Hero Quest Soundtrack (NES)

Hero Quest Soundtrack (NES), Neil Baldwin, Unreleased

Even at the height of the NES’s popularity, there were no official album releases of Western NES game music. That makes a website like Neil Baldwin’s Duty Cycle Generator an important contribution towards filling that gap. On his site, Baldwin – a game music veteran whose career began on the C64 – released all of his NES soundtracks. He also pointed out that part of the reason the site exists was the praise one of his works had received within online chiptune communities. That score was Hero Quest, the video game adaptation of the popular fantasy-themed board game. The soundtrack’s popularity was all the more surprising because the game itself had been cancelled. However, its developer Chris Shrigley later released it into the NES community, and its reputation gradually grew. Baldwin’s surprised discovery of Hero Quest’s popularity also helped to kickstart his involvement with the online game music community.

On Duty Cycle Generator, Baldwin writes that the Hero Quest soundtrack “is probably some of the best NES music” he composed. It is hard to disagree. Earlier works by Baldwin – as well as his later Ferrari Grand Prix Challenge – can feel like exercises in arpeggio-driven NES writing. Those arpeggios were, after all, a relatively straightforward way of creating a lush sound on the console’s limited hardware. There is no question that Baldwin handled the arpeggio textures driving his music with a level of technical virtuosity matched by few other composers. Still, a fantasy-themed work like Magician, in particular, feels lacking in other respects, not least in its ability to generate truly engaging melodies and atmosphere.

The Hero Quest soundtrack is the first of Baldwin’s works in which he finds a comfortable balance between technical complexity and a stronger emotional connection, underpinned by genuinely appealing melodies. “Title Screen / Menu / Quest Story” opens with an appropriately medieval-sounding, stately melody over a slow arpeggio. It is a scene-setter that recalls the ‘once upon a time’ openings of many other NES RPGs. That includes Magician, but here the melody is far more involving. It leads into an ear-catching ritardando, achieved manually through gradually lengthened note values. Clever and rarely attempted in game music, the effect keeps the listener guessing about what might come next.

And then contemporary beats enter, waves of sweeping arpeggios support a heroic lead melody full of high adventure, and the music seems ready to ride off and conquer the world. While more melody-focused than Baldwin’s other scores, much of “Title Screen / Menu / Quest Story”’s emotional pull still derives from his technical wizardry. The sounds coming from all four channels have a warmth and weight that are rare on the NES. Baldwin’s idea of making the arpeggios alternate octaves to create even denser textures also gives the cue precisely the orchestral feel he was aiming for. While Barry Leitch’s computer ports of Hero Quest evoke the game’s fantasy world by suggesting vast open spaces, Baldwin is more interested in filling those spaces with as much musical activity as possible.

Seen in that light, “Dungeon Theme (Overworld)” feels like Baldwin’s definitive and most fully realised statement on arpeggio-based composition. It is a relentless onslaught of cascading notes, but one with just enough melodic backbone to pull the listener through what is, at nearly three and a half minutes unlooped, one of the longer NES compositions. An invigorating wall of sound, “Dungeon Theme (Overworld)” is one of those NES cues that practically challenges you to untangle its web of competing lines and work out how such a piece could possibly have been made with the console’s four sound channels.

Its sumptuousness makes “Dungeon Theme (Overworld)” an ideal match for an RPG. The cue’s aural richness gives it a sense of scale far exceeding the soundtrack’s brief overall running time. Its breadth and energy – generated in no small part by the wonderful vibrato effects on those full-bodied arpeggios – set the stage for a powerful ending, as the music spirals ever higher before concluding with a literal bang. It may not make for the smoothest loop point, but musically it could hardly offer a more satisfying conclusion.

The same is true of the soundtrack’s closing piece, “Ending (Unused)”. This cue takes the contemporary elements heard earlier and recasts them as a slow power ballad. It is driven by a huge, anthemic drum sound, one of Baldwin’s most impressive achievements here. Just as the preceding pieces harboured orchestral ambitions, “Ending” also aims high – only in a different direction. In fact, it plays like the end-credits song to a big Hollywood film, translated into 8-bit terms. Its simple but wistful lead melody is once again beautifully supported by vibrant arpeggios, whose glow also suffuses the melody’s suspended, aching upward swells.

“Ending” does not conclude Baldwin’s single greatest NES soundtrack overall – that distinction would probably belong to the following year’s Erik the Viking. What it does do, however, is complete a trio of Baldwin’s most outstanding and substantial NES compositions.