The Best of Mecomp Multimedia 2

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MYST, The YM2149 ST Emulator © 1997-98 by Nicolas Pomarede (Mr.Styckx) ------------- AUTHOR LIST ------------- This file describes all the music composers included so far in this collection. It doesn't claim to be exhaustive about what every composer have made or does today or about the chronology of compositions ; these are just my personal descriptions, but if you have any valuable informations, don't hesitate to send them to me, so I can include them. If you're interested in more informations on each composer, browse through C64 WEB pages on the net, since many of them were famous composers on C64 and have some dedicated pages with interviews. ================================================================================ AntiChrist from Sector One -------------------------- The tunes he wrote were all done with the Megatizer by Jedi from Sector One. A few of them are some conversions from classical C64 musics (OperationJupiter, SandraLand) and often use SID like enveloppe. ================================================================================ Beben Wally ----------- Also known as Hagar on the C64 scene. He wrote some quite nice musics, although not as numerous as on C64, from famous games like Elite, R-Type or Total Eclipse. He composed mainly for Exocet but also for Firebird or Vivid Images. ================================================================================ Big Alec from Delta Force (Gunnar Gaubatz) ------------------------------------------ Certainly one of the best composers in the demo scene, and also a very innovative one (SID env, samples). His first big release was in the 'Musical Wonders 91' by OffBeat (before they joined Delta Force) and many of these musics were reused or remixed in the 'Punish Your Machine' demo. Another great release was his 'Music Disk #1' (was there any sequel ?) which included some great SID env musics (with a very good adaptatation of Bangkok Knights Loader by Matt Gray). He also worked on the game 'No Second Prize' by Thalion. His routine features some really nice drums. In my opinion this is certainly one of the best composers in the 'post-Hippel' era. ================================================================================ Brimble Allister ---------------- He originaly wrote musics on Amiga (Alien Breed) and made a few musics for cheap games on ST. ================================================================================ Brooke Jason C. --------------- He wrote music mainly in the early age of the ST. His routine is quite similar to David Whittaker's one, which certainly explains why the musics often sound like Whittaker's ones. Some of his best tunes are FlyingShark, IkariWarriors, Vixen and Overlander (really nice one). ================================================================================ Chris Mad from Phalanx ---------------------- His first tunes were in two really famous demos, 'The Whattaheck Demo' and 'The Sowatt Demo', for the Ghost Screens (great memories). He also wrote most of the musics for the 'OverDrive Demo' by Phalanx (which I think were quite noisy for most of them). ================================================================================ Cooksey Mark ------------ Yet another famous C64 composer. He wrote only a few tunes on the ST for some famous arcade game conversions by Elite (Commando, Ghosts'n'Goblins). ================================================================================ Count Zero from Electronic Image (Nic Alderton) ----------------------------------------------- He composed all the musics for the 'Decade Demo' by The Inner Circle back in 1989 (great demo, which in some way represented an alternative to The Union). He also made some very good conversions of Tim Wright's musics for Psygnosis games 'The Killing Game Show' and 'Awesome'. His melodies are quite original and certainly created a good alternative to the Jochen Hippel style which was used in nearly all demos at this time. He made heavy use of enveloppes, which sometimes gave some quite shrill sounds. Still very nice to listen to, I think. ================================================================================ Daglish Ben ----------- Certainly one the most productive game music designer (after David Whittaker). He made many songs on both ST and C64, and what is quite nice is that his ST songs weren't simple C64 conversions. Some of them are really great and should sound familiar to you : Blasteroids, NorthStar, Rick Dangerous, SwitchBlade. ================================================================================ Dalecki Adrian -------------- His games tunes are adaptations of the Amiga version he wrote for StarByte. Sound quite nice, although the games were not very famous on ST. ================================================================================ DocLands from The Overlanders ----------------------------- This french guy is the twin of Adso from The Overlanders. He wrote a few musics for their demos. ================================================================================ Dunn Jonathan ------------- Well, here's again one of the legends of the C64. Remember masterpieces like Ocean Loader or Platoon ? He composed musics mainly for games by Ocean which all have a typical rhythm (Rambo III, Operation ThunderBolt, ...). ================================================================================ Excellence In Art ----------------- I don't know many about him. He composed musics with Megatizer. ================================================================================ Follin Tim ---------- Wow! really great, great songs (unfortunately not enough on the ST). His songs are really clear with some