The 103rd Blog

It’s been a long time since I’ve written about a video game soundtrack in full. Far too long, actually.

What’s say we fix that and hit the ground running, eh?

Terminator 2: Judgement Day- hereafter referred to as T2 The Arcade Game (or just T2), the title it was given for its home ports- was an arcade game released by Midway back in 1991; it’s a rail shooter that puts the player in the role of the T-800 (or two T-800s in simultaneous play), using mounted machine gun peripherals to blast almost everything that pops up on screen away, barring the occasional non-hostile entity. It being an early rail shooter, it’s fairly rudimentary- the only scrolling seen is horizontal, though some enemies do walk in from the background. And being a Midway arcade game, it isn’t a particularly fair or balanced one- it is extremely difficult to avoid taking damage from something, if not nigh-on impossible in some circumstances. The most interesting thing about it is that most of its runtime is actually spent in the apocalyptic future, showing the T-800s journey to travel back into the past to protect John Connor in an extended capacity, whilst most of the storyline of the film is completely nixed. Given Terminator 2 isn’t exactly lacking in numerous action set-pieces, I find that choice curious, though there could be any number of factors behind this decision- budgetary restrictions, memory restrictions (even arcade hardware has its limits), so on and so forth.

Though it isn’t a particularly engaging game to play nowadays, even by the standards of early rail shooters, it was a modest success for its time. And that, of course, meant a lot of ports; the game made its way onto the original Game Boy in 1992, and several platforms including DOS, Amiga, and the SNES in 1993. The quality of the ports, most of which were produced by Probe Entertainment, was mixed to put it generously, with each having to make various sacrifices in visual fidelity and quality of gameplay based on the limitations of the given systems.

There is, however, one port of particular interest, due to it’s music; the Mega Drive port, scored by Matt Furniss.

Matt Furniss isn’t a completely unknown figure- his name is attached to a fairly famous hidden developer rant contained within the Amiga version of Mad Professor Mariarti, warning hackers that they will be deprived of the use of their legs if the game is pirated- but that’s about all he’s really known for, even among video game music afficionados. And I think that’s a teribble shame; whilst he’s been mostly retired for over a decade at this point, he left behind a considerable legacy of both composition and arrangement work on numerous soundtracks for various platforms, often in tandem with Shaun Hollingworth (who lead the design and programming on the various music drivers- proprietary software designed to make producing music for a spefific system easer- that Furniss would use), for a variety of consoles and home computers. Part of why his legacy remains somewhat obscure is due to the games he would often find himself tapped to work on- there’s a lot of licensed games in there, and not all of them were very good (many would argue that most weren’t), and the better titles in his gameography were either released exclusively or found the most success within the UK and Europe. You can view a list of his credits over on mobygames here, which also notes the non-music audio work he’s done on various games, and even credits for non-audio work he did (such as design for titles like Soccer Kid).

For me, it’s his work on the Mega Drive that stands out as particularly excellent. The sound driver Hollingworth and he designed for use with the console’s sound hardware has a very distinct aural quality to its lush and warm FM tones, the generally high quality DAC samples used for things like drums- though it could also produce colder and more metallic tones or impart a grittier, crunchier compression to sample sounds if so desired. Perhaps more than any other platform the two worked on, you know a Furniss and Hollingworth Mega Drive score when you hear one.

Of course, all the fancy tools in the world mean nothing if the person using them doesn’t have talent or skill of their own. Thankfully, Matt has both, in spades- quite often he was called upon to do conversions of other musicians’ scores for ports to different platforms, and his arrangements were often remarkably close to the source material, fleshing things out only where necessary. That’s not to say he couldn’t compose his own work- a good chunk of his back catalogue contains wholly original music, with some titltes (Pugsy in particular) managing to gain a small reputation for its quality.

He was also something of a style chameleon; though he was particularly good at doing funk-infused numbers or uptempo “feelgood” platformer type music, he was also adept at doing more dreamlike and contemplative pieces, or darker and moodier ones, and on more than one occasion, scores that took subtle influence from then-contemporary club music. That the Furniss and Hollingworth Mega Drive sound driver has such a specific sound might have obscured this genre adaptability some- many of the FM tones used across Furniss scored games tent to sound similar if not the same- it’s still fairly obvious when listening to it back. Given that he was so adaptable- good at composing and arranging, able to create works in various styles even on very limited sound hardware- it’s no wonder that he was a reasonably high-in-demand composer during the era of soundchips; he would find a few jobs scoring games released on CD based platforms, that allowing him to do recorded audio that could be played back via audio encoders, which further showed off his genre adaptability and compositional skill, but he moved away from active soundtrack scoring as a profession right around the turn of millenium, so there aren’t quite as many of those to chew over.

