Saturday Soundtracks: Star Goose for Atari ST

Back to the old school Atari ST with this vertical scrolling shooter, featuring a tank that fired bullets or collected missiles and disappeared down 3D tunnels picking up tokens to recharge fuel and shields. The premise is simple: shoot down everything in your path, collect the gems and don't run out of shields or fuel.

A game that featured exactly zero sound effects during the game but made up for it with a wonderfully pumping soundtrack. Now that I think about it, I struggled to get the link with geese and I assumed that it was something to do with the shape of the ship, but nevertheless a solid scrolling shooter.

Saturday Soundtracks: Asterix & The Great Rescue

Saturday Soundtracks: Spring Yard Zone / Sonic the Hedgehog

Now we're talking! Everyone and their mum has played this game and some of the music and sound design was of a great standard for a launch title. Well, that comment about mums was definitely true for mine; she made it most of the way through Emerald Hill Zone before dying at Robotnik and giving up at the continue screen.

No matter - Spring Yard Zone is a great bit of hard edged FM Hip Hop goodness, even verging into Bobby Brown / Bel Biv Devoe new jack swing with those claps and offbeats. Still great today as it ever was, even if Spring Yard Zone was a fairly short experience compared with later levels like Labyrinth Zone and that this game was shortly surpassed in graphical fidelity and sound by its sequels.

Saturday Soundtracks: Disruptor

Another Saturday, another soundtrack; this time it's stylish PlayStation shooter Disruptor.

Saturday Soundtracks: Time Crisis (End Theme)

Another foray into video game soundtracks, this time into Namco's arcade classic Time Crisis (which also got ported to the PS1).

Saturday Soundtracks: Pac Mania

More vidya soundtracks for a Saturday: this time, it's the rather bloopy Pac Mania.

Saturday Soundtracks: Launch Base Zone Act 1

Welcome back to Saturday Soundtracks for 2016, a look at video game music that I enjoy. 

Saturday Soundtrack: Transistor

After a slight hiatus, I hope to be returning to my Saturday Soundtracks series, which highlights music in video games that have really stood out for me and are worth talking about,

Having only recently bought and played this title, I am in a mood to rave about it to people who perhaps haven't already had the chance to try it and to share experiences with fellow players. At the heart of Transistor, a real time and turn-based brawler in an isometric view (similar to SuperGiant Games' other title Bastion), is the incredible attention to detail that makes up the beautiful world and the soundtrack, which in the case of Transistor is an essential element of the plot as well as an excuse for a damn fine score.

Party in the park - Lovebox weekender lineup announced!

Looks like a great lineup, especially with Rudimental returning for the Friday after they smashed it silly a couple of years ago.

From the press release:

"Across the entire weekend, the Lovebox masses will be treated to an exclusive set from Despacio, the innovative, custom-built soundsystem brought to you by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy and 2manydjs. This is going to be an unmissable experience.

Another Lovebox exclusive is an extra-special A/V set from the revered Bonobo. His appearance is set to be immersive and unforgettable, as is Squarepusher's - his pioneering, experimental shows have wowed crowds the world over, and now he's set to stun Lovebox following a sold out show at the Barbican and the release of his highly-anticipated sixteenth album Damogen Furies."

As long as the weather holds, I'll be there!

http://loveboxfestival.com/

Saturday Soundtracks: Chaos Engine

Another Bitmap Shooter gets added to my list of video game gems, this time the seminal classic Chaos Engine. 

Saturday Soundtracks: Mortal Kombat Theme

It's unthinkable that I would have forgotten to mention this came at all in my video game music memories, with the opening title theme and music setting the scene for the excellent Mega Drive console port of the arcade beat 'em up classic. 

Saturday Soundtracks: TMNT Tournament Fighters

Part of the problem with doing posts reminiscing about video game music, is that eventually you have trouble remembering all the games and their music that you enjoyed back in the day after doing the really obvious stuff.

Saturday Soundtrack: International Karate

A very well produced title back in the days of 1985/86 when the home video game revolution was in full swing and martial arts were experiencing another boom in popularity. From the opening titles and credits, you can tell that a lot of work has been put in to the animation, thought sadly the beat em up game play is still a basic, albeit button-mashingly joyful affair. Music occasionally stutters and its various parts get out of sync with each other to resync later on, but I think this is quite charming of a game that is nearly 30 years old. 

