This tune is part of the soundtrack I composed for the Game Gear port of Spirou. The game was fully completed but never released.

Most of the tunes were based on the Game Boy soundtrack, except for this one and another (Toy Shop), which I composed specifically for the Game Gear sound chip.

The sound is recorded from an emulator so it may not be completely accurate.

Spirou - Fight vs Cyanure (Game Gear, 1996, unreleased)

This small tune was composed for the last boss of the game, the Gladiator.
For some reason it wasn't included in the final build of the game :(

Asterix - Gladiator (1993, Game Boy, unused)

This soundtrack was the last one I composed in what it's known today as "chiptune" style, using the 4 Game Boy channels (3 tone + noise) + 2 digital channels.

It was also the last soundtrack where I used my trusty Compact Editor, which had served me well for over 10 years: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0018925

The sound driver was written entirely from scratch in C, using a gnu compiler. It could run on the GBA but also on a PC using a cycle exact emulation of the GBA sound chip I also wrote to avoid using a hardware development system.

The cartridge actually contained 2 different games, making a total of 31 tunes for the entire soundtrack. Many of the tunes were re-arranged from of my Obelix soundtrack for the SNES.

This music was directly recorded from the PC emulation back in the year 2002.

Asterix & Cleopatra - Pirate ship (GBA, 2002)

Asterix & Cleopatra - Inside the Pyramid (GBA, 2002)

Asterix & Cleopatra - The Palace (GBA, 2002)

I composed this short tune using only Super PSG VSTI by AlyJames (http://www.alyjameslab.com/alyjameslabsuperpsg.html), which emulates the SN76489 sound chip found in the Sega Master System, Game Gear and Genesis / Mega Drive consoles.

I used several instances for the different instruments and drums, but no other plugins or effects, except a bit of U-he Satin love for mastering.

I didn't even use a 10% of what the plugin is capable of, only because I wanted to stay mostly faithful to the factory specs of the sound chip.

Update! Recently I uploaded a video on my YouTube channel showing the Cubase project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-mhSQBbkIs

Verbosity (SPSG Test, 2014)

Lucky Luke was one of those soundtracks I did for Infogrames, and it's not one of which I'm particularly proud... I find it too dark sounding and short. Besides, those were the times when development times started to get uncomfortably short, and I couldn't spend much time on it.

It was the last day and I still had to compose the ending theme. I worked all night trying to find a good melody in desperation. Then, in the dawn it came straight to my mind, and in a few hours I had it composed and programmed on the Game Boy. Best moment of the whole soundtrack!

As usual, it's recorded from my own GB emulator, which I swear it's accurate enough!

Lucky Luke - Ending & Credits (Game Boy, 1996)

Yosemite Sam stage music for Bugs Bunny & Lola Bunny - operation carrot patch game, for the Game Boy Color.

Not much to say about it... except that I named it Sam-ba!

Bugs Bunny & Lola Bunny - Operation Carrot Patch - Yosemite Sam Stage - Sam-ba! (GBC, 1998)

One of my favourite tunes from one of my lesser known soundtracks.

The game was actually pretty interesting, a sort puzzle-adventure game done in isometric perspective.

Sylvester & Tweety -  Breakfast On The Run - Grandma's House (GBC, 1998)

Just the day before going on holidays I composed this tune for the soundtrack of Obelix, hence its title! It played in England - Act 2 stage.

Longer and live version by Autoscroll:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ1KMAOxk8Y

Obelix - Holidays (Game Boy, 1995)

Metal masters was a Game Boy port of the Atari ST and Amiga 500 game with the same name. It took years to produce because it went through several graphic changes and there were other games developed in between (mainly Asterix for the Game Boy and NES). It was released only in the USA, years later.

The game had only one track, but 3 versions of it with different starts.
I remember composing it close to the time when I programmed the sound driver and soundtrack of Asterix for the NES. At that time we were all working at the back of a swim-suit shop (long story). How to forget that! This was a short time before we founded Bit Managers and we were still known as New Frontier.

The long driving sound at the start is synchronized with the intro of the game, in which a pilot walks slowly and takes a lift up to the robot.
The "explosion" part sounds when a big arm is attached to the robot, and the subsequent noises and glitches previous to the melody (0:29) where inspired by something I listened in a Terminator 2 remix at the time (I think).
The random blips and notes came actually from setting one channel of the sound driver to play a random ROM address, and tweaked it until I found the sweet spot. I thought it was cool at the time.
The track intro and drums make use of the limited stereo capabilities of the console, so listening with headphones is recommended!