T2: The Arcade game’s score might be the one I consider his best, though- it is, at the very least, in the running for that title. For starters, its one of the very rare cases where Matt chose not to adapt the original score to a game- I suspect this might be because actually hearing Chris Granner’s music underneath the constant barrage of sounds and voice clips in the arcade game was difficult, presuming emulation is reflective of how the game sounded running on its native hardware. Style wise, it’s also very interesting- I wouldn’t know how else to definie it beyond “high energy synth music”, which feels a little redundant given all music on the Mega Drive is synthesized, but I’d imagine a CD quality audio rendition of score would make use of synthesizers for most of its leads, basses, and chords, and drum machines for its rhythms. Indeed, the drum samples used throughout the score have a very punchy and dance-y feel to them- the snare in particular reminds me a lot of the famous Roland TR-909 drum machine snare, though I do not believe it is a sample of that specific snare drum. Ironically, that puts the score in line more with the original Terminator’s music than Terminator 2’s- composer Brad Fiedel did use a Fairlight CMI exstensively for T2, but largely took advantage of its sampling capabilities alongside a bevy of samples of acoustic instrumentation over the Oberhiem and Sequential Circuits synths he’d used for the first film.

The game wastes no time in hitting you with this high energy with the first of its level songs (of which it has five in total, reused at various points throughout), hitting the listener in the face with a rush of snares and kicks that herald the introduction of a well rounded, driving bassline and decaying, phased notes, and a melodic, almost wooden sounding percussive note. The phasing of notes- the active changing of the wave’s texture and sound as it decays- is one of the defining traits of the Furnis + Hollingworth MD driver, as though they were hardly the only ones to make use of the technique, they used it liberally but cleverly, often to create melodies or chord sequence that have an almost sweeping or “gliding” feeling (and unsurprisingly, is used throughout this score extensively). It’s when the melody kicks in around 9 seconds in, eventually giving way to a half-time beat as the melody continues soaring over the bass and chords that I initially fell in love with the soundtrack as a whole and this song especially- it both feels very grand and dramatic but also very despairing, almost hopeless. It’s not triumphant, but it’s not meek or quiet- feels very fitting for the setting. The beat eventually picks back up underneath a bed of chords, that bassline, and plucked melodies, making for something that’s ultimately very light on melody in a traditional sense but still feels very catchy. It’s a standout track.

The second of the songs that play during levels keeps the generally minimal approach to melody in favour of rhythm and atmosphere but doubles down on it, with a particular focus on the dreams- you’ve got the constant tambourine shaker running in the background beneath it all in its crispy compressed glory, the odd blastbeat double-time kickdrum strikes, and most crucially the tomtom smacking that briefly comes in around 34 seconds in. A fair bit of emphasis is placed on that vaguely ‘woodblock’ tone used for some of the counter melodies (insomuch as you can have a countermelody without a main melody). Its probably the least ‘standout’ of the songs on the score, but its by no means a weak one.

Perhaps fittingly, the third of the level BGMs switches the time signature from 4/4 to a triplet based one, which is a nice bit of variety- and the drumwork remains intricate and fairly complex throughout. It’s also the most traditionally melodic song I’ve covered from the score so far, though in an interesting way- it kind of goes more for a freeform-ish solo kind of vibe with a fair bit of noodling around the notes, but it does repeat the sections and lines consistently to create cohesion. It also has plenty of portamento sliding and vibrato to emphasise that looser but constantly “moving” feeling- not unique to this track, of course- it’s all over the other songs as well, and is textbook Furniss, but it really adds to the feel of the melody being a sort of combined solo and consistent melody. It almost feels like a line written for a guitar, and that may well be what Furniss was going for with the patches he chose for it, but I think it works quite well even in these raw synthesized tones. Also, big fan of the bass patch occasionally swapping out from a more straightford synth one to that classic Twangy Mega Drive Slap Bass sound- say what you want about the YM2612 sound chip, it could produce one hell of a slap bass. Larry Graham Jr. would be proud.

The fourth of the song used for levels keeps that vibe, albeit the melody is much more freeform and less centred, which combined with the return to a 4/4 rhythm, a slightly faster tempo, and a double-time beat, definitely creates something more amped up and driving- it’s the most typically energetic and “action scene”-esque of the level tunes, to be sure. Whilst it leans more into that slight synth rock energy as well, this piece also has some of those club/rave music touches blended in by way of the initial bassline the song runs with; both the grindy, fuzzy patch and the pattern it plays feel much more dancey then rocky to me, and it cuts through the mix like a knife in a really pleasing way. I do love that the bass constantly changes vibes, though, switching up to the twangy slap bass and then to the meatier synth bass briefly before looping back around the fuzzier one. Great little tune, this.

