1992 Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Dune Soundtrack (PC)

Dune Soundtrack (PC), Stéphane Picq, 1992

It feels like early media adaptations of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic Dune were doomed to run into equally epic troubles during their production. There’s of course the convoluted story of how Dune finally reached cinema screens in 1984 after more than a decade of failed attempts, only to disappoint at the box office and alienate its own director. However, the first video game adaptation of Dune equally struggled to actually get made – to the point where publisher Virgin Games cancelled the game (and launched development of what would become Dune II), only to find out later that Cryo Interactive had secretly continued development. Thankfully, there was a happy ending to the story. Partially thanks to its innovative mix of adventure and strategy elements, Dune become a commercial hit, with 300,000 units sold by 1997, paving the way for Cryo’s expansion and prolific output throughout the 1990s.

In their assessments, contemporary reviewers put unusual emphasis on Stéphane Picq‘s soundtrack for Dune. Picq’s work soon became part of game music history when Virgin Records released an arrange album titled Dune – Spice Opera. At this point in time, album releases of Western game music were nearly unheard of, so for a European game soundtrack to receive an arrange album was entirely unexpected. The work clearly left its mark – when online game music criticism started to pop up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dune – Spice Opera garnered rave reviews for its unusual and creative aesthetics. It remains a fan favourite, its official release in Europe making it one of the first pieces of game music available for purchase by budding fans of the art form.

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Erik the Viking Soundtrack

Erik the Viking Soundtrack, Neil Baldwin, 1992

It’s a shame that Neil Baldwin wrote his two best NES soundtracks for games that in the end were shelved. At least game music fans discovered Hero Quest‘s excellent score once the game’s developer released the ROM online. On the other hand, Baldwin’s second cancelled project Erik the Viking was pretty much unknown. That is, until Baldwin posted the soundtrack on his website Duty Cycle Generator.

Action adventures like Erik the Viking require a fair amount of world building, and in this undertaking, the music has to pull its weight too. As such, the Erik the Viking soundtrack required Baldwin to create a more varied and larger score than what he had previously written on the NES. He rises to the challenge quite formidably, as Erik the Viking pushes Baldwin’s music into previously unexplored territory.

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Nobunaga’s Ambition: Haouden Soundtrack (PC-98 – Soundware Version)

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Haouden Soundtrack (PC-98), Yoko Kanno, 1992

As with previous instalments of the Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise, KOEI only tweaked details for its fifth instalment, Haouden. Clearly KOEI had hit upon a winning formula, happy to churn these games out to an audience hungry for their fix of historic strategy games that prioritised gameplay depth over fancy graphics. Not surprisingly, what stood out most about Haouden’s presentation was its soundtrack, provided by series regular Yoko Kanno.

Kanno had been given the opportunity to record previous franchise scores with live performers – a rare occurrence in video game music at the time. And thankfully, KOEI seemed willing to increase the music budget for each subsequent Nobunaga’s Ambition title. Bushou Fuuunroku had benefited from a mostly live ensemble – a chamber music-sized orchestra supplemented by a few solo performers and synths. For the Nobunaga’s Ambition: Haouden soundtrack, KOEI went one step further and hired a larger ensemble, now amounting to a small symphony orchestra.

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Tamashii no Mon – Dante Shinkyoku yori Soundtrack (Soundware Version)

Tamashii no Mon – Dante Shinkyoku yori Soundtrack, Masumi Ito / Yoshiyuki Ito / Fiori Wakakuwa, 1992

Turns out 2010’s God of War clone Dante’s Inferno wasn’t the first video game based on Dante Alighieri’s 14^th-century poem The Divine Comedy. But maybe that’s no surprise, given the work’s towering literary status and its vivid imagery of Hell’s nine circles, which make it ripe for adaptations into other media. Another game inspired by The Divine Comedy was Koei’s Tamashii no Mon – Dante no Shinkyoku yori (literally: Gate of Souls – From Dante’s Divine Comedy). As one might expect, players assume the role of Dante, as he struggles to find his way through the depths of hell. The developers cast the game as an adventure title with platforming and melee elements, while making excellent use of the ageing PC-98’s graphical capabilities. The clever use of a limited colour palette combined with excellent sprite art truly brought the game’s nightmarish settings to live.

For the game’s soundtrack, the developers turned to the trio of Masumi Ito, Yoshiyuki Ito and Fiori Wakakuwa, who composed the Tamashii no Mon – Dante no Shinkyoku yori soundtrack under the moniker of hyym. There’s little information available on Wakakuwa’s work – his only other credits seem to be Koei’s Super Mahjong Taikai and Inindo: Way of the Ninja. The opposite is true for the wife and husband team of Masumi and Yoshiyuki Ito. Starting out their careers as arrangers and composers on various Koei titles, they continued to arrange game music into the mid-1990s for numerous album releases – including Super Metroid, Virtua Fighter and Donkey Kong Country. They then moved into anime scoring, with Masumi Ito also launching a career as a singer with several solo albums and Yoshiyuki Ito working as Head Music Producer of Lantis – both artists amassing an impressive discography of 100+ titles each.

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Terminator 2: Judgment Day Soundtrack (NES)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day Soundtrack (NES), Geoff Follin, 1992

If you take a closer look at the history of movies and their video game adaptations, James Cameron’s 1991 Terminator 2: Judgment Day emerges as a watershed moment. At the time of its release, T2 became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time worldwide. Its futuristic, action-packed plot and revolutionary visuals made T2 an obvious candidate for a video game adaptation. What’s more, the film was released at a time when the home video game market had diversified and matured, to the point where it could support two console generations simultaneously. The result was a glut of T2-related games, followed soon by numerous titles based on The Terminator. The creators of Terminator 2: Judgment Day were certainly aware of video games’ commercial potential. After all, the film’s end credits finished with a message reading “Play the hit Nintendo game from Acclaim/LJN Entertainment.”

In the end, that game took nearly seven months to arrive, hitting the NES in 1992, with conversions to the Master System and Game Gear to follow. Coming from LJN, few contemporary reviewers were surprised to find the game a frustrating, at best middling affair – although the developers at Software Creations had at least made an effort to follow the film’s story line closely. Where the game really shone was with its soundtrack, penned by Geoff Follin on one of the few occasions where he didn’t share scoring duties with his brother Tim.

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Wing Commander Soundtrack (FM Towns)

Wing Commander Soundtrack (FM Towns), David Govett / George Sanger / Nenad Vugrinec, 1992

Very few games foreground their music as much as Wing Commander – and that’s only one way in which it proved to be a watershed moment for game music. Before the player gets to see the game’s intro or even title, game producer Chris Roberts inserts something else, something remarkable: the sight of a pixelated orchestra and conductor, set against the backdrop of a blue planetoid and star-speckled outer space. The orchestra tunes for a few seconds, before the conductor gives the signal to launch into a brief fanfare.

Roberts’ vision for Wing Commander was to create a full-blown space opera à la Star Wars. The orchestra intro in Wing Commander shows that Roberts knew how hugely important music was for his dream project to play like a swashbuckling space opera. The intro also serves as a curtain raiser that heightens expectations. The show is about to start, and it’s going to be of grand proportions. And of course, the sight of the orchestra announces the composers’ symphonic ambitions – a rarity for a 1990 video game. Rarely has a 25-second game intro carried so much meaning and context.

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