One track of the music from Primal Rage sounds a LOT like Secret of Evermore
SoE "Boss theme 2": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwyXdGPYOWw
Primal Rage "Stalagtite Cave" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPwTDlgR0x0
They have different composers so maybe a coincidence.
Premonition of dubstep
This came out in 1996...
From the musical Kismet.
The melody is from the opera "Prince Igor".
I saw this at the AMV competition and was really impressed by the image-interpolation technique used to create this. The source material has a much lower framerate.
I have to admire what they could and couldn't do with video game chiptunes.
E.g., to go from this:
to this:
Like I wonder if it breaks some poor composer's heart to have their amazing masterpiece work, confined to a representation in a 30-second loop with 64kb of memory and 8 midi channels. In context, good soundtracks tend to stay good soundtracks, even if chiptunes lose so many details and subtle aspects of the arrangement. I suspect that part of the job of BGM composers back then was to create songs that could still sound good on that form factor.
Replaying Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (replaying nostalgia games lately) and it never occurred to me until now how BAD the soundtrack is.
I mean, the game has other qualities. Just not that. Why are literally all the dungeons and bosses one of two pieces? Why are all the loops like 5 seconds long? Why does this exist:
I would link to the Fortune Teller music but I don't want to put anyone else through that today.