PC Engine Music. Favorite tunes?

[Lord Contaminous]

Lately I've been listening to the HES files from zophar.net on my winamp. I never thought PCE/TG music was so good.

Forget the CD music. I'm talking about redbook chip driven Hucard music.

I noticed that most of the time, the PC Engine sounds extremely identical to the NES/Famicom sound format, but with some extra samples thrown in to enhance it.

[Lost Monkey]

Dragon's Curse (J-Adventure Island) has my favourite chip music.

Others: "Air Zonk", "Bonk's Revenge", "Cyber Core", "Devil's Crush", and "Alien Crush".

[Ed Oscuro]

If you're saying "redbook chip driven," that's a joke, right? Redbook is the primary CD-ROM format only. Anyhow, I think I listed some of my favorites a while back, but here goes:

Shinobi and Valkyrie no Densetsu (mostly superb arcade translations, though some tracks are a bit weak compared to the real ones, for Shinobi this is most noticeable on the Continue/End Game track, and for Valkyrie no Densetsu some of the background melody is lost) are very good.

Jimmu Densho Yaksa is a mostly great-sounding soundtrack; $1b from the HES (Semi Maru) is pretty awesome.

As for the rest, a number of the soundtracks have something I like (I always liked the silly melody for Battle Lode Runner), but don't really distinguish themselves overall. Daimakaimura's HES is a pretty fair cover of the arcade game's soundtrack, though.

[Lord Contaminous]

I guess I took the term "redbook" out of context.

I thought what it meant was music strictly made by a chip instead of digitized instruments no matter what.

The other day I got EACH HES file from Zophar.

My favorites so far, Dragon Spirit/Saber, Fighting Run, Battle Ace (SGX), Burning Angels, Benki Gaiden, City Hunter
Barunba, Batman (several tunes from the NES game are on it)

[Lord Contaminous]

Dragon's Curse (J-Adventure Island) has my favourite chip music.

Others: "Air Zonk", "Bonk's Revenge", "Cyber Core", "Devil's Crush", and "Alien Crush".

Dragon's Curse is "Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap"

[klausien]

I have always loved the first of the two underground stage tunes in Keith Courage/Wataru. EPIC.

[Lost Monkey]

Dragon's Curse (J-Adventure Island) has my favourite chip music.

Others: "Air Zonk", "Bonk's Revenge", "Cyber Core", "Devil's Crush", and "Alien Crush".

Dragon's Curse is "Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap"

Yes... but the PC Engine version is not called "Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap", it is called "Adventure Island"...


http://www.pcecp.com/index.php?mode=catalog&action=images&gameid=8

[Lord Contaminous]

Hmm interesting that's quite a mix up. To me it will always be Wonderboy III cuz i recognize the music from the SMS/Game Gear.

[Lemmy Kilmister]

Hmm interesting that's quite a mix up. To me it will always be Wonderboy III cuz i recognize the music from the SMS/Game Gear.


That's the thing. Should Adventure Island even be added to the list of great TG/PC hu-card soundtracks? I'm not saying the music isn't good, because it's great, but it still was a SMS game first and for most.

[DDCecil]

Here are my favorites:

Parasol Stars (Level 1 especially)
Dragon Spirit (Level 1, again)
Batman (NES Remixes!)
Momotarou Katsugeki (I love the game, and the soundtrack rules!)

[Lord Contaminous]

Another reason but kinda rare is the music itself.

Japanese games that DO make it to the US, get the music completely altered during localization. Examples:

>Ninja Cop Saizou/Wrath of the Black Manta -I think the music was changed to fit the atmosphere of Wrath.

>Gegege No Q-Taro/Ninja Kid -Don't know why they changed

>Doraemon/Cratermaze -I haven't heard much of the music from both these games, but apparently the Doraemon music sounded a little kiddy and Cratermaze's sounded like an average action game.

Now here's one case that was kinda necessary.

Superman for NES.

All the music in the Japanese Famicom version are 8-bit renditions of over a few selections of the musical score from the 4 Superman movies with Christopher Reeve.

Kemco USA had to make origiinal different tunes because of copyright laws.

Sometimes it's worth having the Japanese and chopped up US/Euro versions on hand. Just to see the culture differences.

Play River City Ransom, Renegade and all the other Kunio Kun beat em ups.

Leather jackets, blue jeans and spiked punk haircuts vs. Japanese School Uniforms.