There are many Monkey Island albums running around. Redbook audios, gamerips … I like them all, but have always missed what, in my opinion, are some of the best musical atmospheres to grace a video game ever: the evolving chiptunes from the original PC version of Monkey Island 2, specifically the ones of Scabb Island. With a very Adlib-ish sound, and using the iMuse audio system which alllowed music to “evolve” according to your movements and location, the spooky and obscure music was making traveling by night through Scabb Island a memorable experience.
Eventhough the melodies remain great on their own, I could never find the right atmosphere within the various track by track redbooks and game recordings I ran into. So one night, I just fired ScummVM and recorded myself wandering on Scabb Island for 30 minutes. This is the result.
I am a big listener of Medieval music in general and, as I said already, like medievalish chiptunes a lot. I think simple chiptunes with their clear separated sounds are very appropriate to render medieval music constructions, like it’s also the case with Baroque harpsichord or organ melodies.
Anyway, here are recordings of the music from the PC88/98 versions of Ultima 3, 4 5 and 6. As a medieval and video game music listener, I couldnt not love music from the Ultima games, and the Japanese retro PCs versions stand among my favorites. Those were ripped from Rophon‘s S98 game logs.
As you maybe noticed within the ZX Spectrum edition itself, Follin goodness gets better as technology evolves. Let’s take it one step further with the Atari ST. Converted from game logs, there too.
And there goes a first Falcom release. Falcom PC Engine games are famous for their redbook audio (CDDA tracks), which were most of the time handled by Ryo Yonemitsu. However, the music generated by the PCE itself remained, at that time, unavailable (game logs were made possible since then, though). Anyway, this archive consists of both the redbook tracks and the chiptunes.
The Follin Project was started on a forum with various members. It aimed at recording MP3s of all VGM related works by Tim and Geoff Follin.
Although recordings from original hardware were announced to be preferred, the produced recordings were most of the time from emulated game music logs. The project generated quite a lot of enthusiasm for a while then, as expected, died. However, in the meantime, quite a lot has been made.
This first volume are recordings from the ZX Spectrum games the Follin brothers composed for. I did those from emulated game logs, and I’ve been told the sound isn’t always very accurate, but heh, I don’t own a ZX.
That one is an actual repost from the old days, i’ll quote the nfo there too:
I never played PC88/98 or any other japanese retro PCs as a kid. In fact, I pretty much ignored their existence until a few years back. I discovered them, and their sound systems, thanks to my tastes in videogame music. Almost exclusively Falcom works at first, of course, then after much listening to Sound Team JDK’s goodness, my ears kinda learned to appreciate the true minimalist power and poetry of those early chiptune sounds. I thus widened my horizons, and became quite addicted.
There is a reason why Falcom’s music or people like Yuzo Koshiro are so famous, though: they do tend to rock much more often than the others. After listening to so many PC88 soundtracks, one understands why something like the first Ys OST was such a shock. Still, many hidden gems are hiding in what could sound like an average, or even mediocre soundtrack, at first. This is of course the reason to be of this compilation.
And there goes a first release. Re-release actually since it was posted on specialized forums already a while ago…. Anyway, I’ll just quote the nfo:
This is part of a project which aims at creating video game music compilations of all the essential titles me, my brother and cousin played as kids and thoughout our adolescence. In this first volume, we first get to hear music from games of my cousin’s Master System. We then continue on the Game Gear part, which was the first console I ever actually owned. I had to record most of the Game Gear tracks myself since game logs for this system are rare. All the rest, though, are recorded from emulated game logs. The purpose of this isnt as much to create an objective best-of as it is an attempt to re-create the atmosphere of what seems to be so long ago already, and awake memories.
There are many Monkey Island albums running around. Redbook audios, gamerips … I like them all, but have always missed what, in my opinion, are some of the best musical atmospheres to grace a video game ever: the evolving chiptunes from the original PC version of Monkey Island 2, specifically the ones of Scabb Island. With a very Adlib-ish sound, and using the iMuse audio system which alllowed music to “evolve” according to your movements and location, the spooky and obscure music was making traveling by night through Scabb Island a memorable experience.