very nice sounds (LedStorm (brilliant), Bionic Commando, Gauntlet III). Words fails to express his very good work. IMO, it's definitly one of the best around. ================================================================================ Frazer from Syndicate --------------------- Yet another one to use the Megatizer by Sector One. The tunes he wrote were quite nice, especially the ones for the 'If Pigs Could Fly' demo. Quite a shame he didn't wrote more musics, I think. ================================================================================ Furniss Matt ------------ He wrote musics mainly for Domark. Klax and SpaceHarrier II are certainly some of the best of them. ================================================================================ Gray Fred --------- Matt and Fred Gray were two of the most famous C64 composers (Jochen Hippel adapted many of his tunes on ST : BMX Simulator, Bangkok Knight Loader, ...). Unfortunately, it seems he only composed music for BlackLamp by Firebird. ================================================================================ Herbert Alex ------------ Although BombZ really sounds like game's music, I don't think it was used as such. Musics come from the Lost Boys first demo, 'The Definitive Demo'. As far as I know, Alex Herbert then coded Goldrunner II on ST. ================================================================================ Hippel Jochen - Mad Max from The Exceptions ------------------------------------------- What could be say to describe the biggest and most famous ST musician (despite the criticisms from the Eternal Sound Demo II by SynthDream). He certainly started by converting C64 tunes (and it's true that he didn't always mention the original C64 composer, which might have mislead many people), but he definitly created his own style and wrote many masterpieces which consacrated him as the first one to "really show what the YM2149 was capable of" (as stated in the B.I.G. demo). Here's a little chronology of his musics : His first musics were mainly C64 conversions and appeared in the 'Little Sound Demo' by TEX. They used the same replay as the game Extensor (whose music was used in TEX first Intro, the one with a Dragon from ES). Next there was the 'Little Color Demo' (with the 'Robb says Who') which used another format (note there were two releases of this demo). Next file format then appeared in what will stay as the best music demo IMO, the B.I.G. demo (have a look at my homage conversion). All these musics were again C64 conversions (from Rob Hubbard). The replay uses absolute addressing, which is quite tedious to relocate. Others songs to use this format were Arkanoid (in the Overscan Screen of the Amiga Demo), BangkokKnight Loader (one of the best conversion ever made), many tunes from the Cuddly Demos and from the Union Demo, Dugger and Scout from 'The Swedish New Year Demo'. There was also a kind of 'packed' notes version used in ProfessionalBMX_2 or I-Ball (v2) as well as sample version for BadCat and the Tex Neochrome Show. With the B.I.G. Demo and the Amiga Demo, Jochen Hippel also introduced the first musics with 3 samples and independant frequencies for each one (one funny thing is that the game Sapiens by Loriciel used exactly the same mixing routine as the one from TEX. Wonder who ripped who ? :) Then came the 'Thalion Sound Demo' with another format. This one was at last PC-relative and featured many conversions from Jeroen Tel of Maniacs Of Noise. Waveforms were now stored in the music data (and not in the replay). This format then evolved in the TFMX format (which was reused by Lap, Dr Beat, ENS, An Cool). There were many versions of TFMX, the most recent is for example the one used in 'Chambers of Shaolin', which support env (comm $E9) and variable speed (comm $E0) ; this replay should play all TFMX songs so far. Then, there was the COSO/TFMX format. It was mainly the same as TFMX, but waveforms were better packed ; there were two versions, using long or word addressing for the music data offset. There was also some digi version (GhostBattle, Crickey Menu, ...). Next evolution was the COSO/MMME format, which can play all COSO/TFMX file and have also the possibility of a different vibrato calculation (well, that's what I guess). In fact, one could say that the TFMX and COSO format marks the end of the "C64 conversion time" and starts the "own composition time". Jochen Hippel then wrote many musics for game company (Rainbow Arts, Thalion, ...). Some of his best are for me Wings Of Death, Enchanted Land (great intro), Chambers Of Shaolin In Game, Leaving Terramis, Master Blazer, Prehistoric Tales (brilliant intro music). Really too numerous to mention them all. Since the Syntax Terror demo in 1991, there was really less music from him, and this certainly helped the emergence of new taletented people like Scavenger, Big Alec of Tao who "revolutioned" music with SID like enveloppe. Although Jochen didn't use this technique at this time, one can considered he was the first one to use such sounds in his KnuckleBuster version for the Cuddly Demos (it wasn't exactly the same coding method, but the result was identical). Nevertheless, I recently found 2 SID musics from Hippel on Aura nice sound chip page on the Web. The header is MMME/MMME and they support SID env as well as sample for both STF and STE. As a last word, a special regard to MCoder for his very good general COSO/MMME replayer and the many conversions he made to this format (which is compatible with Hippel COSO/MMME format, except for samples) ================================================================================ Hogh Ash -------- He coded the cheap games about CJ the Elephant for CodeMasters and made the music as well. ================================================================================ Hotline ------- Musics were composed by Lotus (Laurens Tummers) and some by Joard. Their first ones appeared in the SynthDream Demo, and feature some very clear samples and neat bass line. Only problem for me, was that the replay used absolute addressing and was quite a mess to convert (I think it's the biggest replay so far). It wasn't really well written, but anyway, the musics are really great (note that the replay doesn't really support song restarting and can produce strange sounds). Then came the Eternal Sound Demo II, which main purpose was to blame Jochen Hippel for converting so many C64 songs without crediting their authors ; unfortunately, I think the musics were rather poor compared to SynthDream Demo, and certainly didn't deserve critisiscms toward Jochen Hippel. Here again, the replay is a complete mess and uses massive self modifying code (and I'm even not sure it helped speeding up the replay !). Well at least, the replay featured possibility for 3 samples at a time with independant volume (but same frequency). Lotus also wrote musics for 'No Buddies Land' and 'Monster Bussiness', which were of a better quality than the Eternal II, IMO. ================================================================================ Hubbard Rob ----------- The Real C64 Master, period. He was the first one to really pull nice melodies out of the C64 chip (most of them were adapted in the B.I.G demo), and he also converted some of them to ST. What a shame, there aren't more of them ! Anyway, Thrust, WarHawk and GoldRunner are really brilliant (GoldRunner was quite hard to rip, 'cause the replay was splitted and scattered on 30 Kb, but it is quite packable, since 95% of the file are empty bytes now (the replay was directly integrated in the game)). I couldn't conceive a Rob Hubbard directory without what is certainly the music of one of the most astonishing game by Steve Bak and Peter Lyon for MicroDeal. Also, the Thrust_ULM songs was in fact composed by The Fate from ULM for their Gen4 demo, but using the Hubbard replay (hence the similar sounds). ================================================================================ Huelsbeck Chris --------------- Also one the best composers around. He made great musics on C64 (Shades,...) and some very great ones on Amiga (Turrican I and II, Jim Power, Great Giana Sister, Apidya, ...). He converted some of his tunes to ST, and also worked with Jochen Hippel on some 7 voices replay routine for Amiga. Hippel also converted the Turrican's tunes on ST. He's now composing for the Sony PSX (he made musics/fx for Tunnel B1). ================================================================================ Iso from Sentry --------------- Nice songs with good enveloppe use. Include some conversions of Hippel tunes. Some of the songs use SID env (DBA Mag 9, ...). ================================================================================ Jess from The Overlanders ------------------------- He was formerly known as Ninja Turtle, and wrote some music for Legacy (in 'Punish Your Machine' or 'Phaleon Demo'). His brother Ben wrote the replay routine when they were in the group 'Undead'. He then changed his pseudo when joining The Overlanders. All his tunes have been included in the 'Froggies Over The Fence' great demo. Note that his replay supports STE sample. Some of his best tunes are for example BMGS_Loader and Jess_OvrLast. ================================================================================ JMP (John M Phillips) --------------------- A very skilled coder which brought some new concepts on the ST. His game Nebulus was really brilliant (remember the parallax scroll in the bonus stage and the rotating tower ?). He also wrote the musics for his game (note that the file format is the same as the Amiga version). ================================================================================ Joseph Richard -------------- He wrote musics for two famous games, James Pond I and II. He also wrote the music for Cannon Fodder and Chaos Engine. ================================================================================ Lap from Next ------------- His first musics were based on Jochen Hippel TFMX replay format. They were used in 'The Charts' by Next. He then developped his own format (starting with Lap27), which after improvments included sample and SID env. Some of his nicest tunes are Lap29, Lap33, BMGS_Menu and BMGS_Apart (my favorite, great env + sample) ================================================================================ Leitch Barry ------------ He wrote musics for Gremlin. His tunes are really good, especially the 'Monty On The Run' remix for ImpossaMole. He's still working in the PC game industry, but when I contacted him, he told me he sold his ST long ago and so was unable to send me more tunes, what a shame. ================================================================================ Lowe Dave --------- He wrote few tunes on the ST. IK+ is certainly his best one (remember this cool game, with all the hidden cheat words to type ?) ================================================================================ LTK from Mystic --------------- Not many tunes from him and not many to write on this french guy. Anyway, Mystic was a cool group with nicely designed demos. ================================================================================ Megatizer --------- This directory contains Megatizer musics from various composers. Some of the best ones were those composed by Rhino for the PETE party demo. ================================================================================ Misc ---- This directory contains musics from unknown composers or composers who wrote only one or two musics. There're many rather 