Author Archives: Andy

Can't sing, can't dance, can handle a sword a little.

A personal history of game music: Part 3 – Dawn of the PC

Mario Sheet Music

The Spectrum may have been the formative computing experience of my early boyhood but I am, first and foremost, a child of the PC. So here we have part 3 of the series, the early years of the PC where the beeper still held sway. Competing with the might of the Amiga, the PC promised great things…
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Game music: Journey

Journey OST CoverThis week we’re back on albums that are actually soundtracks to games instead of ‘inspired by’ games. However, this week’s soundtrack comes via a recommendation rather than my own experience. Being a PlayStation 3 exclusive I’ve never played it, but the soundtrack to Journey is beautiful and I’m grateful for the recommendation.
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LaTeX, apacite and bibliographies

LaTeX LogoJust a LaTeX issue and solution, in case anyone else ever spends half an afternoon banging their heads against this particular brick wall.
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You want nostalgia? Here’s more nostalgia than you can possibly handle

DOS ThumbnailThe early days of PC gaming were a wonderful, frustrating and mysterious time. Minimum requirements were to be respected and feared, manual configuration was serious business and every last byte of memory counted. I challenge anyone who grew up playing DOS games not to go all misty-eyed at this love-letter from last century…
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A personal history of game music: Part 2 – The NES

Mario Sheet Music

After the Spectrum came the NES (or Nintendo Entertainment System for those who really enjoy syllables), a revolution that brought gaming out of arcades and into the living room. With it came a generational leap in audio quality, a series of truly iconic soundtracks and, for the first time, composers who would go on to become infamous.
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Game Music: World of Goo

World of Goo OST CoverGoo! Lots of goo. A world of it in fact. And goo must have music, gooey music, musical goo. And here it is, the World Of Goo soundtrack.
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A personal history of game music: Part 1 – The ZX Spectrum

Mario Sheet Music

The first computer I ever really played with as a child was my dad’s Dragon 64, an amazing piece of technology where the only games were ones you wrote yourself, using either a knowledge of programming or by copying code from books and magazines. Over time, the latter drifted to the former. My first computer, and the first one I remember having music with its games, was a ZX Spectrum +3.
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Not Quite Game Music: Impostor Nostalgia

Impostor Nostalgia OST CoverIn itself, Impostor Nostalgia the soundtrack to a game. There is no Impostor Nostalgia game, no Impostor Nostalgia leaderboards or Impostor Nostalgia achievements. It is, however, a master class in 8-bit chiptune music by one of my favourite composers and featuring some true greats of the genre.
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A personal history of game music

Mario Sheet Music

Despite writing quite a lot about game music, and listening to an awful lot of it, it turns out I actually know sod all about it – the history, the technology, the composers. Every now and then I’ll come across an article that touches on it and find it all fascinating. Inquisitive blighter that I am, this is going to change.
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Got hypertrousers?

Gunpoint Thumbnail“Achievement unlocked: shot another man again”. In an age of dudebro manshooters, it might be easy to unthinkingly dismiss Gunpoint as just another in an endless parade of grey shooters, maybe blue and orange if the art director felt like the gun designers were having all the fun. It’s even got gun in the bloody title. That would be a mistake though, because you’d miss out on the hypertrousers.
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