Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku‘s daily hangout for people who love video games and the cool sounds that they make. Today we hear the Atari Jaguar game which sounded like a rave to the Lama Ranch, Jeff Minter’s psychedelic retro update Storm 2000.
Since the unfortunate 1994 Atari Jaguar was billed as a 64-bit interactive multimedia system, it must have been strange how many of its games, including the 3D shooter package, have been used Cybermorphhad next to no music. Jag players often played their fancy new high-tech video games that were only accompanied by sound effects. Possibly this was due to the low developer buy-in, the expensive costs for the cartridge ROM, the lack of replacement CPU power or the Jaguars rather barebones, DIY approach for sound generation? Probably all of these and other reasons.
But one game is known to have fought against this tide and not only made a name for itself on the cutting edge. LSD
Atari / iamspider (Youtube) [This first track didn’t make it into the final Jag game, actually!]
Techno in my Jaguar? It’s more likely than you think. And that’s probably because the game is the idea of Jeff Minter, noted ungulate lover, chemistry lover, and eccentric game programmer. Minter – who would later provide images for a NIN video– was no stranger to EDM’s pulsating beats. So why not add it to a psychedelic update to Dave Theurer’s 1980s vector graphics arcade hit? Storm on a brand new console from Atari?
It all sounds very unlikely, but that’s exactly what happened! Why not in fact.
Storm 2000 It turned out that the Jaguar was the closest thing to critical success. Although I didn’t really know how it actually played, I bought a copy on the recommendation of all the magazines. Turns out it wasn’t really my thing: I’m not much of one Storm Fan! But the game’s melting A / V spectacle was enough to delay that realization for a while, and the energetic, sample-heavy soundtrack helped me keep coming back. (Ah, so that was the “techno” I had read so much about …)
In truth, I wasn’t very good at the game, which can seem very tedious unless you’re so interested in sliding over the edge of a wire mesh and snapping photos of wobbly chunks of igamesnewss. As a result, I’ve only burned a few of the game’s half-dozen or so tracks into my brain. additionally Soundtrack album That is the basis for today’s playlist with another six tracks that apparently didn’t make it into the Jag release Cartridge size limitations. I think I was wrong not to compromise. all of these impressively clear samples were not cheap.
Atari / iamspider (Youtube)
The first area is “Spiritual eye“Feels like an obvious classic to me, complete with its memorable sample,” Television is the retina of the mind’s eye, “a slight misplacing of a great line from David Cronenberg’s 1983 Body Horror Fest Videodrome
Nostalgia aside, Storm 2000‘s Music is an interesting selection of video games from the early mid 1990s that are roughly the same year as, for example so famous Mortal Kombat track that was played everywhere for a couple of years. It is definitely a reminder of its time! Music credits go to Ian Howe of Imagitec Design, Alastair Lindsay, Kevin Saville and Julian Hodgson, who apparently also composed for Minter’s Defender 2000After realizing that the Jag had no clothes, I jumped out. Here is an example of the music of this game in action if you’re curious like me.
This is a wrap for today’s morning music! Is TV Really the Retina of the Mind’s Eye? (More terrifying is Facebook?) Maybe it doesn’t matter if the phrase just sounds cool, which it does. How are you? Let’s catch up in the comments. Until tomorrow!
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