Fists as big as your hand!

Saturday Soundtracks: Rolling Ronny

Another classic case of Atari ST square waves gone slightly over the top, Rolling Ronny is a side scrolling platformer with a distinctly British sense of humor. You are Ronny, a clown courier on roller skates, who has to deliver a package across town. However, in order to progress through each stage and get to the next level, you have to endure a set of zany enemies, jumping scenes and a time gauge - even then if you didn't collect enough coins you couldn't afford the bus journey to the next level and your game ended. So yes, it's not particularly forgiving, but the music certainly made up for this - a raucous mix of Atari ST blips and blops in a very childish manner that of course appealed to me as a pre-10 year old games player. See what you think!

Fallout 3 Main Theme / Inon Zur

Ranking up there as a comparable Pavlovian response as the Tetris theme, Fallout 3's amazingly varied soundtrack, starting with the opening theme hits all the right notes. The score builds slowly to the first climax, which coincides nicely with the point where the menu screen comes in and works precisely because it fits in with the rest of the game. For a title that is all about a post nuclear apocalypse, a grim prospect of survival and destruction, and there's plenty of comic and outright silly things out in the wasteland to enjoy to counterbalance it. Looking back to the score, the main theme from Inon Zur presents the game as neither a completely terrible place or completely lighthearted - there's just enough menace in the trumpets to say that there is danger out there but some things have survived and there are opportunities out there.

Lemmings - 10 Green Bottles

One of the biggest successes of DMA (now Rockstar) before the Grand Theft Auto series was the addictive puzzler Lemmings, published by Psygnosis (who became Sony Liverpool, RIP guys!) which has since been ported to every platform under the sun in an attempt to get as much revenue as possible out of it.

Wario Land Stage 1

As Game Boy games go, this one ranks pretty highly in terms of time spent as a kid playing through. A kind of alternative Super Mario Land, this one stars Mario's alter ego and main rival Wario (see what they did there? They replaced the M with a W: genius!) and rather than try and save the girl, all Wario wants to do is to shoulder barge everyone and steal all their money and treasures, so that when he defeats all the pirates he has enough money to buy a super sized castle to live in. 

Mondo Grosso - Shinin'

This isn't just because I bought a PSP on release day (yep, got one of ten 1001 mark PSPs that came to Wallington) or that I think that the PSP is a totally underrated platform for games, but that Lumines was such a standout success for a launch title. Successfully combining bright colours, addictive puzzle action, a straightforward rule set and such great music throughout, this title reminds me of the good, old Sony that used to come out with excellent and enjoyable games. In particular, the cheerful Mondo Grosso's Shinin' is just a joy to hear when starting up a new game and really brings back some good memories of playing this during my year abroad in Germany.

Q! Productions also were responsible for Gunpei, another underrated puzzle title for the platform that I enjoyed, and the port of EEE (Every Extend Extra), which also combines music, pulsing visuals and a spin on shoot 'em up style for a compulsive mix. I'm not sure what they are up to now, but they were responsible for a lot of time spent on my PSP!

New review: I'll Be Your Mirror

Photo courtesey of Efestivals

I've been a bit busy over the weekend with the I'll Be Your Mirror festival, with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs curating an interesting group of bands coming together last Saturday 4th May. It's good to get back into the reviewing season and I am pleased that I have other ones coming up as well.

There was plenty on during the day, though the lack of the second curator meant that there was only the one day rather than the two days in 2011 when Portishead organised the festival. There were also fewer food stands as well - perhaps the credit crunch is having unexpected consequences.

Well worth seeing King Khan and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion as relatively unknown groups that I hadn't heard of who gave really great performances. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs performed a really slick gig whose production values were streets ahead of the others, but then again, it wouldn't exactly be good of them to foul up as headliners, would it?

Link to full review:
http://www.efestivals.co.uk/festivals/ibym/2013/review-overview.shtml

Pokemon Main Theme / Game Boy

Finally justifying the reason why I had a Game Boy Pocket Blue (which I have recently rediscovered under my old toys), the early red and blue Pokemon games were the perfect sort of RPG game that satisfies my base nature for collectivism. It felt like one of the first Game Boy titles I had played that actually had a bit more depth to it than the arcade ports (Tetris, Formula 1, Mortal Kombat, Mario, Bomberman etc) that I had owned or played up to that point.