
The complete C64 music collection                            Jens-Christian Huus


Various game-music, 1988-1991.

This is a collection of the music I managed to do in my 5-year period as a
composer on the Commodore 64. Apart from "Orcus" and "Guldkornekspressen" which
was put into their own directories, the list is very short. And to make matters
even worse, half of the games was not released at all!



DEMOGAME.DAT    Demogame example

                This block was made as the first of seven planned leveltunes.
                It was ordered by a guy in "Bonzai", shortly after I met "Trap"
                of "Bonzai" for the first time. The five sounds are...

                      #  Name              Time   Voice   By      Type
                    

                      1) Get ready         0:03     3     Jch     Jingle
                      2) Game over         0:02     3     Jch     Jingle
                      3) Player explodes   0:02     3     Jch     Sfx
                      4) Congr/Title       0:40     3     Jch     Music
                      5) In-game           2:41     3     Jch     Music

                This was the second attempt after the "Golddigger" project. The
                game was never finished.

GOLDDIG.DAT     Golddigger

                This was the first real game-music project I did. Somewhere in
                the other end of Denmark an entusiastic guy wanted to establish
                a new software house - to help getting this organized, he
                collected a few interesting people in the scene for a meeting
                in a big room somewhere in Jutland. Here the future plans for
                the firm which was named "The Electronic Generation" was
                discussed. I met "Link" for the first time and introduced the
                editor to him - he became the first person to use it (other than
                myself of course!). The first game that "TEG" wanted to code
                was a "Boulder Dash" clone called "Golddigger". Being beginners
                as we were, "Link" and I decided to split the work into doing
                half of the tunes each. As soon as we got home and did the
                work, we never heard from this "firm" again. There are seven
                tunes in the block...

                      #  Name              Time   Voice   By      Type
                    

                      1) Hiscore           1:12     3     Jch     Music
                      2) Space bonus       1:22     2     Jch     Music
                      3) Bouncy bonus      1:01     2     Jch     Music
                      4) Breakout bonus    0:42     2     Jch     Music
                      5) Title screen      1:55     3     Link    Music
                      6) Game over         0:02     3     Link    Jingle
                      7) Get ready         0:01     3     Link    Jingle

                All this was made in april 1989. Considering the quality of
                other composers at that time, these tunes were easily forgotten.

HUGO_ZAK.DAT    Hugo Title

                A professional software house in Denmark called "SilverRock"
                gained a lot of success with "Hugo" in danish television. This
                troll could be controlled in a game using telephone buttons!
                A very new concept which soon became enormously popular. Today,
                SilverRock are selling the concept to television firms all
                over the world and are still making dozens of new scenes. The
                original scene, however, had Hugo wandering through 3D mazes
                collecting gold and dodging dynamite. During the success of the
                troll, a real musician produced a CD containing a rap hit
                where Hugo was singing using the typical voice which was also
                used in the game. As the game was converted for sales versions
                from the Amiga to PC and C64, I did the C64 song converted from
                the danish rap hit. I didn't have a PC back then, so I had
                nothing to do with the PC version.

LABYRINT.DAT    Labyrint

                A television quiz program which was made popular by a great
                danish former disc-jockey Kim Schumacher was converted by a
                small danish firm as a C64 game. The music was composed on the
                amiga by an unknown guy. "Drax" was asked to convert the tune
                for a certain sum of money but, as he said himself, he wasn't
                sure he could convert it so he asked me for help. I completed
                the conversion for the ridiculous sum of money - later, "Drax"
                admitted that he didn't complete the conversion because he
                thought the original amiga music was boring. I must confess
                that he has a point there! :)

OSWALD.DAT      Oswald

                Before inventing "Hugo" for television, SilverRock Productions
                actually had a little success with its predecessor, "Oswald",
                which was also controlled using an ordinary telephone. The
                game was much simpler - Oswald had to jump on ice floes viewed
                as in typical platform arcade games on older computers. "Hugo"
                which arrived later, revolutionized the idea by introducing
                real 3D animation. Anyway, on the C64 version of the original
                amiga game I had to compose my very own piece of music since
                the game didn't really have any music at all. I made two tries,
                both present in this package. The first ("FIASKO_2.DAT") was
                trashed while the second made the programmer and graphician go
                completely wild.

PERPLEX.DAT     Perplex

                This is only a fragment of the music for the game "Perplex".
                The game was a shoot'em up coded by an austrian guy, Robert
                Hermely, with great graphics by "Corwin" - the game was very
                advanced and easily knocked every other sideways shoot'em up
                out. Using every trick from the demoscene the game was slick
                but took a long time to code. In the beginning "Drax" did
                the soundtrack for the game while I made the sfx. At some time
                during the production of the music, "Drax" thought he could use
                some help and I agreed to do some of the music. The part here
                contains my contributions to the game...

