26 June 2013

Episode 139: Sports 3

Once again, Sports Games is the topic of the week for the Legacy Music Hour.  This time Brent and Rob are joined by Dan Bialek and Asterios Kokkinos from the Gamedians video game podcast.  They talk about sports, pull ups, going on dates, and good video game music from 8-bit and 16-bit era sports video games.  Full track listing below.




Game - Composer - Song - Company - Console - Year (North American release unless otherwise indicated)

International Superstar Soccer - Harumi Ueko, Hideyuki Eto - Scenario Mode Clear - Konami - SNES - 1995

Bill Walsh College Football '95 - Joel Simmons, Jim Simmons - Title Screen - Electronic Arts - Genesis - 1994

New 3D Golf Simulation: Devil's Course - Yumi Satake (Yumi Kinoshita), Shigekazu Kamaki (arr.), Shunsuke Minomiya (arr.), Yusaburo Shimojyo (arr.), Akira Tamada (arr.) - Music No. 6 - T&E Soft - Mega Drive - 1994

Jack Nicklaus' Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf - unknown - Options/Statistics - Konami - NES - 1990

ATP Tour Championship Tennis - Hikoshi Hashimoto - Try Again Next Year! (Tournament Elimination) - Sims/Sega - Genesis - 1994

Ganbare! Golf Boys - Atsuhiro Motoyama - Memory of the Breeze - Masaya/Dual - PC Engine - 1989

Bases Loaded 4 - Tatsuya Nishimura - Menu - TOSE/Jaleco - NES - 1993

Super Spike V'Ball - Kazunaka Yamane - Ending Credits - Technos - NES - 1990

Dear Boys - Kenji Yamazaki, Yoshikazu Yao - Out on a Date - Yutaka/Kan's - Super Famicom - 1994

Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs - Rob Hubbard - 1st Half - Electronic Arts - Genesis - 1991

Kings of the Beach - unknown - Match BGM - Konami/Ultra Games - NES - 1990

Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 3 - Harumi Ueko - Success Mode Autumn - Konami - Super Famicom - 1996

Super Hockey '94 - Hayato Matsuo, Hitoshi Sakimoto (prog., arr.) - Game Match 2 - Opera House/Yonezawa PR21 - Super Famicom - 1994

Ganbare! Golf Boys - Atsuhiro Motoyama - Away Back - Masaya/Dual - PC Engine - 1989

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! - Kenji Yamamoto, Akito Nakatsuka, Yukio Kaneoka - Match BGM - Nintendo - NES - 1987

4 comments:

  1. The 30 by 30 documentaries are fantastic. I am not in to sports at all, but these films are a fantastic use of your time.

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  2. Wait, no one knew if Lakers vs. Celtics was a worthy rivalry in the 1980s...? That's crazy, man, Magic vs. Bird was THE rivalry every single year! (You may have been joking.)

    Hey guys, I have a question about equipment. Been listening to LMH since the beginning, and I can't recall if this particular topic has been addressed: Did 8-bit and 16-bit composers play actual instruments as they recorded tracks for video games? That is, did they spend 100% of their time typing code on keyboards, or were there synthesizers, drum machines, etc. that plugged directly into software?

    I have a hard time imagining that such tuneful music was programmed on QWERTY keyboards exclusively, but that may have been the case, I don't know.

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  3. LMH, and Guests: This episode cracked me up, thanks for the good times, and great jams! Jack Nicklaus golf sounds pretty exciting when you hear that song :)

    Andy,
    From what I have found, many composers from this time worked their music out on a piano (electric, or otherwise), and then start plugging parts of the song into the computer. They tend to go back, and forth this way while composing. Some will have pretty much the whole thing written out before they start programming.

    The technology to plug instruments into the hardware did not exist, except on an experimental level. I'm pretty sure in the Jeff Van Dyke interview, he stated that the engineers at EA cooked up a custom connection from his synth keyboard, to his Genesis, so that he could play with the hardware in real time. (That would be SO cool to have today).

    Shockingly there are quite a few composers out there who worked directly with the hardware itself, composing the whole thing from the ground up, with only the QWERTY keyboard, and in many cases, no tracking software either. Many composed DIRECTLY WITH CODE (Mind is BLOWN whenever I think about it). Trackers became more common with the 16-bit era.

    BTW, I'm not a chiptune composer, just a nerd who likes to read up on this stuff :)

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  4. Retro N, thanks for the update! Shall have to re-listen to the JFD episode, it's been a while--I've only started to consider the technological transfer aspects more recently. Crazy to think that some composers just Matrixed their way through songs without a music scale in sight...!

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