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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Feb 21, 2019 18:49:01 GMT -5
Knew about it but I was under the impression that it played a medley of songs on loop as one track. At least two of the tracks are 80s pop song covers (Nena - 99 Luftballons, Visage - Fade to Grey) and some seem like variations on previous tracks. I'll just wait for condroid this time.
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Post by phediuk on Feb 21, 2019 18:54:30 GMT -5
Knew about it but I was under the impression that it played a medley of songs on loop as one track. At least two of the tracks are 80s pop song covers (Nena - 99 Luftballons, Visage - Fade to Grey) and some seem like variations on previous tracks. I'll just wait for condroid this time. The tempo is continuous throughout the game but the melody changes seamlessly depending on which room you're in.
Actually, Lazy Jones might be the first game to do seamless music transitions, period.
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Post by condroid on Feb 22, 2019 10:12:13 GMT -5
Some stuff I found when I was looking through the HVSC yesterday: Frantic Freddie (C64, 1983) has 11 tracks (all covers) that are attributed to three different composers/arrangers. Jammin' (C64, 1983) has 42 unique tracks, although some are variations of the same music. This is also an early example of an interactive soundtrack as the music changes depending on which instrument you are carrying. Bomb Jack from 1984 is kind of close at 3 level tracks, although one of them is a Beatles cover. BGM1 is also a cover.Knew about it but I was under the impression that it played a medley of songs on loop as one track. At least two of the tracks are 80s pop song covers (Nena - 99 Luftballons, Visage - Fade to Grey) and some seem like variations on previous tracks. IIRC correctly Lazy Jones uses mostly covers or variations thereof. Even the famous Kernkraft 400 track is somewhat inspired by another piece.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Feb 22, 2019 10:26:08 GMT -5
That's rather obscure re: Bomb Jack, how'd you even find that cartoon theme and the likeness?
Ironic that Whittaker would sue them for that (or is that a myth?). He did go on to make some great stuff both on C64 and Amiga though!
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Post by phediuk on Feb 22, 2019 11:26:21 GMT -5
Some stuff I found when I was looking through the HVSC yesterday: Frantic Freddie (C64, 1983) has 11 tracks (all covers) that are attributed to three different composers/arrangers. Jammin' (C64, 1983) has 42 unique tracks, although some are variations of the same music. This is also an early example of an interactive soundtrack as the music changes depending on which instrument you are carrying. Bomb Jack from 1984 is kind of close at 3 level tracks, although one of them is a Beatles cover. BGM1 is also a cover.Knew about it but I was under the impression that it played a medley of songs on loop as one track. At least two of the tracks are 80s pop song covers (Nena - 99 Luftballons, Visage - Fade to Grey) and some seem like variations on previous tracks. IIRC correctly Lazy Jones uses mostly covers or variations thereof. Even the famous Kernkraft 400 track is somewhat inspired by another piece.Nice work.
I'm not that concerned with whether pieces are original or not since ripoffs are so common in VGM. I'll accept Jammin' as the longest soundtrack of 1983.
And fuck, it must have held that record for a few years. Actually, I wouldn't mind doing an historical progression of the longest video game soundtracks. By the time Sorcerian (PC88, 1987) comes out there's soundtracks with an hour's worth of original music (i.e., not counting loops, there's still an hour of music), and I believe Last Ninja 2 (C64, 1988) is the first soundtrack by a single composer (Matt Gray) to accomplish the same feat.
As far as individual tracks go, the theme from Gordian Tomb (C64, 1990), by Thomas Detert, at 31 minutes, is the longest chiptune I've ever encountered in a video game, and probably close to the longest track period.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Feb 22, 2019 14:47:41 GMT -5
Music in general is full of varying degrees of ripoffs but obviously a straightforward pop song cover is usually the easiest to make and nothing really new after the first one has been made. Certain songs can be a challenge to recreate well on a SID chip for example though. Length is a rather minor if not pointless category on its own - it's not really harder to write a longer track(s) and unless you introduce samples the chiptune tracks tend to barely take up any space (a longer track doesnt necessarily mean a bigger file). A longer, varied track with small but still good sounding samples and featuring more complex tracking techniques which is also used during gameplay without too noticeable cutoff from sfx, now that can be really impressive depending on the hardware used. A track that introduces a new genre to games or various distinct features now associated with the chiptune genre, also cool and relevant. A longer track that stays interesting compositionally, well that's very subjective. My vgm tribute page takes most of that into consideration, but I'll have a look to see what might fit all of them.