The final of the level tunes is an interesting one. It starts out more akin to the second of the level tunes, relying more on atmospheric bed and a steady rhythm- albiet a less complex one that’s easier for the ear to follow, with a fairly basic beat and a much more basic bassline compared to what the rest of the soundtrack has given us. Even the phasing pads eventually give way to a metallic clonking background melody. It feels very dry and almost too restrained for its own good. Then that buzzy bass cuts in around 47 seconds in, the beat picks up slightly (though it doesn’t get too crazy), and we get a short, but satisfying melody over a bassline that almost sounds acid-housey in its patterning, offset by the metallic clonks until it loops back around. That burst of energy is really needed and is deliberately sharp contrast to the rest of the track, and excellent used of contrasting extremes. If I had to pick one song as the overall weakest I do still think this would be it, though- there’s more of the “plodding” section than there is the more vibrant one, and I don’t feel it fully matches the pace and vibe set by the rest of the score. I think a big part of what lets it down is that its used for both the final stage and the final boss encounter with the T-1000, which only the more uptempo portion of the song particularly fits.

Bringing things back up though is the theme used for a few of the boss encounters. It’s fairly similar in construction and tone to the first of the level tunes, going for brief flourishes of melody laid atop droning pads, chords, pending notes, and a driving beat and bassline. It’s the highest BPM track on the score, fittingly for a boss encounter, and though the actual loop is itself fairly short- barely over 30 seconds long before looping- it doesn’t feel overly repetitive or dull. That the chord progression changes up whilst staying in the same key helps it stay fresh, without suddenly feeling like a jarring shift. I’m also a big fan of the little speedy arpeggio that comes into the mix for a short portion around 23 seconds in- it’s not too loud and in your face but it compliments slots into the mix nicely.

Lastly, there’s the music that plays when you’ve cleared a level and your results are being tallied. Don’t have much to say about this one; it’s not the best song of it’s kind I’ve ever heard, but it’s catchy enough and more than fitting for its function. It also takes a lot longer to completely loop than a lot of other ‘stage clear’ songs from the time, which is neat. Though still not a direct arrangement, this is the song that pulls the most from the arcade version’s score, going for a very similar sort of style and arrangement, so I’ve included that version as well as a point of comparison.

I picked both the game and the musician for this “comeback” article for a reason; in the grand scheme of things, T2 The Arcade Game is not a great game, in either its original arcade incarnation or this specific port. Though far from terrible or unplayably broken, it is an astoundingly unfair game that seems to actively punish the player for wanting to play it- that third level where you have to protect the pickup truck is a roadblock I never got passed, and I know for many people it was much the same. It’s not a very notable game either- the arcade original did feature some early use of digitised actors in place of hand drawn sprites, and though it did predate perhaps the most famous example of that technique- Midway’s own Mortal Kombat series- it was not the first game to use it, and of course the Mega Drive port does away with this in favour of redrawn graphics. I feel obligated to say that this is not to imply the staff on either version- or any version of T2- didn’t put in effort, or didn’t care about the end product to some degree- nobody sets out to make underwhelming games- but that’s simply the way things pan out sometimes. As for Matt Furniss, as discussed above, his is a name that lives in considerable obscurity among those who are interested in videogame music- known to some, certainly, but still ultimately a niche composer without the pull of someone like Nobuo Uematsu, stereotypical an example as that is. Many of the games he worked on could be considered mediocre to quite rough, a lot of the games he worked on came to formats that were only popular- and possibly only available- in specific regions, limiting their reach. And despite being a vital contributor to Furniss’ music, Shaun Hollingworth is even less of a presence.

But I believe the quality of the soundtrack I discussed here speaks for itself (though not enough to speak for it anyway, evidently). It is, by any metric, exceptionally well composed, programmed, and produced video game music. Matt and Shaun worked very hard on this score and that is reflected in the end product, and I think said end product can be easily enjoyed by most anyone with even a passing interest in videogame music.

I have discovered an incredible wealth of good to exceptional videogame music both through the games I have been lucky enough to grow up with/sought out once I had my own income, and through deep diving into the back catalogue of composers, or the gamographies of entire companies, even entire swathes of a particular console or computer’s releases in some cases. So much more of it out there beyond the boarders of what is known, what is “noteworthy”.

And I would like to discuss as much of it as I can.