ZX Spectrum/Music

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/wiki/ZX Spectrumwork

Some listeners say they prefer the sound of the original Spectrum's 1-bit beeper to the 128Ks' AY-3-8912, and if you compare the title music on, for example, Sweevo's World (48K) vs Sweevo's Whirled (128K), you'd be forgiven for thinking the publishers were trying to promote this view. On the other hand, while it is possible to emulate multiple channels on the beeper, any more than 3 tends to sound choppy and hissy, and the AY chip saves the CPU a lot of work.

Below are some of the better examples of both.

Beeper

• Shiru's Magic Tokens, apart from just being great, includes a rare sight: arpeggios on Spectrum beeper. The link includes another 19 tracks in case you like that one.
• Stardust (Topo Soft, 1987) has this masterpiece, which is sometimes missed because it's played after several minutes of demo and credits. The author re-used it for the game Bronx (1990).
• Rasterscan (1987, Mastertronic): A lot more effort went into the music than the name.
• Sweevo's World (Gargoyle, 1985) has this rendition of Holzmann's Blaze Away, apparently arranged by Rob Hubbard. It was reused in the sequel, Hydrofool (1987).
• Manic Miner's version of Hall of the Mountain King isn't all that great, but for the first game to beep both sfx and background music it was a good start (and it's way better than the intro.)
• Fairlight (1985, The Edge)

AY chip

• Doctor Mario had only one original track, to be precise, but what a track.
  • The others are derived yet nicely done as well. And named correspondingly to their original artists in-game: KSA, KLAV and KENT.
• Super Bomberman 2 by Slip.
  • Crack's intro music (this separate one was done by Black Groove, now known as Key-Jee)
  • The first main menu
  • The instruction manual
  • The second main menu
  • And now, the sweetest picks... Overworld music.
• The Cezar and Imperia 2 Dune by the same author.
  • The Cezar's main menu theme.
  • The song you hear in the instruction manual.
  • All three overworlds.
  • And finally, the ending theme.
  • Imperia 2: Dune's intro tune.
  • A Letter To Elise cover heard in the main menu.
  • An introductory cutscene which is supposed to get you into the story. The music theme only helps.
  • On which side are you?
  • The sweetest overworld music in the game. The remaining three are there as well.
• Doom from Digital Reality. Was never actually released, but even then, it leaves us with something awesome that will make you wish you'd hear it in the original game. Prooflink.
• Kliatba Noci.
  • The only ingame music
  • The intro tune from the ones who hacked this game is cool as well!
• Battle City may not need much music per se, but Mr. LTD's port delivers a couple of awesome tunes made by Wakson: the intro theme and the chiptune remix of Airwolf theme you may hear in the main menu.
• Very loose adaptation of Mortal Kombat by AWS, with several awesome techno songs by TMS also deserves a mention even if there's only one song that is FULLY related to Mortal Kombat itself.
• Fire and Ice is awesome. This troper had a chance to see some games with really great music shown on demoparties, but could remember only a few, and some are just impossible to find.
• Kolobok Zoom 2. Includes the covers of The Fools' Village and Red Riding Hood theme songs, as well as some really heavy harddance $#1&.
• Warcraft: Introduction. This fan port has never been released, but it still includes a couple of tunes, one of which is performed on pure AY, and the other one is digital.