DOS Games Discussion

PixelTHING's top ten 8 and 16 bit intro tunes episode inspired me to create this thread. I guess we could discuss anything video game music related here, but recently I realized that I'm completely unfamiliar with music from some games I know - simply because those particular tunes play in the menu, and it never occurred to me to listen to through.

For example, until recently I never listened to more than maybe a few seconds of the Halloween Harry main menu theme. I wouldn't have realized that there was something beyond those several seconds if that particular tune's remix was not featured during the 3D Realms website reboot.

Many other games have very nice and interesting, and sometimes plain awesome main menu music, but it can be missed easily if you quickly navigate through the menus.

Cheezits and Rice!hehe

Thank you Jesus!!!!!!!!!!!!

The tune is pretty awesome.

Reminds me of Commodore 64.

I don't know if these qualify since they are console related, but they sure bring back a tear of nostalgia.

All time favorite battle tune
FF VII Jenova

All time creepy exploration tune
King's Field 2 - Ancient Battleground

Top 10 ponder why it was tune
King's Field: TAC - City Center

This guy reminds me a bit of my own toxic persona. Hades - my favorite FF summon.

I am actually quite pleased with this thread and FFVII has such a great assortment of nostalgic tunes. Anywhere from the over world map, sneaking into the Shinra building, the Chocabo races, Red XIII town music, Valentine's mansion music, the piano score when the pearls fall into the water..., the amusement park music, air ship music, even the extended battle music, etc. was all good. I remember I loved some music so much I would even go into old areas where I could sneeze and kill an opponent, but was only there to listen to the music. In fact I do not remember a tune I did not enjoy from it. Granted some were better than others, but all hold a special place in my heart. I used to know a site that had every song in midi form, but have long since forgotten where it was.

And Katamary Damacy has some really great upbeat and jazzy tunes to them. And as with FFVII, even after beating a level I would go back mostly for certain songs, with this being my favorite or one of my most favorite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFLJX-T7 ... re=related

I remember the ending theme about every one coming together and changing the world as you literally rolled up the world was also on my high praise list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuWmY65o-s

Not sure the translation, but I heard "Love" in it some where.

There are many more I am sure, I will just have to remember all the games and musical scores. But I was quite surprised that back in the 8 and 16 bit era, that the game music was what took up the most space. You could virtually have a game that was many continents large, even the whole world or multiple worlds with 60+ hours of game play, but it was the music that took up the most space.

And just to comment on Kings Field. I forget which version I played on the PS1, (Part 2 I think.) but it had a sword that could grow and level up, although I heard at a certain point it would break and or revert back to it's normal form, but you could level it up a second time and it stayed that powerful. And although the graphics were not that good, the fog thick and it was hard to know what enemies were what- with it's story, exploration, magic and first person mode, I really enjoyed it. I remember I use to go back and forth just to kill every thing I could to make sword grow and discover new things. Sadly I have not seen that game since.

And I believe my post count will get rather large from this thread alone. But I am not to blame for that.

Well, thanks pseudocoder and DOS Wolf. Great tunes.

DOS Wolf wrote:FFVII has such a great assortment of nostalgic tunes.

I've played way too many console games to keep track of their music, but FF VII always stood out. There were many theme appropriate tunes that really helped to set the mood of a given area.

DOS Wolf wrote:Katamary Damacy

I've never heard of this game. :O That was a pretty nice tune though; I thought I saw a reference to Namco... if so, they seemed to have a lot of theatrical type tracks. I remember Tales of Destiny had some decent songs.

DOS Wolf wrote:And just to comment on Kings Field.

Yeah; part 2 had the leveling sword. Excellerator or something to that effect. LOL with the fog; I cursed those flying skulls atop the graveyard hill way too many times to count. The game's graphics (psx graphics in general) weren't that good, but they were mostly about the game play. Flash and frilly stuff hadn't quite evolved yet.

In keeping the thread theme, I guess that Battle of Olympus probably had my favorite 8 bit sound... though that era didn't really leave much of an impression sound wise.

I think one of the most amazing feats as far as videogame music goes is the Journey to Silus soundtrack. Sunsoft really knew their way around the NES sound chip and had creative ways to get around its limitations. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNCrpIL2XlY">Check out this masterpiece</a>.

MrFlibble wrote:Many other games have very nice and interesting, and sometimes plain awesome main menu music, but it can be missed easily if you quickly navigate through the menus.

Indeed.

One example that comes to mind is the intermission music from DOOM2 (D_DM2INT).

In Red Alert 2, here's a track called Jank which normally only plays during mission loading screens. Because the data loads rather fast, only a small portion of the track is played (however, it can be enabled in the game's jukebox playlist by editing an INI file IIRC).

The track can be listened to at Frank Klepacki's website.

wardrich wrote:I think one of the most amazing feats as far as videogame music goes is the Journey to Silus soundtrack. Sunsoft really knew their way around the NES sound chip and had creative ways to get around its limitations. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNCrpIL2XlY">Check out this masterpiece</a>.

Wiki quote-

"One of the interesting details about the game was the music: Most commonly, NES composers would use the digital channel for sampled drums and the other channels for melodic content. Journey to Silius used the digital channel for a sampled bassline, and the triangle channel for a kickdrum. This made the game soundtrack sound vastly different than other games."

The sound track for Tail of the Sun for the PS1 was also unique and fun. Great game too by the way. And yes Katamari Damacy is a Namco game. You should look it up on the Wiki, they give some interesting facts, it was more or less a test to see what could be done with a small group of people on a limited budget.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the PS1 was spectacular, although I like the violin introduction to Castlevania 64 as well. A shame the rest of the game could not be that good...

And I remember some kind of walking, crawling or floating plant/flower that would attack me in King's Field. Haha. I think there were NPC town folk as well, but only like one or two at any given time, but then again it has been so long I could be mistaken.

Check out this clip DOS Wolf - it talks about a lot of the tricks that Sunsoft pulled off.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEgoYUzwabI">NES Audio: Sunsoft Bass and Melodic Samples</a>

Cheezits and Rice!hehe

Not to interrupt, however, I just wanted to say it is pretty cool how they have music in DOS. DOS is pretty touchy. I am trying to do some music in DOS for quite some time now and it is pretty hard. I have heard some good tunes in DOS though that simply amazes me even through the PC speaker.

O-well, I guess I am just a pure assembly developer that people enjoy. hehe At least I am trying to be a pure assembly developer anyways. Today is my second time I develop in pure assembly.

You should look for a MIDI or MOD library so you can just use MID or XM/MOD tracks to handle music. If you need a good mod tracker, I would recommend <a href="http://milkytracker.org/">Milky Tracker</a>.

Village of the Elw by far my most favorite of the songs with the theme song a close second, although I have not finished the game completely and there may be more hidden gems some where. However that is not to say the rest of the sound track is not good either. These are just two of my personal favorites. Sadly it did not do as well as FFVII. Graphics although 3D in nature, were a bit blocky (Even more blockier than FFVII) and chibi in nature. But all in all it was a decent foray into RPGs on the PS1. Still it is a decent play. The story is great, music top notch and the graphics, apart from the battle scenes are also rather well done.

Village of the Elw-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11CqmhtBfJI

Intro Movie-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twRv1qR6rVw

And I will have to check out that clip later on the music War.