'exotic' format, which were not always easy to rip and relocate. I think most of the tunes here were never ripped before, so enjoy BackLash, HadesNebula (one of the first ST shoot-em up), International Karate, Predator (great one, with two sample voices), SpaceHarrier, ... Many of the composers are unknown to me, so if you have any hint, don't hesitate to contact me. ================================================================================ Music Studio ------------ Remember this old music program (one of the first on ST). Musics wasn't very elaborated, but it was use for games like MetroCross or Xevious. ================================================================================ Noodle Chrispy from BBC ----------------------- He wrote mainly conversions. Nvertheless, his Hybris version is quite good, as well as Commando and Sapiens. ================================================================================ Obarski Karsten --------------- THE father of Amiga soundtracker. His first tunes were already converted by TEX in their Amiga Demo. Some years after the soundtracker, he created his own format with some more 'synthetic' sounds on Amiga. Only game to use this routine is I think Dyter 07. ================================================================================ Pritchard Nigel --------------- Not many too say, it seems he didn't write many musics on ST. ================================================================================ Shields Paul ------------ Another of my fave ST composer. Really nice musics (but it seems he only wrote 3 musics ?). The best is certainly Airball ; listen to it and remember when you played this great game in 1986, what a shock it has been when the game was released ! (this really showed the gap between 8 bits and 16 bits computer). Also Jug and TetaQuest are really good. ================================================================================ Roger J. Dave ------------- This one also wrote very few songs, but they were really, really good. The Zinaps tune was reused in an Intro from the Replicants. My favorite is the Exolon's music. Simply great. ================================================================================ Scavenger from Synergy ---------------------- Well, here's in my opinion the best composer in the latest ST productions. His first music was I think in the 'Leif Rullar' screen of Electra in the 'Punish Your Machine' demo ; it featured some really innovative env sounds as well as samples. At the beginning, his musics were composed with the TriSound Designer by Enigma. He then used the SidSound Designer (with a replay from BAT) and released his 'Music Disk'. This one contained excellent musics (certainly the best SID env musics written) with very good env and drum sound : DBA6_Intro, Pandora Box, WickedPolygons and more. He then wrote his own music editor to suit his need : ChipMon II and released a demo version of it in the great Synergy's Megademo. This demo also contained many other ChipMon music, all of them with great SID env usage and very dynamic melodies. No doubt that Scavenger is one of the 4 best demo scene composers on ST for me (with Jochen Hippel, Big Alec and Tao). ================================================================================ Scharvona Justin ---------------- Only known music is for The Last Ninja II by System III. ================================================================================ Simmonds Matthew from Sonic Design ---------------------------------- Also known as 4Mat on the Amiga, he's certainly one of the best Amiga composer. The ST version are in the same format as ProTracker modules, except they don't include any sample. ================================================================================ Tao from ACF ------------ Another very talented person in the "succession" of Jochen Hippel in the demo scene. His first musics appeared in the 'Just Buggin' demo. He then wrote many more tunes which featured samples as well as SID env for the 'Songs That Make Me Go Mmmm' music disk. He wrote some good C64 conversions : Ice Age, Master Of Magic, Sanxion, SpellBound, ThunderCats. ================================================================================ The Mind from Aenigmatica ------------------------- His tunes came from the 'Genesys Remix' megademo and from the Phaleon demo. He also wrote the music for the games DizzyPanic and Steg. Good Reset tune and Xenon Remix. ================================================================================ Walker Martin ------------- He mainly worked for Activision (R-Type II, Atomic RoboKid, DragonBreed). ================================================================================ Whittaker David --------------- Here's the biggest game music composer on ST. He wrote nearly 100 music. Many people have reproched him that his tunes often sound the same, and it's true that it's quite easy to recognize a music by David Whittaker. Anyway, he made some very good tunes for famous games : Bad Company, Beyond The Ice Palace, BMX Simulator, Custodian, Defender Of the Crown, Enduro Racer, Leatherneck, Menace, Obliterator, Platoon (conversion from J. Dunn), Renagade (remember the old Test Drive crack intro by Delta Force ?), SpeedBall, Starray, Xenon, Xenon II, Zombi and many more. Certainly one of the major actors of the ST musical scene. ================================================================================ Williams Tony ------------- He did wrote only a few musics for some good games : Ninja Warriors, Pang, ... ================================================================================ Wilson Mark ----------- Not many about him, only 2 songs. ================================================================================