================================================================================ The complete C64 music collection Jens-Christian Huus ================================================================================ Various game-music, 1988-1991. This is a collection of the music I managed to do in my 5-year period as a composer on the Commodore 64. Apart from "Orcus" and "Guldkornekspressen" which was put into their own directories, the list is very short. And to make matters even worse, half of the games was not released at all! ================================================================================ DEMOGAME.DAT Demogame example This block was made as the first of seven planned leveltunes. It was ordered by a guy in "Bonzai", shortly after I met "Trap" of "Bonzai" for the first time. The five sounds are... # Name Time Voice By Type ====================================================== 1) Get ready 0:03 3 Jch Jingle 2) Game over 0:02 3 Jch Jingle 3) Player explodes 0:02 3 Jch Sfx 4) Congr/Title 0:40 3 Jch Music 5) In-game 2:41 3 Jch Music This was the second attempt after the "Golddigger" project. The game was never finished. GOLDDIG.DAT Golddigger This was the first real game-music project I did. Somewhere in the other end of Denmark an entusiastic guy wanted to establish a new software house - to help getting this organized, he collected a few interesting people in the scene for a meeting in a big room somewhere in Jutland. Here the future plans for the firm which was named "The Electronic Generation" was discussed. I met "Link" for the first time and introduced the editor to him - he became the first person to use it (other than myself of course!). The first game that "TEG" wanted to code was a "Boulder Dash" clone called "Golddigger". Being beginners as we were, "Link" and I decided to split the work into doing half of the tunes each. As soon as we got home and did the work, we never heard from this "firm" again. There are seven tunes in the block... # Name Time Voice By Type ====================================================== 1) Hiscore 1:12 3 Jch Music 2) Space bonus 1:22 2 Jch Music 3) Bouncy bonus 1:01 2 Jch Music 4) Breakout bonus 0:42 2 Jch Music 5) Title screen 1:55 3 Link Music 6) Game over 0:02 3 Link Jingle 7) Get ready 0:01 3 Link Jingle All this was made in april 1989. Considering the quality of other composers at that time, these tunes were easily forgotten. HUGO_ZAK.DAT Hugo Title A professional software house in Denmark called "SilverRock" gained a lot of success with "Hugo" in danish television. This troll could be controlled in a game using telephone buttons! A very new concept which soon became enormously popular. Today, SilverRock are selling the concept to television firms all over the world and are still making dozens of new scenes. The original scene, however, had Hugo wandering through 3D mazes collecting gold and dodging dynamite. During the success of the troll, a real musician produced a CD containing a rap hit where Hugo was singing using the typical voice which was also used in the game. As the game was converted for sales versions from the Amiga to PC and C64, I did the C64 song converted from the danish rap hit. I didn't have a PC back then, so I had nothing to do with the PC version. LABYRINT.DAT Labyrint A television quiz program which was made popular by a great danish former disc-jockey Kim Schumacher was converted by a small danish firm as a C64 game. The music was composed on the amiga by an unknown guy. "Drax" was asked to convert the tune for a certain sum of money but, as he said himself, he wasn't sure he could convert it so he asked me for help. I completed the conversion for the ridiculous sum of money - later, "Drax" admitted that he didn't complete the conversion because he thought the original amiga music was boring. I must confess that he has a point there! :) OSWALD.DAT Oswald Before inventing "Hugo" for television, SilverRock Productions actually had a little success with its predecessor, "Oswald", which was also controlled using an ordinary telephone. The game was much simpler - Oswald had to jump on ice floes viewed as in typical platform arcade games on older computers. "Hugo" which arrived later, revolutionized the idea by introducing real 3D animation. Anyway, on the C64 version of the original amiga game I had to compose my very own piece of music since the game didn't really have any music at all. I made two tries, both present in this package. The first ("FIASKO_2.DAT") was trashed while the second made the programmer and graphician go completely wild. PERPLEX.DAT Perplex This is only a fragment of the music for the game "Perplex". The game was a shoot'em up coded by an austrian guy, Robert Hermely, with great graphics by "Corwin" - the game was very advanced and easily knocked every other sideways shoot'em up out. Using every trick from the demoscene the game was slick but took a long time to code. In the beginning "Drax" did the soundtrack for the game while I made the sfx. At some time during the production of the music, "Drax" thought he could use some help and I agreed to do some of the music. The part here