Gems Of Our Youth PART 1 | Chris Hülsbeck | Mastermind of Epic Game Music and Soundtracks | Amiga and C64 Reloaded

onetin84 (62)in #music • 7 years ago (edited)

Hello Steemit friends,

Back from the Future right into the Past. Come with me for a few minutes. Hear sonme of the greatest game music soundtracks ever produced. But beware it's no Beyonce, Pink or French Montana! ;)

(X-Out ingame artwork edited, Amiga)

Whether you played on an Amiga in the 90ties or not. Chris Hülsbeck was a true master of atmospheric game music soundtracks who wrotes his own Tracker-Software to get the most out of the Amiga 500. The Amiga had an incredible sound chip. No other home computer system at that time was even near the capabilities.. PC?..beep

The music was a part of my and school friends lifestyle at the time and defined for me what "good (game) music" was. Thank you Chris!

At that time he also produced for the popular C64 with much less sound capabilities than the Amiga but had done also magical things with the today primitive technology ("SID" called sound chip, Hülsbeck developed the SoundMonitor to get the most out of it). With his own tracker software for the Amiga TFMX he founded the basis for all coming great soundtracks we dreamed at night about.

TFMX 7Voice Music Editor Commodore Amiga - video by Mastertronic

Here is the list of his game soundtracks (without PC, strong marked my favorites)

Katakis (Amiga)
Apidya (Amiga)
Apprentice (Amiga)
The Baby of Can Guru (C64)
Dulcedo Cogitationis (C64)
The Great Giana Sisters (C64)
Gem'X
Hard 'n' Heavy (C64)
Jim Power in Mutant Planet (Amiga)
Jim Power: The Lost Dimension in 3-D (SNES)
R-Type intro music (C64, Amiga)
Starball intro music (C64)[7]
Shades (C64 demo)
To be on Top (C64)
Turrican 1-3 soundtracks (Amiga)
Grand Monster Slam (Amiga)
M.U.D.S. – Mean Ugly Dirty Sport (Amiga)
X-Out (Amiga)
Z-Out (Amiga)

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Huelsbeck
(Katakis, Grand Monster Slam, Gem'X, Masterblazer, Battle Isle not mentioned)

The beauty of these tracks were the pure electronic instruments without any voiceover. He had the great talent to make on one hand memorable simple to grab melodies and on the other hand very cool Synth Leads and rhytms to beam you to another world! His music played a very important role in games as unique selling point. Chris was beside David Whittaker (Shadow of the Beast e.g.), Shaun Southern (e. g. Lotus series) and a few other heros a real brand at this time. Let's jump into some masterpieces:*

Lotus series - famous for his 2-player simultaneous mode and high speed feel

Also the the strong Hacker and Demo scene supported the distribution of mod music produced with different Soundtrackers similar to the TFMX by Hülsbeck. The unique sample sound of the Amiga is like a trademark.

The Best of Compilation gives an first impression what Chris Hülsbeck composed. It's not the original chiptune Amiga sound but you can hear the great energetic soundtracks. Simply great!

Best of Chris Hülsbeck (Mastertronic) - video by Mastertronic

The following Shades Vol. 1 album is my favorite compilation of game tracks in remastered form.

Chris Huelsbeck Vol. 1- Shades - video by Ryan Landry

The original C64 Demo shows a lot more crispy chiptune sound but has the same epic composition by Chris

Shade by Newlook for the Commodore 64 (C64) from 1987 - video by sacreleases

Now let's jump into more original music i collected thanks to the Internet and many who contributed with blood and sweat to keep the gems alive!

Katakis with his cold and cool intro music is a classic! The rest of the game is quiet you just hear the drives of your ships, shots and explosions.

[AMIGA MUSIC] Katakis -01- Title Screen - video by amigaparadise

The dark deep sea theme of X-Out is unprecedented and very atmospheric!

Amiga music: X-Out (loading & main theme combo - Dolby Headphone) - video by Kuokka77

Z-Out smashes metal hammers in outer space. It fit's perfectly to the metallic atmosphere of the graphics and very high difficuilty!

Amiga music: Z-Out near-full OST (Dolby Headphone) - video by Kuokka77

Did you know that the Amiga had great output capabilities like Stereo Cinch to connect easily with a hifi system to record the great soundtracks on cassettes in good quality. In games i'd looked always in the main menu for a music selection and playback menu to record the tracks. It took many hours but then i could hear them all time..

Jim Power a brightly colored Jump'n'Shoot got a gorgeous intro and game music by Chris Hülsbeck. The game itself was quite good from technical standpoint, but the music is much better in my opinion.

Jim Power in Mutant Planet - Title Theme (Amiga) - video by BrandonJ33

Jim Power Level 1 music - video by Scrub Wave

R-Type by far not the best game technically spoken had a great title track by Chris Hülsbeck.

Amiga music: R-Type (main theme) - video by Kuokka77

Gem'X like Apidya was released under the label Kaiko and was hardly inspired by japanese culture. Hülsbeck talked about that time with Rainbow Arts the studio who also released R-Type for Amiga and Apidya with japanes roots.

Amiga music: Gem'X (main theme) - video by Kuokka77

Giana Sisters inspired by Super Mario was always the topic for us as school kids. "Had you seen the green dragon in Level 32?!". The childish music is cult and catapulted that game beside the smooth game controls to the top.

The Great Giana Sisters -= Amiga Game Soundtrack =- - video by ED209rev1

Epic arena music in a medieval setting was in Grand Monster Slam.

Amiga Music - Grand Monster Slam - video by redcommando2

The successor of Grand Monster Slam M.U.D.S. is in a similar setting and the title song is epic!

Amiga MUDS Intro Theme - video by Drexow

Next one is the Apidia-Soundtrack. I took the music from the game via my stereosystem Philips FW40 (they were the rage at the time) on ferro cassettes. That soundtrack was just great! If you ever played the game in the second level at the pond with that beautiful beautiful music despite the nowadays very bad resolution, it brought everything out of the machine and the soundtrack was stuff of dreams which took me lightyears away from my computer desk for a while..

Stereo cassette - used for recording game music

(Amiga)Apidya-Soundtrack - video by Game-Movie

Apprentice was this little guy with a magical hat who tried to survive in a enchanted place. The game was not one of the best and also for me as child a bit infantile. But thanks to the soundtrack it is unforgiven and branded in my memory

(Amiga)Apprentice-Soundtrack - video by Game-Movie

Masterblazer i don't remember really, but the music is very good

Masterblazer - [Amiga 500] Soundtrack by Chris Hülsbeck (1990) - video by Stefan Lindberg

Battle Isle was a round based strategy game and one of the favored games of my best friend at the time.

Battle Isle (amiga) Intro & Title - video by einokeino303

BUT! AND THAT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT!

.... TURRICAN I + II ....

Almost everything stands in the shadow of these games on the Amiga AND THE SOUNDTRACK!!!

Turrican introduced a new quality of game soundtracks. Pure pumping energy, great melodies, modern, epic. Chris Hülsbeck was at the top.

Turrican Complete Soundtrack video by 10StundenNostalgie

If you're see the breachin' hull of the spaceship and the alien invasion followed by the pumping beats of the intro music.. rage and anger on the face of the survivor who puts his Turrican suit on to take revenge for his comrads .. yeahh!! that's pure tailor made game music, nothing from the test tube, great!

Turrican 2 - Complete Soundtrack - video by TantrisOST

Later Hülsbeck made more and more orchestral and for my taste too serious music like for a 3D shooter on PS1 (forgot name). The deepness and uniqueness of the Turrican soundtracks was gone in favor of a more mass pleasing standard classic type of music..

Soo! that's for now. I decided to split that initially longer post into two parts. In PART 2 i'll give you some links to Longplay videos of Amiga classics where you also hear the great music!