Seriously, it sounds like a ballad you'd hear at Gorilla vs. Bear
November 30, 2017 4:59 PM Subscribe
Rarely can a film’s video game adaptation say it improved upon the film from which it drew inspiration, but the 1989 Game Boy version of Robocop, Paul Verhoeven’s ultra-violent genre classic, has at least one thing on its source material: An unforgettable theme song.
The Twitter thread that reminded everyone of this theme. The responders mostly bring up the music you'd expect, but it's fun to dive into anyhow.
Here's an Outline article that might have gone above the fold if it had been more than "Hey, this tune exists."
And here's a Lil B track that samples it.
The Twitter thread that reminded everyone of this theme. The responders mostly bring up the music you'd expect, but it's fun to dive into anyhow.
Here's an Outline article that might have gone above the fold if it had been more than "Hey, this tune exists."
And here's a Lil B track that samples it.
I immediately recognised this song from those terrible Dilbert cartoons by a guy under the moniker Chef Boyardee.
posted by constantinescharity at 5:18 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by constantinescharity at 5:18 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Oh, man, I totally forgot how memorable this song is, thanks.
Also, if we're going to link to our favorite chiptune music, I'll first leave this link to Aivi and Surasshu and this link to the chiptune version of the Nier Automata soundtrack that you hear when you're playing the hacking minigame, which is by Shotaro Seo (MONACA).
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:36 PM on November 30, 2017
Also, if we're going to link to our favorite chiptune music, I'll first leave this link to Aivi and Surasshu and this link to the chiptune version of the Nier Automata soundtrack that you hear when you're playing the hacking minigame, which is by Shotaro Seo (MONACA).
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:36 PM on November 30, 2017
Between Robocop and Terminator, it's astonishing to remember how R-rated movies routinely got video game and toy tie-ins back in the day.
posted by dr_dank at 5:52 PM on November 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by dr_dank at 5:52 PM on November 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
This is both legit amazing and also the least Robocop thing I have ever heard.
When I was a kid I got sort of obsessed with oddly chill, even downbeat themes to games. Partly started by Dungeon Explorer's theme.
posted by selfnoise at 5:59 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
When I was a kid I got sort of obsessed with oddly chill, even downbeat themes to games. Partly started by Dungeon Explorer's theme.
posted by selfnoise at 5:59 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
The finest, all others are trash.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 6:13 PM on November 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 6:13 PM on November 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
Little Nemo Dream Master - Ending Theme
posted by theodolite at 6:22 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by theodolite at 6:22 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
That's a good tune... I wish they'd mixed it differently, the chopping sort of harmony chords drown out the cool melody and the funky bass runs. Or is that a chip-tune thing? Can you mix it differently? How do it work?
posted by stinkfoot at 6:33 PM on November 30, 2017
posted by stinkfoot at 6:33 PM on November 30, 2017
It reminds me of the Twin Peaks theme for some reason...
posted by Hicksu at 6:51 PM on November 30, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by Hicksu at 6:51 PM on November 30, 2017 [6 favorites]
Ducktales is:
a) One of the greatest licensed games ever.
b) One of the greatest games ever.
c) One of the greatest game soundtracks ever.
I don't think anything can top The Moon, especially with awesome arrangements like this and this.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:13 PM on November 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
a) One of the greatest licensed games ever.
b) One of the greatest games ever.
c) One of the greatest game soundtracks ever.
I don't think anything can top The Moon, especially with awesome arrangements like this and this.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:13 PM on November 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
Comic Bakery is the song I always post in these threads.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:41 PM on November 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:41 PM on November 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
If you want to play one game series for the music alone, I'd suggest Suikoden.
posted by MrVisible at 7:55 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by MrVisible at 7:55 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
I realize this isn't a GameBoy Advance game, but for my money the best old videogame theme I ever encountered was the theme from M.U.L.E.
Most of the YouTube videos are showing an emulator playing at a slower speed than the original; my link doesn't have the total song, but at least plays it at the right speed.
posted by davejay at 7:58 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Most of the YouTube videos are showing an emulator playing at a slower speed than the original; my link doesn't have the total song, but at least plays it at the right speed.
posted by davejay at 7:58 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Now I have the urge to dig up my Game Boy with its frontlight/arcade-button combo that I traded something in for from 'Games to Go', none of which has existed since the 90s.
As far as chiptunes go, after far too many hours in front of the SX-64 as a kid, I will always have a soft spot for Bulldog and Stoat &Tim's Thrust Concert. Ooh, also Swinth! Man, I loved Swinth.
posted by sysinfo at 8:11 PM on November 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
As far as chiptunes go, after far too many hours in front of the SX-64 as a kid, I will always have a soft spot for Bulldog and Stoat &Tim's Thrust Concert. Ooh, also Swinth! Man, I loved Swinth.
posted by sysinfo at 8:11 PM on November 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
Stinkfoot, the 'chopping' sort of chord thing is an old trick to play something like a chord with only one note.
On tightly limited sound chips like the one found in the Gameboy, you can typically only play 3-5 notes at a time. Which is a problem when you want to have, oh, drums and bass and melody and accompaniment, and want to have chords in some of those - you'd have to drop everything else out just to play a chord.
So on the c64, people started doing this thing where they would make a single voice rapidly cycle through the notes of a chord. It was still only playing one note at a time, but they were coming fast enough that they sort of blend together in your brain into a warbly, vibrant kind of chord.
People who got their start on the c64 - like, say, all the folks at Ocean - tended to carry this technique to other systems. And various other tricks; the c64 had a really rich culture of musician-programmers who figured out a lot of ways to make it sound a lot richer than anyone imagined it ever could. So when you put them on the Nintendo machines, they really sounded strikingly different from the music put out by Japanese developers, who had none of this expertise in Weird Musical Hackery.
ObChiptuneLink: Chris Hülsbeck's theme to Oxxonian is one of my all-time c64 faves.
posted by egypturnash at 8:36 PM on November 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
On tightly limited sound chips like the one found in the Gameboy, you can typically only play 3-5 notes at a time. Which is a problem when you want to have, oh, drums and bass and melody and accompaniment, and want to have chords in some of those - you'd have to drop everything else out just to play a chord.
So on the c64, people started doing this thing where they would make a single voice rapidly cycle through the notes of a chord. It was still only playing one note at a time, but they were coming fast enough that they sort of blend together in your brain into a warbly, vibrant kind of chord.
People who got their start on the c64 - like, say, all the folks at Ocean - tended to carry this technique to other systems. And various other tricks; the c64 had a really rich culture of musician-programmers who figured out a lot of ways to make it sound a lot richer than anyone imagined it ever could. So when you put them on the Nintendo machines, they really sounded strikingly different from the music put out by Japanese developers, who had none of this expertise in Weird Musical Hackery.
ObChiptuneLink: Chris Hülsbeck's theme to Oxxonian is one of my all-time c64 faves.
posted by egypturnash at 8:36 PM on November 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
The Robocop track is so much fun because it sounds more like a modern chiptune track from Anamanaguchi than something from a video game in 1989. There's a fuzzy edge to it and a languid beat. Moon from Duck Tales is a great song but listen to it on an actual piano and it's still amazing if not moreso. This Robocop theme needs the Gameboy's sound quality to make it shine.
posted by thecjm at 9:20 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by thecjm at 9:20 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Are there any MeFi musicians who could post a quick take of themselves playing the Gameboy Robocop theme on a traditional instrument for comparison?
posted by fairmettle at 10:11 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by fairmettle at 10:11 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Sounds like Genetic Engineering material.
Also, the end of Adventure when you bring the chalis into the castle? I hear it all the time.
posted by markbrendanawitzmissesus at 11:08 PM on November 30, 2017
Also, the end of Adventure when you bring the chalis into the castle? I hear it all the time.
posted by markbrendanawitzmissesus at 11:08 PM on November 30, 2017
People who got their start on the c64 - like, say, all the folks at Ocean - tended to carry this technique to other systems.
I remember first encountering this in the NES Darkman soundtrack (which was by Ocean, of course -- and hey look, another R-rated movie made into a Nintendo game!). "What the hell? This all sounds like C64 music!" I thought the really fast arpeggio trick was just a SID feature of some sort.
posted by neckro23 at 11:20 PM on November 30, 2017
I remember first encountering this in the NES Darkman soundtrack (which was by Ocean, of course -- and hey look, another R-rated movie made into a Nintendo game!). "What the hell? This all sounds like C64 music!" I thought the really fast arpeggio trick was just a SID feature of some sort.
posted by neckro23 at 11:20 PM on November 30, 2017
The theme from the C64 game Skyfox is an entire symphony packed into a three-voice two-minute chiptune.
posted by straight at 11:47 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by straight at 11:47 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
The finest, all others are trash.
I never played Wizards & Warriors, so it took me a while to figure out why those themes seemed so familiar. Turns out I recognized them from this cheesy but awesome 17-minute guitar medley/remix, which I stumbled across more than a decade ago and had forgotten about until now.
posted by teraflop at 12:41 AM on December 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
I never played Wizards & Warriors, so it took me a while to figure out why those themes seemed so familiar. Turns out I recognized them from this cheesy but awesome 17-minute guitar medley/remix, which I stumbled across more than a decade ago and had forgotten about until now.
posted by teraflop at 12:41 AM on December 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
A brief tangent on Game Boy licensed games that ended up being better than their movies in some way: Ecks vs Sever was a licensed 3D FPS on the Game Boy Advance, which didn't have a divide operation and thus, in theory, shouldn't have been able to do 3D. It was a pretty solid FPS game, as well.
The movie it was based on, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever, was sent out to die nearly two years later, a career low point for Lucy Liu.
posted by Merus at 1:09 AM on December 1, 2017
The movie it was based on, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever, was sent out to die nearly two years later, a career low point for Lucy Liu.
posted by Merus at 1:09 AM on December 1, 2017
This is both legit amazing and also the least Robocop thing I have ever heard.
Striking but repetative heavy chords in the foreground, melodic humanizing flute in the background, quiet enough that i didn't notice it at first but the heart of the song. In a robot body, Murphy.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 6:34 AM on December 1, 2017
Striking but repetative heavy chords in the foreground, melodic humanizing flute in the background, quiet enough that i didn't notice it at first but the heart of the song. In a robot body, Murphy.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 6:34 AM on December 1, 2017
The theme to the Adventure Construction Set on the Commodore 64 (a program that let you make your own RPG/adventure games and was an inspiration for the Elder Scrolls Construction Sets distributed with most Bethesda games) was an entire overture, designed because of the memory constraints to be chopped up and used as a variety of incidental music that you could use for various events like battle, finding a thing, something sad, traveling to a new area, etc.
posted by straight at 7:17 AM on December 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by straight at 7:17 AM on December 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
In the UK the track was used on a household appliance ad for Ariston in 1991.
posted by tomp at 8:06 AM on December 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by tomp at 8:06 AM on December 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'd forgotten that ACS had that overture, but I definitely remembered loving the little incidental clips you could put in your own game. I thought I'd never hear it again. Thanks!
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:05 AM on December 1, 2017
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:05 AM on December 1, 2017
The Robocop song sounds surprisingly like the chorus of "Last Christmas" by Wham!, with the insistent, jingly synths, the smooth melody/vocal line, and the repetition.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:14 AM on December 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:14 AM on December 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
Also, I wish they had played this at the Roadhouse in Twin Peaks season 3.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:19 AM on December 1, 2017
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:19 AM on December 1, 2017
Is it on iTunes? Because I'd buy that for a dollar.
posted by me3dia at 11:10 AM on December 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by me3dia at 11:10 AM on December 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
I've now listened to like 4 versions of this thanks to Youtube continuous play, it rules. The current one puts the melody from that Coldplay song about being king over the backing part.
posted by grobstein at 12:52 PM on December 1, 2017
posted by grobstein at 12:52 PM on December 1, 2017
... without ANY acknowledgment in the video title or description that it’s doing this, I should add. It purports to just be the same Robocop title music.
posted by grobstein at 12:57 PM on December 1, 2017
posted by grobstein at 12:57 PM on December 1, 2017
Oh, also, my favorite retro chiptune soundtrack is this tragically overlooked NES title: The Guardian Legend
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:48 PM on December 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:48 PM on December 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
Seconding guardian legend, it's so good- music and gameplay. I've not found much else like it... I've seriously considered making a game "in the spirit" of guardian legend, but it's a really high bar for me to reach to.
And yes, that Wizards and Warriors track would get stuck in my head - unfortunately, so would the not-so-great "health low" theme that was so repetitive and awful, it would instantly prompt you to in-game suicide simply to escape it. Very memorable music, overall.
I still think this particular track from the NES Metroid is one that has held up extraordinarily well - it's a perfect use of the synth capabilities of the NES to a rather haunting effect, and it stands out as a particularly memorable track within the game.
posted by MysticMCJ at 2:41 PM on December 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
And yes, that Wizards and Warriors track would get stuck in my head - unfortunately, so would the not-so-great "health low" theme that was so repetitive and awful, it would instantly prompt you to in-game suicide simply to escape it. Very memorable music, overall.
I still think this particular track from the NES Metroid is one that has held up extraordinarily well - it's a perfect use of the synth capabilities of the NES to a rather haunting effect, and it stands out as a particularly memorable track within the game.
posted by MysticMCJ at 2:41 PM on December 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
If you want an 8-bit theme that has more emotional and musical depth to it than you thought possible, I would recommend the Muda Kingdom Theme from Super Mario Land for Game Boy.
posted by dhens at 5:13 PM on December 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by dhens at 5:13 PM on December 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
It reminds me of the Twin Peaks theme for some reason...
Twin Peaks Robocop remix.
posted by straight at 11:24 AM on December 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
Twin Peaks Robocop remix.
posted by straight at 11:24 AM on December 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
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