                      #  Name              Time   Voice   By      Type
                    

                      1) Get ready         0:03     3     Jch     Jingle
                      2) Game over         0:02     3     Jch     Jingle
                      3) In-game 4+        1:32     3     Jch     Music
                      4) Monster 4+        0:23     3     Jch     Music

                While the music and sfx was done in 1990, the game was put on
                ice by the austrian guys as they became tired of it. Some years
                later they revived the project, finished it, and sold it to a
                german software house under the new name, "Hermetic".

PITFIGHT.DAT    Pitfight

                One of the last game projects I worked on. Through the member
                in Scotland, "Deek", I made contact with a guy who managed to
                get me a few orders from the software house "Domark". This music
                was ordered for "Pitfight" and contains...

                      #  Name              Time   Voice   By      Type
                    

                      1) Bonus             0:03     3     Jch     Music
                      2) In-game           2:11     2     Jch     Music

                It was probably in 1991 - I remember I made an extra effort out
                of squeezing as many chords and effects into the two voices of
                the in-game tune to make it sound like many more voices.

PU_INTRO.DAT    Push-It Intro

                The danish demogroup "Jewels" also fiddled with a puzzle game,
                called "Push-It". Featuring main code by "Doc" and main graphics
                by "Access", the game looked very promising when I first saw it.
                I accepted the job although I knew it would be risky since this
                was another job for private people. This is the intro tune, one
                of my favourite tunes from the C64 period. It uses a double
                voice drum and was heavily inspired by the music on "Task III",
                a game featuring music by a guy I never quite identified. This
                tune is well worth checking out if I may say so. Don't mind the
                strange intro, listen to the main part from 00:17. At 02:49, a
                few dog-like barksounds appears followed by a funny solo at
                03:11. From 03:58 the tunes ends with a drum part. As far as the
                game concerns - do I really have to say that it wasn't finished?

PU_MAIN.DAT     Push-It Main

                Here's the main music block for "Push-It", the puzzle game. It
                was made in november 1989 and features...

                      #  Name              Time   Voice   By      Type
                    

                      1) Game over         0:02     3     Jch     Jingle
                      2) Hiscore           1:01     3     Jch     Music
                      3) In-game           2:43     3     Jch     Music
                      4) Get ready         0:02     3     Jch     Jingle
                      5) Title screen      3:41     3     Jch     Music

                The music is not as outstanding as the introtune, IMHO.

SU-SWEET.DAT    Su-Sweet

                Speaking of puzzle games, the german software house "Double
                Density" was a master at releasing such games. One of them was
                the game "Su-Sweet" which was a "Tetris" clone with a few
                interesting new ideas thrown in. I was contacted and asked to
                do the soundtrack within a tight deadline. This is the music
                for the game - it was done in march 1991 and includes...

                      #  Name              Time   Voice   By      Type
                    

                      1) Intro/Title       3:07     3     Jch     Music
                      2) Made it           0:51     3     Jch     Music
                      3) Get ready         0:02     3     Jch     Jingle
                      4) Game over         0:06     3     Jch     Jingle
                      5) Well done         0:06     3     Jch     Jingle
                      6) In-game 1         0:57     2     Jch     Music
                      7) In-game 2         1:32     2     Jch     Music
                      8) In-game 3         0:46     2     Jch     Music

                The titletune is perhaps one of the best "shuffle"-tunes I have
                done on the C64. I tried to use a claves instrument too. Notice
                the melodic change at 01:32. Most of the tunes in this block
                needs a lot of filtering on the hihat noise, something you'll
                have to live with on the PC, I'm afraid! ;)  The 2-voice in-game
                tunes was another example of trying to cram as many chords and
                notes into two voices as possible - tune 1 and 3 uses leader and
                chords with drum and bass in the other voice, but tune 2 was
                very special. Here both drum, bass and chords was squeezed into
                the first voice, leaving the second voice for the leader alone!

TECNETIU.DAT    Tecnetium

                I always get mixed feelings when I play this music. The title-
                tune is long and I put a lot of work into it in april 1989, but
                today I can hear loads of harmonic errors here and there! :)
                The game was done for a sideways shoot'em up which a couple of
                totally unknown danish guys was making. This was some time
                before "Perplex", so at that time I thought the game looked very
                good - inspite of the fact that the programmers didn't know
                anything about a C64 scene at all! The block contains...

                      #  Name              Time   Voice   By      Type
                    

                      1) Title screen      5:55     3     Jch     Music
                      2) Hiscore           1:29     3     Jch     Music

                You will also find a few jingles and a little in-game tune in
                the version for the emulator. The hiscore theme was a conversion
                of the old Cliff Richard hit "Congratulations" done right out
                my head. I always wanted to make such a hiscore tune, because I
                always thought Rob Hubbard made a mistake when he made "sad"
                hiscore tunes. You made it to the HISCORE for crying out loud!
                This only happens if you made a score that was bigger than the
                scores on the list - it's supposed to be a HAPPY thing! :)  The
                game itself suffered the same fate as most other games I made
                music for - the programmers soon became tired of it all. On the
                the titletune a strange intro part is kept alive for 50 seconds
                until the tune really begins. At 03:28 there's a drum solo and
                at 05:11 a real solo.


