
The complete C64 music collection                            Jens-Christian Huus


Music for the game "Guldkornekspressen", 1991.

One of the last game projects I worked on was for a danish "advertisment" game
ordered by "OTA", a competetor to "Kellogs" who wanted a game for their most
popular breakfast, "Guldkorn" (english - "Goldcorn"). "SilverRock", the makers
of the television games "Hugo" and "Oswald" was interested in making such
commercial games - they obviously saw some bucks in it! :)  "OTA" already had
a commercial on danish television where a toybear was riding an old train with
goldcorn to be delivered after a few obstacles was dodged, typical cartoon style
commercial. The tune from this commercial was the one I converted to the "Intro"
tune in this directory. The games was made on PC, Amiga and C64 and I did all
the music and sfx for the game. Jesper Olsen converted all this to the Amiga -
on the PC only a few beeps was used since we didn't have a PC back then. The C64
version was programmed by a few good old demo programmers from the scene; Thomas
Villadsen (Scorpio/2000 AD), Uffe Jakobsen (Microtop/Starion) with graphics by
Brian "Mr.3D" - so the game certainly boded well. However, long after I finished
the music and sfx, Thomas became extremely lazy - the deadline was crossed again
and again - in the end Thomas had to cut down on a long number of music and sfx
in order to keep it in the game cartridge RAM. One of the greatest sacrifices he
made was "either sfx or in-game music" - but not at once! This was a catastrophe
since I made 2-voice music with 1-voice sfx. When the game was released after a
long delay, certain danish computer magazines critisized the game for its many
bugs - sadly, when a reviewer gets a bad feeling about a game, the rest of it is
of course bad as well. I *HATE* such reviewers! :(  This really made me feel sad
since I actually think the leveltunes are quite nice.

Something that was common for all five leveltunes was that the "puff" in the
chord sounds was output from the player to synchronize it with the smoke coming
up from the chimney of the train. Also, the players for these leveltunes was
especially modified to transpose the tune after two wraps. This is the reason
for times in paranthesis in the SID files. All leveltunes uses TWO voices only.



G_AFTER.DAT     Guldkornekspressen Levels (v3)

                This and the next block contains all five leveltunes crammed
                together in one single block. Notice (3) in the block which is a
                conversion of the music "Do the Locomotion" - I thought it would
                be a nice touch to such a train game. However, the boss back at
                SilverRock thought they might get in trouble if I converted it.
                I tried to tell them that loads of trials had been lost from
                real musicians who tried to sue C64 musicians, but they wouldn't
                listen, so...
                
G_BEFORE.DAT    Guldkornekspressen Levels (v4)

                ...this is how it was changed to make the boss happy. As you can
                hear the difference is really not that big! ;)  Later on during
                the programming of the game, Thomas realized that he could not
                fit all the leveltunes into the game, hence this leveltune was
                the first to go.

HI_TITLE.DAT    Guldkornekspressen Hi/Title

                Contains the hiscore tune (which uses filter in all three voices
                at the same time - rather unusual) and the titletune. The title-
                tune took a long time to convert to the Amiga, yet the coders on
                the Amiga version only found room for the simple hiscore tune,
                totally discarding the title tune. Grrmbllfll! :)  The hiscore
                was a simple idea from the keyboard. It does not sound too cool
                nowadays, but what the heck. The tunes are...

                      #  Name              Time   Voice   By      Type
                    

                      1) Hiscore           0:38     3     Jch     Music
                      2) Title screen      2:26     3     Jch     Music

                The titletune is IMHO only interesting from 01:41.

INTRO.DAT       Guldkornekspressen Intro

                This can also be found as "HOOONING.DAT" somewhere else in this
                package. It wasn't used in the game because of memory problems.
                A shame - the conversion it quite all right, IMHO.

JINGLES.DAT     Guldkornekspressen Jingles

                All the jingles for the game in a seperate block. It includes...

                      #  Name                      Time   Voice   Type
                    

                      1) Get ready                 0:02     3     Jingle
                      2) Game over                 0:03     3     Jingle
                      3) Reach startpoint          0:01     3     Jingle
                      4) Reach destination         0:01     3     Jingle
                      5) Forgot some goldcorn      0:01     3     Jingle
                      6) Remembered all goldcorn   0:01     3     Jingle
                      7) Loose a train             0:02     3     Jingle
                      8) Chain onto wagon          0:01     3     Jingle
                      9) Super train jingle        0:02     3     Jingle

                Jingle #6 is my own favourite of all these jingles.

LVL1.DAT        Guldkornekspressen Level 1 (2-voice)

                A major scale tune.

LVL2.DAT        Guldkornekspressen Level 2 (2-voice)

                Another major scale tune, slightly more interesting that #1.

LVL3.DAT        Guldkornekspressen Level 3 (2-voice)

                The modified "Locomotion" tune. The longest of them all with
                some snaredrum stuff in the end.

LVL4.DAT        Guldkornekspressen Level 4 (2-voice)

                The second-best of the five, IMHO.

LVL5.DAT        Guldkornekspressen Level 5 (2-voice)

                Here I became bored of the usual major scale stuff and made a
                leveltune with a minor scale. This is my favourite leveltune.


