obviously plays it on much fancier midi hardware compared to general midi.

/P
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He redid and "upgraded" some of the classic Dune II sound tracks for Dune 2000. The music in that remake was prerecorded digital audio, as in most games by then. The MIDI era was already over. :(

Oh well, at least there was no more sound card "elitism". Any sound card with a reasonable DAC would reproduce the music as intended. And the music that Frank composed for the C&C series (which was also all prerecorded digital audio), was just as awesome as the stuff he did for Dune II, IMO.
 
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While not a PC game, my Fav is the enemy boss music from NES's 'LifeForce'

I still get chills running down my spine and my hair stands on end everytime i go back to fighting the last boss
 
Do you rember Mystic Towers? I love that title song. Can't remember how much time I spent with this game... :D
 
Hehe Mystic Towers :) Great game. It's abandonware now IIRC so go and grab a copy of DOSbox :)

My choice is probably going to make a few people cringe... but it's 'Popcorn' rendered on the PC speaker as featured on Digger (only because it was the first game music that stuck in my head, after playing it on a Compaq portable 20 or so years ago)

EDIT: Ahah that's coincidence... didn't see 'digger's post above! Not just me who's a fan then!
 
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