Warriors of Might and Magic Soundtrack (GBC)

Warriors of Might and Magic Soundtrack (GBC), Matthew Simmonds, 2000

By the late 1990s, the Might & Magic franchise was still going strong, with several successful mainline entries and the recent establishment of the Heroes of Might & Magic series. Unsurprisingly, publisher The 3DO Company was keen to branch out further and make the most of the brand’s value. Unfortunately, its first attempt to do so, 1999’s 3D action RPG Crusaders of Might and Magic, failed to generate much excitement. The company tried again a year later with a broadly similar concept. Yet Warriors of Might and Magic was met with little more enthusiasm from players and critics than its predecessor.

If the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 versions of Warriors of Might and Magic barely made a ripple, the same was doubly true of the Game Boy Color conversion, which is hardly surprising given the game’s poor reviews and the sheer volume of software appearing on the platform in 2000. The one clear positive to emerge from this otherwise run-of-the-mill 2D action RPG was an outstanding soundtrack by Matthew Simmonds, perhaps better known under his demoscene handle 4mat. At the time an in-house composer for developer Climax Group, Simmonds had begun his career in 1989 as part of the Amiga demoscene group Slipstream before moving into professional game music in the early 1990s. Interestingly, he is one of the few game composers to have remained active in both the games industry and the demoscene decades after first starting out.

Despite his prolific output on various platforms throughout the 1990s, Simmonds had not written for a Game Boy title before 2000, when he scored four of them in a single year for Climax Group. Yet his demoscene background, built on pushing hardware far beyond its apparent limits, prepared him perfectly for composing on a technologically constrained platform such as the Game Boy Color. Like other outstanding GBC scores of the same period, the Warriors of Might and Magic soundtrack is an impressive display of both technical and compositional command.

Simmonds’ approach to fantasy scoring gives the Warriors of Might and Magic soundtrack its distinctive identity almost immediately. There is little here in the way of strongly defined recurring themes or swashbuckling melodic statements, and the tempi remain fairly measured throughout. There are no frantic battle themes or grandly theatrical laments. Instead, Simmonds generates drama and gravitas through density and scale, creating a grand sonority befitting the game’s fantasy setting. His ubiquitous, yet always carefully judged, use of arpeggios for both melodic and textural purposes firmly marks this score as an heir to many of the great European chiptune soundtracks.

What is especially striking is the way Simmonds exploits the programmable wavetable to create, by GBC standards, enormous bass sounds. He often uses that bass not to propel the rhythm but more like an orchestral force, adding mass, weight, and sheer pressure to the music. At times these droning bass notes can become slightly intrusive, “Track 03” being a case in point, but more often they are central to the score’s surprising scope and sonic force. Simmonds frequently combines this more-than-solid foundation with substantial melodies that again betray his demoscene roots, offering lengthy themes well suited to the game’s fantasy idiom, especially when paired with swirling, lush arpeggios. At the same time, the Warriors of Might and Magic soundtrack often folds catchy pop impulses into these stoically anthemic melodies, striking exactly the right balance between expansiveness and immediacy.

“Track 06” offers the clearest example of this attractive contrast between heavy, forceful rhythms and measured melodic writing, at times sounding like an outtake from Alberto Jose González’s classic Smurfs soundtrack. “Track 01” establishes the score’s fantasy credentials straight away, its adventurous lead melody combining stateliness and heroism in just the right proportions, again set effectively against the forceful percussion. Throughout the soundtrack, Simmonds keeps his melodic ideas optimistic and uplifting. Even a cue such as “Track 08”, whose emotive lead melody carries a hint of loneliness, remains ultimately affirmative. Surrounded by churning rhythms, the initially pop-inflected melody presses on doggedly in the face of adversity, lending the music more emotional subtlety than one might expect without ever becoming unduly heavy.

In the soundtrack’s latter half, Simmonds begins to build these towering sonorities ever higher, pushing its stadium-sized melodies towards their logical extreme. “Track 07” signals these ambitions through massive timpani strikes that reinforce the cue’s stark, dramatic atmosphere. “Track 10” and “Track 12” in turn foreground the score’s kinship with rock rather than with older game-music convention. Both begin quietly, with slow-building extended introductions that set the scene for spectacular eruptions of stomping beats and sky-punching melodies that could scarcely be any larger. Yet such grandstanding does not exclude nuance, as “Track 12” in particular builds its momentum patiently over the course of its long-form structure.

Elsewhere, the Warriors of Might and Magic soundtrack adds further shades to its fantasy world, becoming richer and more rewarding still. “Track 02” and “Track 09” benefit from seamlessly integrated prog-rock influences. On “Track 02”, constantly offbeat arpeggios keep the mood tense and unpredictable while supplying sparse, maniacally focused melodic material. “Track 09” deepens the cue’s mystery through syncopated rhythms, odd metres, an elusive melody, and some virtuoso, exquisitely atmospheric echo effects. “Track 05”, meanwhile, opens by convincingly imitating the sound of an acoustic guitar riff, giving the music an unexpectedly forlorn cast.

Best of all is “Track 13”, whose melodies gradually shift from gloom to hope in what is the soundtrack’s most varied and complex piece. Few would have expected a low-profile licensed game like this to harbour one of the Game Boy Color’s finest fantasy scores. Thanks to Simmonds’ talent and commitment, however, that is exactly what it offers.