After hearing Zeta Force many, many years ago, I always liked the melodies. But something about the original song didn't exactly gel with me. It could be...bolder, I guess. 

Anyways, recently I sat down and wanted to learn more about music making, so I figured, what better way to challenge myself than tackling a chiptune? I've also been very keen on trying drum & bass lately and thought "Why not combine the two?"

And here we are.

Credits for the original source material goes to Zabutom. The arrangement, additional melodies and sound design is all by me for this remix.

Zeta Force

Omega Force (Zeta Force - Zabutom Remix)

Original song by Jochen Mad Max Hippel, for Thalion Software's A Prehistoric Tale (1990), developed by The Lost Boys for the Atari ST and Amiga 500 home computers.

I remixed this song many many years ago, but I only really knew of the Amiga version of the song. I have learned a lot about music making in the years following, and having recently talked to people about the Atari ST version, I figured it was time I tackle this tune again, this time in ATARI MODE. It's still largely the same arrangement, with a few differences here and there to account for the Amiga and Atari versions being subtly different. I did however end up changing it slightly more towards the Amiga version, particularly in the end, as I felt the end kind of dragged a bit in the Atari version. Still, the sound and feel is unmistakenly the Atari version.

Special thanks to all of the amazing remixers out there, whose tracks I've taken inspiration from. Especially dw1664, whose acoustic cover was the guideline for how I wanted this remix to flow.

Finally a heartfelt THANK YOU to Jochen Mad Max Hippel, for the original arrangement! WIthout you, none of these glorious remixes would exist, and I dare say, some of would never have pursued our musical hobby with such passion without your inspiration.

Thank you, Jochen!

A Prehistoric Tale - Theme

A Prehistoric Tale [Atari ST] (Jochen Hippel)

My number one favourite track from the Demoscene days. Elwood's "Unknown Phuture" has stuck with me for the majority of my life, and Jussi's style of music has been a gigantic inspiration for me.

This is more of a remaster than a genuine remix, mostly because I think the original track is so goddamn perfect, I didn't want to change to much.

I've focused on cleaning up sounds, adding some much-needed drum variation as well as diversifying sounds and trying to clean up the mix. The end always dragged a little for me, so I shortened it a tad.

This was a super fun project and I learned a lot from making this track. Most of the sounds are created from scratch by me, which was part of the project. Only the lead synth is a FLEX-preset.

Project time: 0ver 20 hours, using FL Studio

Retro Remixes Vol. 1

Unknown Phuture (Elwood 1996)

A reading of my "On the Shoulders of Giants" challenge article.

Music credits go to Thomas Happ - Axiom Verge Soundtrack.

Enthulessi - Audio Reading

An alternative mixing of A Prehistoric Tale by my friend Kohn.

A remix I made of the 1990 intro song for Thalion's "A Prehistoric Tale" developed by The Lost boys for the Atari ST and Amiga computers, originally composed by Jochen Hippel. Hope you enjoy!

Original song composed and arranged by Jochen Hippel. Remix is composed and arranged by Tobias "Moonshine Fox" Linder (AKA Mánagarmr of Totally Legit Gaming) using FL Studio 12. Project time is approx 11 hours.

Remixes

A Prehistoric Tale [AMIGA] (Kohn Mix)

A remix I made of the 1986 lead song for FTL's "Lightforce" for the Commodore 64, originally composed by Rob Hubbard. Hope you enjoy!

Song composed and arranged originally by Rob Hubbard. Remix is composed and arranged by Tobias "Moonshine Fox" Linder (AKA Mánagarmr of Totally Legit Gaming) using FL Studio 12. Project time is approx 5,5 hours.

Remixes and Covers

Lightforce [C64] (Rob Hubbard)

A collection of "happy house" style music. I call it "dreamdance" but it's mostly a lot of really old songs I made in Reason 2.0 in the heydays.

Dreamlands

Unfriendly Skies

This used to be a FastTracker II XM file waaay back in the ancient days of DOS. I made it for my then-girlfriend Sara, and while we've long since broken up and moved on with our lives, this song always stuck with me somewhat.

I like the flow and melody of it, so I remade it in Reason 2.0 some time in early 2004 or 2005. I've been meaning to return to it and give it a proper remaster some day.

Längtan

Dreams Of A Broken Soul

Celenia

Bring To Mind

A New Twilight

I've been meaning to revisit this tune for a long time, and a comment on my older remix got me into action. This version is far more "mystic", but also more synthetic. The old one was relatively natural sounding, but didn't really go much for the mystic aspect of the Great Palace. 

