Rated: 100% (4 votes)
Loading ...What happened to cool computer game tunes?
Ben Hardwidge
I’m really tired this morning, and I’d like to blame something for it. I could blame insomnia, or my dog’s unfortunate habit of sneaking into the bedroom and putting her wet nose in my armpit, but in truth it’s mainly because it usually gets to Midnight and I think ‘hmm, I should really go to bed now,’ but instead, I decide to look up something stupid on the Internet, such as Michael J Fox’s real name, and then spend the next hour and a half looking at similar things. Last night’s sleep-depriving search was ‘e1m1,’ which is otherwise known as the music from the first level of Doom.
I worked out how to play it on the guitar the other day (it isn’t hard), you see, and thought I’d see what else had been done with it. A search on YouTube brings up a lot of results, including various cover versions, a great instructional video by Sonic Clang (who recorded his version for the Classic Doom 3 mod) and a huge debate over which metal song e1m1 ripped off. This ranges from Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ to Slayers ‘Behind the Crooked Cross.’ For the record, I own both these tracks and they sound about as much like e1m1 as the speaking clock. Sonic Clang feels the same way, to the point where he even went to the effort of filming his own short film to prove that the track was a rip off of Metallica’s ‘No Remorse’.
On the one hand this proves that there are a lot of obsessive weirdos on the Internet, and I count myself among them, seeing as I conducted the search in the first place. On the other hand, though, it also proves that a good computer game soundtrack can still be an Internet hit 15 years after it was first released. Why don’t they write good, catchy computer game tunes like that any more?
After this, I started to look for other good computer game tunes, and found various covers of the theme from Monkey Island, including this great piano piece. I was also reminded of the fun of playing through Quake II to Sonic Mayhem’s crunching techno metal soundtrack. There are numerous other catchy computer game tunes, of course, including the Bomb the Bass track for Xenon 2: Megablast (also known as a faster version of the theme from ‘Assault on Precinct 13′), not to mention the theme tunes to console classics such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros and the Legend of Zelda, all of which I’m sure you can whistle off the top of your head, whether you’re a seasoned console hater or not.
I tried to think of other good computer game soundtracks that have come out recently, and while there have been plenty of good, big-production scores for the likes of Oblivion, and occasional bouts of action music cropping up in Half-Life 2 and Crysis, there just isn’t anything with a simple, catchy soundtrack any more. Basically, there’s nothing that’s going to make it to an Internet video in 15 years time. Why is this? Are game developers too sophisticated for catchy game tunes now? Do we only get film-like scores at appropriate moments from now on?
The answer’s probably yes, but I’m not entirely happy about this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for good, realistic games with appropriate music and cinematic cut scenes, but I also kind of miss the all-out ‘just shoot everything in sight’ approach of the Doom and Quake games, all to a stomping metal soundtrack that would be going on in your head all day. Is there any reason why we can’t have both?
Maybe Duke Nukem Forever will change this, but I doubt it. Doom 3 was rammed full of boring cutscenes, stupid stuff like PDAs and tedious levels, when it should have just been a fun, guts and glory shooter. Quake 4 was similarly full of marines talking gibberish, and pointless vehicle levels. I actually quite liked Quake 4, but I’d have liked it a lot more if it just involved shooting loads of stuff to techno metal.
And don’t even think about telling me that I should play Serious Sam. I like the idea of Serious Sam. After all, you’re a big guy with massive guns whose mission is to gallivant around ancient Egypt, turning harpies into bullet-torn heaps of feathers. But, let’s face it, Serious Sam was crap, and boring. You go into an area, it gets full of creatures and then you shoot them all, then move onto the next one. There’s little in the way of interesting map design, with cool, winding corridors. This is what Doom and Quake II had in abundance, but they didn’t ruin it by pretending to have a story, and they had great tunes too.
In fact, I’d often play the first few levels of Doom and Quake II for fun, even after I’d completed them on various difficulty levels – it didn’t matter about completing the game; I just wanted to shoot stuff. So basically, after all my rambling, I’ve come to the conclusion that I want a stomping thrash metal soundtrack to accompany a simple game where I just shoot loads of stuff. And, no, this doesn’t mean I want to play online multiplayer games – I suck at them. Make some new games with simple, cool and catchy tunes. Do it. Do it now!
Rated: 91.43% (7 votes)
Loading ...Why the hell are you using SonicStage?
Ben Hardwidge
It’s easy to get a gag out of Sony these days. You’d think the robotic dog maker would have been humbled by the whole Betamax thing in the 1980s, but a quarter of a century later there’s still a gradually-filling graveyard of proprietary Sony products that have completely failed to take the world by storm. At the last count this included: MemoryStick, SACD, High-density CD-R (anyone else remember them?), Micro-DIMM, UMD, MiniDisc, ATRAC, SonicStage and, of course, the yet-to-be-proven Blu-Ray.
But while it’s easy to point and laugh at Sony, most of these products aren’t actually bad at all. As a case in point, I’ve just had to explain to my fellow colleagues why I use Sony SonicStage for about the tenth time this year. Now, before I start coming across as a Sony salesman, I’d like to point out that I know Sonic Stage isn’t perfect. I don’t like Sony’s DRM-heavy Connect music store, early versions of the software were quite buggy and I hate the way it messes about with stuff like Artist Link data (whatever that is) when I connect a Walkman. However, SonicStage has a terrible reputation that’s (for the most part) undeserved. Read more
Rated: 100% (6 votes)
Loading ...Dawn of War beats tabletop gaming
Ben Hardwidge
Would you look at me strangely if I mentioned Chaos Black, Realm of Chaos or Blood Bowl? If so, then you’ll probably have no idea about what I’m talking about in this blog, and I suggest you give Clive some reassurance about his AMD console instead. If, however, you too were seduced by the world of Warhammer, then read on and see if you agree that Games Workshop’s store days could be numbered. Read more
Rated: 100% (5 votes)
Loading ...Why Orange can ’something rude’ off
Ben Hardwidge
It’s not everyday that I want to disembowel everyone at Orange with a rusty fish hook, but today is certainly one of those days. I’ve just had the joy of trying to get my phone line and broadband connection installed in my new house, which apparently involves spending hundreds of pounds on absolutely nothing. Read more
Rated: 90% (6 votes)
Loading ...If Christopher Biggins made browsers, they’d probably look like Safari
Ben Hardwidge
When you think of a Safari, you’ll probably think of a gorgeous African landscape filled with giraffes and elephants, with a few lions lurking here and there. At the very least, you might imagine having your car savaged by chimps in a cold field in England, or perhaps the really awful 1980s kids’ TV show ‘On Safari’ with Christopher Biggins.
It’s unfortunately the latter comparison that bears the best resemblance to Apple’s Safari web browser. Much like a real safari, Apple’s Safari browser has a lot to live up to if it wants to compete with what’s out there already, but it comes across as a poor imitator.
I was willing to overcome my initial scepticism about the browser, so I decided to give Safari a go yesterday. The first impressions were good – it featured tabbed browsing, it loaded quickly and it didn’t grind to a halt when you had multiple tabs open either. Then I noticed that my TFT monitor looked as if it was running at 1,024 x 768 rather than its native resolution of 1,280 x 1,024. Read more
Rated: 80% (6 votes)
Loading ...Getting by with the bare minimum
Ben Hardwidge
Strangely, most companies don’t send you a bottle of champagne when you write something less than favourable about their products. Or ever, in fact. This is one of the few downsides about being a technology journo; sometimes your blood is wanted and your enemies intend to extract it via several days’ worth of angry phone calls. Read more