Top Gear 2 Soundtrack (Amiga)

Top Gear 2 Soundtrack (Amiga), Patrick Phelan, 1994

At least in its SNES incarnation, the Top Gear franchise remains fondly remembered to this day. Contemporary reviews, however, make clear that the series has always been somewhat divisive. More than a few critics pointed out that the Top Gear games offered a no-frills, arcade-style approach to racing that yielded solid, if not necessarily spectacular, results. The fact that developer Gremlin Graphics, later Gremlin Interactive, effectively used the series to recycle its Lotus games only reinforced the sense of having been here before. Even so, Top Gear 2 remains the franchise’s best-regarded entry. Though it played rather like an expansion of its predecessor, it made enough refinements to improve on the original Top Gear.

That was true of the SNES version, at any rate. Once Top Gear 2 reached the Amiga in 1994, reviewers were far less enthusiastic. Several highlighted the port’s lack of innovation and the sense that it no longer met the standards Gremlin itself had set with the Lotus titles a few years earlier. The one area in which the Amiga conversion unquestionably excelled was its soundtrack, equalled within the Top Gear franchise only by Barry Leitch’s Top Gear Rally. After Leitch had laid the musical foundations for both the Top Gear and Lotus series, Patrick Phelan took over on both, further developing their electronica-heavy idiom while folding in contemporary mid-1990s influences.

The Lotus and Top Gear series have indeed generated a great deal of affection among vintage game-music fans thanks to a number of standout cues. What is interesting, however, is that before Top Gear 2, none of these games had really managed to assemble a soundtrack that worked consistently from beginning to end. Take Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, which, outside its excellent intro and ending themes, consists largely of short course cues that do not amount to much. Phelan’s Top Gear 2 soundtrack on the Amiga is the first score in the line to satisfy throughout. Yes, it consists of only three tracks, but each of them lands exactly as it should.

As ever, things become less straightforward once one compares the various versions of the score. Top Gear 2 originated on the SNES in 1993, so one might assume that soundtrack to be the definitive one. Yet while the SNES version, like the Genesis port, features five tracks rather than three, it is also the weakest link in the chain. Its sound is markedly thinner than what the Genesis and Amiga achieve, and it lacks anything like their impact. The SNES soundtrack tries to compensate through significantly faster tempi, but the result merely feels rushed and relatively insubstantial.

The Genesis version fares better. It cannot match the power of the Amiga samples, but it does offer some intriguing alternative angles on the same melodic material. Where the Amiga version succeeds primarily through the force of its anthem-like melodic declarations, the Genesis presents those same tunes on rubbery synth tones that blur into one another, creating denser and in some ways more complex textures.

While the Lotus and Top Gear scores were unmistakably products of their time, they drew on more than 1990s electronica alone. Nowhere is that clearer than in Top Gear 2’s “Burn Rubber”, known as “Canterbury Plains” on the console versions. The Lotus and Top Gear games are not short of memorable melodies, and here Phelan delivers one of the finest either series ever produced: a triumphant, 1980s-inflected tune backed by proud synth fanfares, seemingly designed to set a sold-out stadium roaring. An elastic, forceful bass line gives the cue a more contemporary edge before the melody segues into a note-shredding solo as exuberant as the material surrounding it, shifting the music into a higher gear. The interaction between melody and chordal support, those fanfares especially, is rather more involved than one might expect, lending this impeccably crafted power anthem some welcome substance.

The melodies of “Destructive Comment”, titled “Ayers Rock” elsewhere, are just as durable as those in “Burn Rubber”, but here the soundtrack becomes slightly more adventurous. At first, “Destructive Comment” rocks harder than anything heard so far. Its pounding drums and driving rock bass once again demonstrate how far Phelan pushes the Amiga hardware on this score. Then, however, the cue introduces a floating synth-pad backdrop and a lead melody whose watery timbre nudges the music towards trance. As is typical of that idiom, the melody is more repetitive than the synth-rock tune guiding “Burn Rubber”. Yet Phelan cleverly varies its pitch to prolong its effectiveness, and its almost hammered staccato character acquires an unexpectedly dramatic force when set against the spacious, static synth background. Like “Burn Rubber”, it celebrates the exhilaration of high-speed racing, only by different means.

“Night Train” plants itself even more firmly in 1990s electronica, with more pronounced grooves and house-piano riffs, and yes, this is the track containing the famous “You might be missing some of the benefits that stereo can provide” voice sample. Even here, the soundtrack continues to spring subtle surprises. Phelan combines his electronic influences with a sturdy acoustic bass that supplies a superbly tight rhythmic foundation. This in turn supports the horn samples and handclaps that enter later, by which point the score has decisively arrived on the dance floor via a perfectly judged house-funk hybrid. As on the other two tracks, Phelan uses breakdowns with real discipline, sustaining the length of the composition while shaping its flow organically. It may have taken a while, but Gremlin’s signature racing series had finally produced a genuine genre classic.