The only complaints I have about this version are that I kinda went a bit overboard with the hi-hat reverb, leading to a hiss-like sound in the early parts of the song. But I didn't catch that prior to release, so meh. It's staying :P The other complaint is that I was somewhat impatient with sound design. I could've spent more time making sounds that would gel better, but you know, for a 2017 NES remix, I'm actually quite happy with this one. 

It's not the remix to end all remixes, by a longshot, but I'm happy with it for what it is, for the time that it was.

This version is an alternate take on the tune. Hope you enjoy!

Thumbnail image by Haddian "Hyrule452" Key (https://www.deviantart.com/hyrule452)

Zelda 2 - Great Palace [NES] (Akito Nakatsuka)

The Palace theme from Zelda 2 on the 8 bit NES. This one is a bit of a clusterfuck, but it was made by me in 2007-2008 somewhere. I'm not at all happy with this one, but I've made it, so I'm sharing it. I know people have liked it in the past, it's just one of those things that I look back on I hear *so* many things I could've done better.

But hey, I didn't know then what I know today ^^

8bit Paradise

Zelda 2 Palace [NES]

My first attempt at remixing this tune. It's the Great Palace theme from Zelda 2 on the 8 bit NES. I went for a naturally sounding (as in using relatively natural instruments) tune, but I think I kinda lost a bit of the mystery that's supposed to surround the Great Palace. 

I've made another mix of this song, about seven years after this one, and I think that even though that one is far more synthetic, it's the better tune.

Zelda 2 Great Palace [NES]

The Cavern theme (or Battle Theme) from Zelda 2 to the 8 bit NES.

Zelda 2 Cave [NES]

The "odd" level soundtrack for the 1989 Amiga pacman inspired game "Clown-O-Mania" by StarByte. The original tune was composed by Roman Werner.

I deliberately strayed far from the original here, but retained it's gloomy feel, all the melody (even the weird stair) and gave it a bit of a house groove. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. 

Remix is composed and arranged by Tobias "Moonshine Fox" Linder (AKA Mánagarmr of Totally Legit Gaming) using FL Studio 12. Project time ~3 hours.

Clown-O-Mania [AMIGA] (Roman Werner)

A remix I made of the 1990 intro song for Thalion's "A Prehistoric Tale" developed by The Lost boys for the Atari ST and Amiga computers, originally composed by Jochen Hippel. Hope you enjoy!

Original song composed and arranged by Jochen Hippel. Remix is composed and arranged by Tobias "Moonshine Fox" Linder (AKA Mánagarmr of Totally Legit Gaming) using FL Studio 12. Project time is approx 11 hours.

A Prehistoric Tale [AMIGA] (Jochen Hippel)

A *very* early WIP of something that was supposed to become something slow and smooth and comfy. When I laid out the first few tones, it was clear the song had a completely different idea in mind. There would be no comfy here. This went dark in a hurry. I have no idea where this tune will take me, but I'm excited to see where we end up.

Dark Tendencies (Early WIP)

This is a near ancient tune I composed for the 1999 puzzle game Flux. It was originally composed for my then girlfriend, Sara, under the moniker "Vermilion X". I've long since left Vermilion X behind, but what happened was that the Flux team loved it so much when they heard it on Trax In Space (a web community for trackers, back in the 90's) that they asked my permission to use it for their game. I obliged and the tune has since become legendary among the few ones who got to enjoy the game. For now, enjoy this 90's flashback. 

If you like this kind of 90's tracker music, I implore you to seek out the full FLUX OST. There's tons of amazing tracks in there!

Heart of Loneliness [FLUX 1999 OST]

Another Fasttracker 2 XM I made in the mid 90's. I went totally overboard with the strings on this one. The XM has 32 channels, of which 26 are strings alone. It contains a sampled drumloop that has been complemented with "manual" drums, particularly hihat and snare. It also has four completely separate string samples playing over those channels. 

It's pretty bonkers, but I kinda do love it still, even though it's *old*. 

NOTICE:
If you listened to this version and felt it sounded a bit "bland", it's because it was a straight export of the original XM via a...not so good player. I've since run it through MilkyTracker for Linux and souped up the samples and fiddled a bit with settings to make it sound much more like the original FT2 mod.

Always On My mind

I haven't made a new original song in over 12 years. I've done a fair amount of retro remixes, but nothing of my own composition. When I woke up one day I was feeling extremely blue after a terrible nightmare. I was nearly heartbroken and this sentence kept repeating itself in my head "Why does it still hurt?" So I sat down at my computer and I saw the icon for FL Studio and more or less subconsciously clicked it. The intro loop came almost on its own and from there I realized I was on to something. The tune started out very sad and gloomy with the loop and minor chords, but as I kept on working, it started to cheer me up.

