another fun, fairly obscure, game soundtrack title: Greg LoPiccolo's "Hospital - Alternate" from System Shock.
SS has some great tracks, but the musical qualities really depend upon the quality of MIDI synth you're working with. even with a real Roland SC-55, it's a bit flat sounding.
in a pretty rare move for Origin Systems - they released a Macintosh/PowerPC version of System Shock. there was a bunch of extra space on the CD, and LoPiccolo took advantage of it by rendering and remastering his own redbook audio tracks. they're great - far better than a vanilla SC-55. he took a lot of extra time to customize his instruments and play with the stereo separation.
so here it is, freshly ripped from my macintosh CD.
@vga256@retrohistories
I totally forgot we did that on SS Mac! I remember we had them redo all the cinematic videos at higher res for the Mac version, but forgot about the music. Such a great soundtrack. There is a 99% chance I wrote the red book music controlling code for SS Mac 🙂
Do I know anyone who does/knows about #VideoGameMusic / #VideoGame Music / #VGM? I have a question about how something worked in a discontinued game called #Priconne.
It's a game that has visual novel story telling for cutscenes. During those scenes there's "dynamic music" in the background but I don't know enough about music or mobile game hardware to know what is normal or feasible.
I thought that dynamic music usually worked by having loop_A play in area A then when you moved to area_B it would cross fade by decreasing the volume of A and increasing B. Maybe there's another layer of music added on top to indicate a special effect is going on but that second layer ignores the first. It's just composed in such a way that it sorta works with either of them and has a timing thing so it starts at a time to make certain beats line up.
What confuses me about the cutscenes in Priconne is that it seems like they're able to do fancier stuff like changing tempo, picking which instruments are playing, or making it sound sadder (change to minor key?) in response to where you are in the dialogue tree.
Can you actually do that kind of thing on the fly or do they just have a few variants of the song that they switch between with normal cross fades? I only saw them do it in scenes with a handful of instruments if that helps narrow it down.
I guess what I'm really asking is does the script for the cutscene say something like "switch to track_6_sad.mp3 at next opportunity" or is it more like "for track_6.midi applyTransform(MOOD_SAD) and muteChannel(trombone)"?
@o76923 Changing the instrument is certainly a easy task in MIDI, you just have to change the channel in which the MIDI signal is sent.
In terms of instruments I don't believe there would be any limitation, is more about how the song itself is made that needs to be a certain way to not arouse any weird dissonance whenever the keychange happens. In keys they would probably be limited to using either the same mode or even only the same key during a song, to achieve the major-minor thing.
Having beaten the #CassetteBeasts game and not finished the post-game content..."Same Old Story" takes on more meaning than it did initially. The feeling that centuries of experience are baked into these lyrics, the perspective of a far older being.
I'm buying this soundtrack tomorrow for offline listening...All the songs are inspired!
@MetalTigerDude
Exactly, this is what pushed me through. The music really pulled me in, it absolutely brought this experience to a cohesive level that is imagination capturing.
@PlayAllTheThings Eiko Ishikawa Nichols does lovely soundtrack work and arrangements of familiar stuff. I particularly enjoy her turns at Final Fantasy arrangements: https://ayco.bandcamp.com
I don't market my music much... I hope people enjoy it and want people to listen, but marketing always feels weird... I'll get better one day, maybe...
However, I haven't released anything in a while, but the bandcamp income keeps going up... I coul just focus on music and games if it keeps up... I'm also getting onto other platforms and itch. Anyway, I'm lowering the "digital discography" price to say, "thanks!" Give me a follow if you like DOS, Midi, SNES, and chiptune music: https://zweihander.bandcamp.com/follow_me #chiptunes#midi#fmsynth#dosmusic#videogamemusic#snesmusic
I know it's gonna be a long day when I start humming
NES tunes out of nowhere. Zelda 2's palace music and most of the stuff from Castlevania 3 are bangers j/s
It's #VGMWednesday and todays theme is #SuperSixteenBit One of my favorite and most played Sega Megadrive (Genesis) games was Streets of Rage 2. The soundtrack is still a banger!
It still blows my mind that composer Yuzo Koshiro was only 22 back then 🤯 He started composing video game soundtracks when still in high school. Check out a photo of his setup in 1989 in this recent feature: