Monday, October 22, 2012

Banjo Kazooie OST

Back in 1998 Rare released Banjo Kazooie on the N64 console.
 At the time it was released it already had at least three or four years worth of development and a console change, which makes for an interesting backstory. Originally Banjo Kazooie started life as Project Dream on the SNES at some point in the early 90's. It slid onto the N64 at around 1995 when it was deemed too large for the SNES. Project Dream has, as far as I know never been leaked or shown to the public bar this one screenshot printed in.. actually I have no idea where it was printed.


Interesting isn't it? There is more over here at Unseen64 including snippets of information taken from the blog of one Grant Kirkhope, who did the music.

So, you collect golden jigsaw pieces to progress to new levels - fair enough. Ten per level, with one of them being collecting five jingoes hidden throught the level. There are also health bar upgrades in the form of hollow honeycombs hidden, one per level. Lets not forget 100 notes per level which do not save upon exit and re-entry to the level (Which I just read is because  "Saving the collection state of all 100 Notes in each world was apparently too much for N64 hardware." This was apparently changed on the Xbox Live re-release. Weak! Source) In summary, Rare fucking loved item collection,.

And as is the theme with these posts, the actual bit I am archiving/posting to share is the soundtrack. Which is of course awesome. The game is jammed full of unique bouncy tunes that perfectly compliment the levels they go with. Ideally of course you'd be hearing these tunes while playing the game, but I think they have enough merit to stand on their own.
Enjoy!


DDL
Mediafire

Saturday, October 20, 2012

wipE'out" OST


Wipeout (or wipE'out") is a futuristic (Released over a decade ago) racing game from 1995 made by Psygnosis -who I seem to have some kind of bias towards. It's a well rounded game in my opinion - fun gameplay, amazing art design and brilliant music.

That said, I never got too far in wipeout, I could never get a hang of the controlls for the ships and I pretty much pinballed around the course the entire race. Which is weird because I do pretty well in F-Zero X. This isn't to say I didn't appreciate the game, mind you.
 
I'm a big fan of the visuals in wipeout, they're amazingly fresh and fun to look at. Some kind of futuristic blend of everything with a dash of japanese. I recently found out after years of thinking Psygnosis were insane geniuses on this one games art direction. That the design was actually handled by a company called The Designers Republic who are amazing. (Were amazing, sadly. They closed their doors in 2009) You can find a selection of their work to get inspired about over here.

I used to have a Retro Gamer article about the production of the game and the music but I can't seem to find it at the moment. One of the most interesting bits however, was that to get the feel for the sound they needed they took the sound guy clubbing.

So, withour further ado - here is the rip of the soundtrack from sources unknown.

(I took the cover scan from here)


DDL
Mediafire

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Pilot Wings OST

I touched upon the Pilot Wings OST in an earlier post (NSFW), but it's so good I think it deserves a seperate archival post.

Pilotwings was a launch title for the N64 back in 1996 (Or march 1 1997 if you were in the PAL region) It was developed by Paradigm Entertainment in tandem with Nintendo. The gist of the development saga is covered on the wikipedia page. Company is good at graphics, Nintendo approaches them, a game is made. Now that I think about it, that's actually dead on with what they (Nintendo) did earlier on with Starfox on the SNES.

The soundtrack was composed by Dan Hess, and (in my opinion) is nothing less than a masterwork of smooth tunes. Some people have said to me that they find the slow paced music boring so, it's not for everyone clearly. But for me the relaxing tunes go perfectly with the game, even if it is sometimes juxtaposed with my mounting fustration in the cave levels. If you enjoy this you may also like the Chrono Trigger jazz remix album. Track one is over here.

As a side note according to the wikipedia page Paradigm Entertainment was closed by THQ in 2008. Not many companies seem to last long in the video game world. If I have the time I'll make a flow chart some day.

Edit: I found those scans I mentioned. Wait no, somehow I didn't mention them.
The pages below are from Retro Gamer a british magazine which covers the old school, at one point Pilot WIngs 64 got a two page spread and they tracked down some of the people involved in making it.

Click on them for the larger image that you can actually read!



Enjoy!


Mediafire

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Pandemonium 2 OST

For today's archival we're continuing right on from yesterday with the soundtrack of Pandemonium 2. Which is as you may have guessed, the sequel to Pandemonium! It was released on the PS1 in 1997/8 (depending on where you live) it was also ported to PC. There was going tobe a Sega Saturn port as well but it never materialised for some reason.

As you may have noticed from the cover someone decided that Nikki needed more bucket load more sex appeal, I'm not sure I really agree she needed it personally - oh well. It is perhaps less unrelentingly hard than the first game, but that dosen't nessacarily mean it's better - I'm on the fence about that. Also as with the last game whoever did the level design is a champ, the bizzare spacey levels are amazingly memorable and fun.

Moving right along - as with the last post, I did not rip this - rather jwitz over at Emuparadise forums did. So go there and give him your thanks. This is an archival backup to hopefully spread a bit of awareness about a great game.

Also as you may have guessed I love platformers.


DDL
Mediafire

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Pandemonium! OST

Back in 1996/7 (depending on where you live) Crystal Dynamics released Pandemonium! a psuedo 3d side scrolling platformer for the PS1. I never got much of a chance to play it when it was released due to various reasons, but when I did get around to tracking it down years later I found that it was by far one of the best platformers I had played.

The simple yet highly functional gameplay mechanics along with amazingly well designed stages, and tight gameplay made a challenging and fun game. It and other PS1 era platformers, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot and nothing short of gaming gold. Gold I tell you.

Well I had a look around and eventually found the OST for the game - and here it is. This is an archival - not a release and I didn't rip this. The source appears to be steve2606 over on FFshrine.org (here) In the interests of getting this fun little soundtrack out there I've stuck the cover image in the folder and rehosted it.


DDL
Mediafire