My spirits lifted as I got to work creatively again, and when the guitar rhythm came in, I went with a more happier style for the song. This is the first song where I've made extensive use of sampled audio. Usually I go entirely with my own made drumloops and arrangements, as well as synths. In this song however I went with entirely pre-sampled drums as well as the guitar loops. I figured I needed to try and see if I could make that work and I think it turned out pretty good.

I've now worked on this song for a total of 7 hours over way too long of a time and you all know how that is. In the end there's only so much you can do to make a song better. I'm not a mixing expert so the EQ and compression are probably all over the place, but I do consider this to be done finally. Enjoy!

Return to Dreamlands

Why Does It Still Hurt?

Another one from the game Flux in 1999. I don't actually remember if this tune was in the original game, or if it was added for the remake. Either way, it's in the remake and people have been asking for it, so here it is!

Composed sometime in the late 1990's, using FastTracker 2, later souped up in ModPlug Tracker sometime in the mid 2000's. This particular version I've also run through MilkyTracker to try and clean it up a bit.

Frozen Dreams

This is the Intro tune for Thalion Software's "Enchanted Land", composed by Jochen Hippel in 1990. This tune was remade and arranged by Tobias "Moonshine Fox" Linder, using FL Studio 12 over the course of ~6 hours.

In this song I learned *a lot* about mixing. So this is probably my best mixed song to date. It was an incredibly valuable learning experience. Enjoy!

Intro

Enchanted Land [AMIGA] (Jochen Hippel)

Another work in progress and another Jochen Hippel classic! This one is in the *very* early stages. Most of the instruments aren't there, and I'm really in the middle of getting the pace and melodies, basslines etc in place so there's no mixing, no cool effects and most of the song is missing, but I figured some of you might be interested in hearing some very early works.

WIP - Lethal XCess: Wings of Death II [AMIGA] (Jochen Hippel)

Had some fun after a bout of inspiration and re-created the classic intro tune from the adventure/action game Wizards and Warriors for the NES.

Wizards and Warriors: Intro [NES] (David Wise)

Enchanted Land was released in 1990 for the Amiga and Atari ST computers by Thalion Software. The music was composed and arranged by Jochen Hippel.

This project is something I've been working on for about 18 hours total, and it turned out to be one of my absolute favourite tracks. If you heard any of my WIPs of this song, there's a completely reworked ending and much better mixing. The ending really gives me goosebumps. Enjoy!

Enchanted Land: The Cave [AMIGA] (Jochen Hippel)

Highly WIP. Mostly posting this for a customer.

Postapoc Soundscape

Sat down amidst a bunch of inspiration and started working on a remix of one of my absolutely #1 favorite tracks in all of videogaming history: Cybernoids 2. This is the current WIP as I leave it after some 2-3 hours of fiddling around.

It's starting to get somewhere towards where I want it at least. I feel the sound design and general feel is close enough that I can start arranging the whole track and then start working on variation, drum variety, deep sound design, SFX etc.

Cybernoids 2 - WIP

"We know how you have harmed this place with your pollution. Your violence. And your discord. When we spread across the world, we will cleanse it. Merge all of its flesh with the Mass. Join with us! Enjoy the ectacy of our union.   So what shall it be? Will you join the Glorious Mass... or do you DIE here?" 

A narration of "The Processor", leader of the Mass.

https://www.worldanvil.com/w/CD10-CotC/a/the-mass-organization

The Processor - Join us or Die

"The Mass does not know death. It does not know sorrow. Only change. What is a thought compared to the Mind? What is your tiny individuality compared to our glorious Mass? Join the Mass and you will never again be weak, alone or helpless."

A narration of a quote from the Processor. 
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/CD10-CotC/a/processor

The Processor - The Glorious Mass

Just a current project now that I've got my computer all set up again after that awful harddrive crash that wiped EVERYTHING music-related. All instruments, all patches, all songs I've ever made. Everything. Gone.

This is the first time I've sat down to compose anything since then. I have a good feeling about this one though. It makes me happy. :)

Pop Song [Very WIP]

40+, grew up with Amiga and Fasttracker 2...guess from where my inspiration comes? "Moonshine Fox" is the artist moniker I've used for over two decades now, but if you're really old-school, you may also know me as "Vermilion X" of Trax In Space.

I make everything from house and electronic to chiptunes and my great passion in life is to remix old 80's and 90's classics from Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST home computers.

I also occasionally throw a DOS game or two here and there.

Moonshine Fox

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