My post about the Agent X II theme reminded me of something else that’s interested me for a while. The music in computer games back in the 80s and 90s clearly contained some major pop culture influences, but I wonder how often it was completely subconscious, and how often the composer set out to copy the feel (or even the notes!) of an existing piece of music? We had a much more relaxed attitude to copyright back then!
Anyhow, the influences ranged from the utterly blatant:
cf.
Or the stunning (for 1990) game over music from Shadow of the Beast II on the Amiga, and a piece of incidental music from Miami Vice:
But sometimes it was a little more subtle.
Take for example, Rob Hubbard’s C64 music for One Man and His Droid: Listen to the section 3:05 into this:
and compare with the passage 2 minutes 40 seconds into this:
Of course, sometimes it works in the opposite direction!
So how many more examples are there?
i read a few articles about rob hubbard and jeroen tel/others excelent c64 musicians which stated that often they produced their work based off stuff they listed to at the time, i mean who wouldnt.
other times tho they would be specifically asked to make their next piece deliberatly like another.
its no different nowadays tho, im even now still a big fan of the chemical brothers/the prodigy/crystal method and loads of other oldie techno/noisy beat type bands/musicians and who can say that a load of music you get today is vastly different?
be it the computer world or “regular” music world, they all take inspiration from one another 😀
Oh, man! Loved that post…I think AVGN showed how the Hylide theme was a Raiders of the Lost Arc rip…
Oh yes, unmistakeably!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZDXUT3nPtE
(Your board’s on its way now, by the way. I soldered the connectors on simply because it seemed like the safest way to ship them without any danger of delicate pins being bent!)
On a similar note, you might want to have a look on this page that traces the “influences” for the cover art.
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/tracing/tracing3.htm
Target Renegade anyone? At least Bob Wakelin never made kept secret about where he got the inspiration for the Athena cover (Lisa Lyon) 🙂