contains my contributions to the game... # Name Time Voice By Type ====================================================== 1) Get ready 0:03 3 Jch Jingle 2) Game over 0:02 3 Jch Jingle 3) In-game 4+ 1:32 3 Jch Music 4) Monster 4+ 0:23 3 Jch Music While the music and sfx was done in 1990, the game was put on ice by the austrian guys as they became tired of it. Some years later they revived the project, finished it, and sold it to a german software house under the new name, "Hermetic". PITFIGHT.DAT Pitfight One of the last game projects I worked on. Through the member in Scotland, "Deek", I made contact with a guy who managed to get me a few orders from the software house "Domark". This music was ordered for "Pitfight" and contains... # Name Time Voice By Type ====================================================== 1) Bonus 0:03 3 Jch Music 2) In-game 2:11 2 Jch Music It was probably in 1991 - I remember I made an extra effort out of squeezing as many chords and effects into the two voices of the in-game tune to make it sound like many more voices. PU_INTRO.DAT Push-It Intro The danish demogroup "Jewels" also fiddled with a puzzle game, called "Push-It". Featuring main code by "Doc" and main graphics by "Access", the game looked very promising when I first saw it. I accepted the job although I knew it would be risky since this was another job for private people. This is the intro tune, one of my favourite tunes from the C64 period. It uses a double voice drum and was heavily inspired by the music on "Task III", a game featuring music by a guy I never quite identified. This tune is well worth checking out if I may say so. Don't mind the strange intro, listen to the main part from 00:17. At 02:49, a few dog-like barksounds appears followed by a funny solo at 03:11. From 03:58 the tunes ends with a drum part. As far as the game concerns - do I really have to say that it wasn't finished? PU_MAIN.DAT Push-It Main Here's the main music block for "Push-It", the puzzle game. It was made in november 1989 and features... # Name Time Voice By Type ====================================================== 1) Game over 0:02 3 Jch Jingle 2) Hiscore 1:01 3 Jch Music 3) In-game 2:43 3 Jch Music 4) Get ready 0:02 3 Jch Jingle 5) Title screen 3:41 3 Jch Music The music is not as outstanding as the introtune, IMHO. SU-SWEET.DAT Su-Sweet Speaking of puzzle games, the german software house "Double Density" was a master at releasing such games. One of them was the game "Su-Sweet" which was a "Tetris" clone with a few interesting new ideas thrown in. I was contacted and asked to do the soundtrack within a tight deadline. This is the music for the game - it was done in march 1991 and includes... # Name Time Voice By Type ====================================================== 1) Intro/Title 3:07 3 Jch Music 2) Made it 0:51 3 Jch Music 3) Get ready 0:02 3 Jch Jingle 4) Game over 0:06 3 Jch Jingle 5) Well done 0:06 3 Jch Jingle 6) In-game 1 0:57 2 Jch Music 7) In-game 2 1:32 2 Jch Music 8) In-game 3 0:46 2 Jch Music The titletune is perhaps one of the best "shuffle"-tunes I have done on the C64. I tried to use a claves instrument too. Notice the melodic change at 01:32. Most of the tunes in this block needs a lot of filtering on the hihat noise, something you'll have to live with on the PC, I'm afraid! ;) The 2-voice in-game tunes was another example of trying to cram as many chords and notes into two voices as possible - tune 1 and 3 uses leader and chords with drum and bass in the other voice, but tune 2 was very special. Here both drum, bass and chords was squeezed into the first voice, leaving the second voice for the leader alone! TECNETIU.DAT Tecnetium I always get mixed feelings when I play this music. The title- tune is long and I put a lot of work into it in april 1989, but today I can hear loads of harmonic errors here and there! :) The game was done for a sideways shoot'em up which a couple of totally unknown danish guys was making. This was some time before "Perplex", so at that time I thought the game looked very good - inspite of the fact that the programmers didn't know anything about a C64 scene at all! The block contains... # Name Time Voice By Type ====================================================== 1) Title screen 5:55 3 Jch Music 2) Hiscore 1:29 3 Jch Music You will also find a few jingles and a little in-game tune in the version for the emulator. The hiscore theme was a conversion of the old Cliff Richard hit "Congratulations" done right out my head. I always wanted to make such a hiscore tune, because I always thought Rob Hubbard made a mistake when he made "sad" hiscore tunes. You made it to the HISCORE for crying out loud! This only happens if you made a score that was bigger than the scores on the list - it's supposed to be a HAPPY thing! :) The game itself suffered the same fate as most other games I made music for - the programmers soon became tired of it all. On the the titletune a strange intro part is kept alive for 50 seconds until the tune really begins. At 03:28 there's a drum solo and at 05:11 a real solo. ================================================================================