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Post by phediuk on Feb 22, 2019 15:03:01 GMT -5
Music in general is full of varying degrees of ripoffs but obviously a straightforward pop song cover is usually the easiest to make and nothing really new after the first one has been made. Certain songs can be a challenge to recreate well on a SID chip for example though. Length is a rather minor if not pointless category on its own - it's not really harder to write a longer track(s) and unless you introduce samples the chiptune tracks tend to barely take up any space (a longer track doesnt necessarily mean a bigger file). A longer, varied track with small but still good sounding samples and featuring more complex tracking techniques which is also used during gameplay without too noticeable cutoff from sfx, now that can be really impressive depending on the hardware used. A track that introduces a new genre to games or various distinct features now associated with the chiptune genre, also cool and relevant. A longer track that stays interesting compositionally, well that's very subjective. My vgm tribute page takes most of that into consideration, but I'll have a look to see what might fit all of them. k but the longest game soundtracks are almost invariably the most complex ones too though. I'm sure someone somewhere has released a game track that's like 2 notes half an hour apart, but in practice, that just isn't common, simple tracks are usually also short, especially in the context of chiptunes.
For instance, you can observe on Project YM2612 that the largest soundtracks in terms of file size correlate strongly (as in, almost precisely) with the longest soundtracks: project2612.org/list.php
I accept that length alone is a crude measure, but it is provably a good indicator of the increasing complexity of game soundtracks for the purposes of this discussion.
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Post by condroid on Feb 22, 2019 15:59:44 GMT -5
Deus Ex Machina (1984) has 45+ minutes of audio, although there are some parts with narration and no background music. For instance, you can observe on Project YM2612 that the largest soundtracks in terms of file size correlate strongly (as in, almost precisely) with the longest soundtracks: project2612.org/list.phpThat's because .vgm is a logged format and thus song length is usually directly proportional to file size. More interesting to know would be how big the memory footprint of music data + sound driver is.
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Post by phediuk on Feb 22, 2019 16:21:23 GMT -5
Deus Ex Machina (1984) has 45+ minutes of audio, although there are some parts with narration and no background music. For instance, you can observe on Project YM2612 that the largest soundtracks in terms of file size correlate strongly (as in, almost precisely) with the longest soundtracks: project2612.org/list.phpThat's because .vgm is a logged format and thus song length is usually directly proportional to file size. More interesting to know would be how big the memory footprint of music data + sound driver is. Is there anywhere that provides such data?
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Post by phediuk on Feb 22, 2019 16:27:31 GMT -5
Also, regarding Deus Ex Machina, I'm talking chiptunes specifically for the point above (i.e., length usually correlates with complexity in chiptunes), and that one falls into the "tape plays prerecorded music after the game is done loading" category. It's still cool and undoubtedly the longest game soundtrack up to that point, but it's a bit adjacent to what I was looking for.
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Post by condroid on Feb 22, 2019 16:49:01 GMT -5
For chiptunes there is Aerobics (Atari 800, 1984) that has 20+ minutes of unlooped, original music. Marble Madness must be up there as well, one of the 6 in-game tracks is over 10 minutes long by itself. Is there anywhere that provides such data? I don't think something like that exists for Genesis games as there is no established sound format that could be used to derive such information from. It's much easier with formats like .sid or .nsf because they are actually binaries that just contain the sound driver + music data and very little else.
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Post by phediuk on Feb 22, 2019 17:05:33 GMT -5
For chiptunes there is Aerobics (Atari 800, 1984) that has 20+ minutes of unlooped, original music. Marble Madness must be up there as well, one of the 6 in-game tracks is over 10 minutes long by itself. Nice.
Also, what do you mean regarding Marble Madness? Here's the soundtrack, which runs 10 minutes, and that's with everything looped, and none of the tracks are more than a minute long without looping.
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Post by phediuk on Feb 22, 2019 17:13:48 GMT -5
I'm assuming you're referring to this track?
Does the music actually play like this in-game? For one, thing the timer is only 99 seconds max, and I'm skeptical that the later part of the track is supposed to sound like that.
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Post by condroid on Feb 22, 2019 17:35:00 GMT -5
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Post by phediuk on Feb 22, 2019 17:43:16 GMT -5
Doesn't look like any of the ports include the stuff after about the 2 minute mark either. I'm thinking the latter section is unintentional.
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