Recorded from AJGB, my own GB emulator ^^

Originally I composed another track for the game long time before, which can be found here along other details:

https://soundcloud.com/joemcalby/vintage-8-bit-metal-masters

Metal Masters - Metal Beat (Game Boy, 1993)

Of all my game soundtracks this is probably the track which makes less sense of all. A Smurfs game, the mountains stage, and a reggae tune? Don't ask me why, I just thought it sounded nice at the time.

It doesn't use PCM sounds for the drums, it's all done with the triangle, rectangular and noise channels.

The Smurfs was also the last game for which I drew the sprites too, then focused on composing and programming music only.

I'd love to dedicate this track to (Hip) Tanaka-san, fantastic musician and also designer of both the sound chips of the NES and Game Boy consoles.

Recorded from emulator.

Smurfs - The Mountain (NES, 1994)

This is the only tune I have ever composed for the ZX Spectrum 48k. It's based on the original composition by Frederic Mentzen for the Amiga version of the game.

Those of you with fine ears will notice that it sounds certainly similar to the music Tim Follin did for ZX too (and you know how much devotion I have for that man). That's because IT IS his sound driver, more or less.

At that time I was trying to learn as much assembler programming as I could. I thought it would be a really good exercise to disassemble the sound driver of my favourite musician and understand the magic behind its unique sound. I think I hacked Chronos but I'm not completely sure.

It wasn't easy but somehow I managed to do it, and to test my findings I used a small fragment of the music I was composing at the moment, which was the main theme of The Light Corridor. I also modified the driver to play the constant arpeggio, separating one of the 3 chord channels. The code was very clever, really good stuff! I never could have done something like that by myself.

I didn't intend to use the driver in our games, as we were very focused on the +2, +3 and AY music, but that short test I did sounded so nice that it seemed like a crime not to put it somewhere.

I always feel a bit embarrassed about that but I learned A LOT from the experience. Besides, without Internet or dedicated books there were not many ways of learning new things, so looking at the code of others was not uncommon at the time.

Eventually I showed this to Tim, and he told me I was the only person he knew who was able to get something out out his sound driver, and that many others had tried at the time.

Apart from this tune, I composed a very long soundtrack (about 14 tracks IIRC) for this game using the AY38912 sound chip found in the 128k model.

Vintage 8 bit - Light Corridor (ZX Spectrum 48k (beeper), 1990)

Within my old archives I found a remix of a tune I did for the unreleased Radikal Bikers port for Game Boy! It's probably from year 2000 which is the year when I composed the soundtrack, which by the way can be found here:
https://soundcloud.com/joemcalby/radikal-bikers

I remember I did the short remix because I found a very cool free SoundFont with distorted guitars and drums and wanted to do something with it. 

Radikal Bikers (Sound Blaster Awe32 + soundfont, ~2000)

This is the second soundtrack I composed for Tintin on the Game Boy.

Tintin - Le Temple Du Soleil - Complete soundtrack (Game Boy, 1997)

This is a remix I did too many years ago of a song I composed for the Smurfs Nightmare game, using only my tiny Korg X5DR sound module. The song was used in the stage from the "Schlips Planet".
Here is the original tune of the game:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlokRNcURKM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlokRNcURKM</a>

Vintage X5DR - Another World

In 1991 I composed this song (during the military service) for a game about "El Zorro" which was never released. If I remember correctly this was my second Game Boy song after Pop Up / Cool Ball, which was also composed during that time. Bomb Jack soundtrack for Game Boy followed this one.

Some seconds of the intro are based on the intro of another song named "Aire" by the Spanish group Mecano (loved that one!). I would change that part later, but since the song was never used it still has that part on it.

By the way, recorded from my own Game Boy emulator (AJGB), with sound accuracy certified by myself! ^_^

Vintage 8 bit - Fox Power (Game Boy, 1991, unreleased)

This tune was composed for a very rare Game Boy game named Metal Masters, but it was never used. The game suffered many delays during the development (years!), and in the end I composed a completely different soundtrack for the final release.

It is one of my first where I used pseudo stereo effects on the Game Boy. Recorded from my own GB emulator.

Fact: The original game boy console had 4 shades of grey to represent the graphics. We developed a technique to show up to 7 shades of grey on this game, taking advantage of the LCD persistence, but in the end Nintendo didn't allow us to use it, arguing future compatibility. Needless to say, the game looked amazing (for a Game Boy) with 7 "colours" instead of 4!

Here's the track which was finally released in the game.
https://soundcloud.com/joemcalby/metal-masters-gb

Metal Masters prototype track (Game Boy, 1992, unreleased)

This is the complete soundtrack I composed for the Game Boy version of Bomb Jack in 1992. It probably contains my longest menu and game over themes, and conversely the shortest in-game theme!

Bomb Jack - complete soundtrack (Game Boy, 1992)

This small soundtrack was composed for a promotional game named "The Morning Adventure", also know as "Mañanitos Bollycao" in 2003. It was available only in Spain and only a few copies exist. It was the last Game Boy Advance game I composed music for.

At that time I programmed a synthesizer on PC which faithfully emulated the Nintendo sound system used for the GBA games, except that it sounded better because of the higher resolution and sample rate mixing. With that program I was able to sequence GBA soundtracks without using the actual console or the expensive official MIDI cartridge.

The music is recorded from that synthesizer at a sample rate of 44k instead of 15k. All instrument sounds were sampled from my tiny Korg X5DR sound module.

The Morning Adventure - complete soundtrack (GBA, 2003)

Soundtrack for an unreleased Game Boy Color game, composed in the year 2000. It was one of my latests soundtracks for Game Boy Color. Unfortunately the game was never published, though it was one of the most amazing racing games ever made for the console!

Radikal Bikers - complete soundtrack (GBC, ~2000, unreleased)

Short tune composed and dedicated to friends Hannah and Robin, NES style.

First chiptune in many years! Using the sound set I created for Music On - Retro Keyboard, with sounds of my NES soundtracks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2rb3YwU5dM

Hannah & Robin (NES style)

WORK IN PROGRESS!

Spending some holidays time remixing a tune I composed for the menu of Asterix for NES:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdwRrvvtUfI


Asterix NES menu remix WIP

In the late nineties I did several soundtracks for the games of Velez & Dubail, published by Infogrames. At first I would also do the sountrack for Wacky Races, but they needed a really fast sound driver, as the game would be some of the most advanced ever for the console (just check it, it's amazing). Unfortunately my driver was too slow for what they needed, and writing a new and faster one was far out of schedule and budget.

The tracks you hear are the first test, just to check if the game could deal with the sound driver CPU consumption. The tunes only use 2 channels (+ noise), as one entire channel had to be reserved for the sound of the car engine. They use many stereo effects, so be sure to put your headphones on.

In the end the job went to Manfred Linzner who did a wonderful work.

Wacky Races - test tracks (GBC, 1999, unreleased)

My second and last soundtrack for a Smurfs game on the Game Boy, released in 1997, and re-released in 1999 for the Game Boy Color.
Some trivia:
- The main menu theme was the same I composed for the first game on the NES.
- The Rabbit Race theme was composed originally for the first Smurfs game.
- I did a remix of the Mysterious Planet theme, which can be found here: http://soundcloud.com/joemcalby/another-world
- Originally the Ending theme finished in decrescendo, but the developers required it to loop forever. I found inspiration on a theme named Tattoo from one of my favourite composers, Mike Oldfield. Instead of square waves there should have been bagpipes, lots of!

The Smurfs Nightmare - complete soundtrack (Game Boy, 1997)

This is one of the few soundtracks I composed directly for Infogrames. They used it twice, first in "Martian Alert!" and one year later in "Martian Revenge". The games were also named in other countries "Alert!" and "Marvin Strikes Back!"

Note that the names I've set are the originally intended, not the actual stages of the game.

Looney Tunes Collector - Martian Alert! - complete soundtrack (Game Boy, 2000)

My first and only soundtrack for the Super Nintendo (SNES) back in 1995. The sound sources were recorded from a Turtle Beach - Maui sound card. My studio gear at that time consisted in that sound card, a Sound Blaster (the Maui had to be attached to an existing sound card), a pair of speakers and a Roland PC-200 keyboard (which I still have).

The sound chip (APU) was created by Sony and designed by Ken Kutaragi, who was also the designer of the Playstation. The chip was in fact a complete autonomous computer with its own CPU (sort of 6502 with additional instructions), memory (64k), and DSP which produced 8 channels of audio and also some cool effects. The APU communicated with the main console processor using 4 registers, and some kind of communication protocol was used to upload the code and sounds from the game cartridge to the APU during the game. The 64k had to be shared with the sound driver, sound sequence data, samples for the music & fx. Also some memory was required to process the commonly used reverberation effect (if necessary).

The development system for the console was a huge, grey rectangular box that communicated with the PC via a SCSI port and MIDI. My unit didn't work very well... and I had to spend some time every morning switching it on and off a random number of times until it booted correctly. The development tools were very rudimentary (compared to today's standards) and all written to run on MS-DOS only.

The soundtrack is recorded from the "Audio Overload" multi-sound chip emulator. I hope to be able to record the soundtrack from a real machine in the future.

Don't forget to check the second part of this soundtrack here!
https://soundcloud.com/joemcalby/asterix-obelix-snes-part2

Asterix & Obelix - Complete Soundtrack (SNES, 1995) Part 1 / 2

My first and only soundtrack for the Super Nintendo (SNES) back in 1995. The sound sources were recorded from a Turtle Beach - Maui sound card. My studio gear at that time consisted in that sound card, a Sound Blaster (the Maui had to be attached to an existing sound card), a pair of speakers and a Roland PC-200 keyboard (which I still have).

The sound chip (APU) was created by Sony and designed by Ken Kutaragi, who was also the designer of the Playstation. The chip was in fact a complete autonomous computer with its own CPU (sort of 6502 with additional instructions), memory (64k), and DSP which produced 8 channels of audio and also some cool effects. The APU communicated with the main console processor using 4 registers, and some kind of communication protocol was used to upload the code and sounds from the game cartridge to the APU during the game. The 64k had to be shared with the sound driver, sound sequence data, samples for the music & fx. Also some memory was required to process the commonly used reverberation effect (if necessary).

The development system for the console was a huge, grey rectangular box that communicated with the PC via a SCSI port and MIDI. My unit didn't work very well... and I had to spend some time every morning switching it on and off a random number of times until it booted correctly. The development tools were very rudimentary (compared to today's standards) and all written to run on MS-DOS only.

The soundtrack is recorded from the "Audio Overload" multi-sound chip emulator. I hope to be able to record the soundtrack from a real machine in the future.

Don't forget to check the first part of this soundtrack here!
https://soundcloud.com/joemcalby/asterix-obelix-snes-part1

Asterix & Obelix - Complete Soundtrack (SNES, 1995) Part 2 / 2

Soundtrack for Ronaldo V-Football and UEFA 2000 soccer games for the Game Boy.

UEFA 2000 shares some sound flavour to my soundtrack for V-Rally. For Ronaldo I tried to compose something more festive, with some inspiration from my favourite game musician :-)

Ronaldo V-Football + UEFA 2000 (Game Boy, 1999~2000)

The third soundtrack in the Turok series for Game Boy, and probably my most experimental work for that console. For this soundtrack I wanted to give one more twist to the GB sound chip, so I upgraded my sound driver with new triangle+noise based drum sounds, wave sequencing and other cool effects. There are lots of subtle stereo effects used in all the soundtrack, so listening with headphones is recommended!

I searched for inspiration in the works of Yuzo Koshiro, who in my book is one of the most brilliant and adventurous game musicians ever.

Turok - Rage Wars - complete soundtrack (Game Boy Color, 2000)

My last soundtrack for the Game Boy, nearly 10 years after the first one (Pop Up / Cool Ball).

Baby Felix Halloween - complete soundtrack (Game Boy Color, 2001)

My first commercial tune for the Game Boy, released in the US as Cool Ball.

The game was only 32k in size (just like Bomb Jack) but very entertaining. It only had this tune and a small jingle for the game over. I was doing the mandatory military service and composed this tune in a weekend off.

I remember how amazed I was about the new possibilities of the Game Boy sound (specially the noise channel and the pseudo stereo), compared to the 8 bit computers I used until then!

Pop Up / Cool Ball (Game Boy, 1991)

My fourth and last soundtrack for the Turok series on the Game Boy.

Turok 3 Shadow of Oblivion - complete soundtrack (Game Boy Color, 2000)

Hi! I've been working in the video game industry since the late 80's, be it as a graphic artist, musician, programmer, designer, or any weird combination of these. Most of my work is known as musician and specially for 8 bit game consoles. If you ever had a gray brick, probably you already listened some of my music!

I used to sign my earlier works as "Joe McAlby" because my name is just plain boring and ordinary. But then the nickname is also ridiculous... too late to change that I suppose!

I rarely compose music nowadays, so I use this account to share some of my past works, and hopefully new experiments too.

Be my guest, enjoy the music, and leave a message if you like it. It'll be appreciated!

Please note that all music here is copyrighted.

Popular tracks by Alberto J. González (McAlby)