Here’s something rather silly I’ve put together. Anyone up for a bunch of 8-bit versions of popular TV and film themes, taken from a load of BBC Micro games? I CAN TELL YOU ARE, HELLO YOU.
Some of the pieces are really well done – I especially love the opening version of the Match of the Day theme – and some… aren’t. What the bloody hell is that interpretation of Play Your Cards Right?
Download “Four Channels” (13MB MP3, 11:06)
And here’s a quick rundown of each piece – each with the name of the game (with link to the disc image, to be run on an emulator), software house, name of the music (if applicable), and the programme/film it comes from:
0:04 – Arcade Soccer, The Fourth Dimension (Match of the Day)
0:24 – Howszat, ANF (Soul Limbo, BBC Cricket)
0:36 – Repton, Superior Software (Black and White Rag, Pot Black)
1:23 – Bullseye, Macsen (Bullseye)
1:49 – Countdown, Macsen (Countdown)
2:08 – Bruce Forsyth’s Play Your Cards Right, Britannia (Play Your Cards Right)
2:31 – Gold Run, Macsen (Blockbusters)
2:52 – The Archers, Mosaic (Barwick Green, The Archers)
3:06 – Dallas, Cases (Dallas)
3:12 – Doctor Who The First Adventure, BBCSoft (Doctor Who)
3:33 – Frak!, Aardvark (The Trumpet Hornpipe, Captain Pugwash)
3:51 – Shark Attack, Romik (Theme from Jaws, Jaws)
4:00 – Star Wars, Unreleased (Main Title, Star Wars)
4:59 – Superman, Tynesoft (Theme from Superman, Superman)
6:36 – Hyper Sports, Imagine (Titles, Chariots of Fire)
9:23 – Return of the Jedi, Domark (The Imperial March/Yoda’s Theme, Return of the Jedi)
(Incidentally, if anybody could identify the exact piece of music from Return of the Jedi, I’d be grateful – I recognise the first bit as The Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back, but I don’t recognise the second bit at all. UPDATE 7/5/13: It’s ‘Yoda’s Theme’ from The Empire Strikes Back. Thanks to MattLB in the comments.)
Hope you enjoyed all that. It’s just a shame there wasn’t a BBC Micro version of Catchphrase, or we really would have had a “chip”tune!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’ll go away now.
4 comments
MattLB on 30 April 2013 @ 6pm
The music following the Imperial March in the Return of the Jedi soundtrack is actually from the Empire Strikes Back and is called the “Love Theme”. You can hear it from 3:11 onwards at:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE4SfF4pyxM
MattLB on 30 April 2013 @ 6pm
No, scratch that. It’s Yoda’s theme.
JamesW on 6 May 2013 @ 10pm
The Macsen games sound like they have some weird speed issue on some of the channels, like the NTSC/PAL effect you get on some C64 games. I wonder if they developed the sound code on a non BBC machine, and didn’t get the sync quite right.
John Hoare on 7 May 2013 @ 5pm
Lovely, thanks Matt! I’ve updated the article to include it.
Agreed, James. I did wonder whether it was an emulator issue, but I think BeebEm is pretty good with that kind of thing.
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