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Tag: soundtrack album

  • Legendary Original Soundtrack: A high note in an otherwise average performance.

    Legendary Original Soundtrack: A high note in an otherwise average performance.

    Hey look, another post about this game! But this time, we’re focusing on one little part of it: The music. I briefly hinted at it when I wrote about Legendary, but the music is probably the game’s most shining moment. Which is me kinda lowering my standards here, since we’re talking about something as average as Legendary. Though it had been nearly a decade since I last played the game, the music is the one thing I remember from it besides the literal soul sucking and that time where I fell through the elevator at the end of the game.

    For a little context: I like film and game scores, especially when it’s stuff that is mostly forgotten. It’s become one of those things I tend to collect because it’s neat to listen to scores to mostly forgotten films like Paycheck or the TV score for the 2000s reality show The Mole. That also applies to video game scores. Since Legendary was released around the time where companies were going “Oh yeah, we can do soundtracks for our video game,” a lot of games got soundtracks. And of all the games to get a soundtrack, this was one of them.

    Okay, it looks fairly cheap, but hey, better than nothing.

    Composed by Jack Grillo (the audio director at Spark Unlimited at the time, who’s since moved on to Crystal Dynamics, working on audio for the Tomb Raider games) and Ricardo Hernandez (presumably a drummer friend of Grillo’s, his name is hard to find info on him easily), this soundtrack was released in September 2008 on most digital storefronts, and also got a physical release on Melee Sound Design Records, Hernandez’s self-published label.

    So what does it sound like? It’s mostly chugging guitars and heavy drum hits. After “Prologue,” which is mostly a monologue with occasional guitar playing throughout, “Flashpoint” is the first proper song on here, which plays while in the game’s main menu. It starts with a suspenseful guitar intro, before the drums kick in and layers of guitars are blended into this fairly intense menu music, which is probably the best way to get you pumped up to play the game.

    It’s also really interesting how there’s voice lines from the game featured. “Prologue” and “Epilogue” are literally featured from the game itself at those particular sections, which is expected, though they are truncated from the actual dialogue. featured However, the way it’s framed makes the album as trying to tell its own story, outside of the game. “It’s Just Business” is framed like Deckard just got severely wounded and about to get killed by LeFey, but in the actual game he says this line from a hijacked video line before a squad of baddies come to murder Deckard and Vivian in a subway. I’ll chalk this up to creative liberty with the material featured, but honestly I could’ve done without the random dialogue bits featured here.

    You can kinda tell they had to put a different TV model in front of the original model. That’s game design hotfixes for you, baby!
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  • Carmen Sandiego Out of This World: A bizarre album based on the game show.

    Carmen Sandiego Out of This World: A bizarre album based on the game show.

    Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? is one of those rather ubiquitous edutainment titles of the late 80s and early 90s. A geography-driven game, the goal is to find clues around the world to stop Carmen’s henchmen from stealing some of the most notable artifacts from around the world, eventually leading to stopping Carmen herself.

    A fair share of computers around the world had Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? installed, probably alongside Odell Lake or Number Munchers. But as time goes on, the video games have become only one part of what people remember about Carmen Sandiego as a franchise. If you’re in that generation of ’90s kids like me, you probably remember Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? not from a best-selling video game series, but through a rather popular game show.

    (Rockapella intensifies)

    Also called Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, it was a kids game show that was about the wonders of geography. This show was co-produced by PBS stations WGBH and WQED, and aired on PBS stations all around the country. Hosted by actor Greg Lee and featuring actress Lynne Thigpen as “The Chief,” it featured kids playing gumshoes at ACME Crimenet, answering geography questions to stop the theft of an artifact of the world from one of Carmen’s henchmen, with the final round having the winning gumshoe try to find Carmen herself to win a fabulous trip.

    This show holds about as much nostalgia for kids of the 80s and 90s as most of Nickelodeon’s well known game shows did. It definitely rivals some of the greats on that network, what with it’s cool style, entertaining form of education, and fun quiz elements, giving a silly but fun vibe to the whole show. It lasted about 4 years on PBS before pivoting from geography to history, with a follow-up series called Where In Time is Carmen Sandiego? lasting two more years before ending production.

    Naturally for a show that’s modestly popular like Where in the World… is, there would be loads of merchandising. The common T-shirts, video game adaptations, the works. Since the show featured a capella band Rockapella singing throughout the show’s 250+ episode run, naturally a soundtrack CD was also released. But there’s more than one soundtrack made for Where in the World…, and that one’s been mostly forgotten. Let’s talk about Carmen Sandiego: Out of this World.

    Look at how happy Greg Lee is.

    This was available one week early to people who subscribed to my Patreon. If you wanna see posts like these before everyone else, you can support my Patreon here.

    Admittedly, I’m writing about this primarily because of an article I read about the game show that has been making the internet rounds lately. Christian Carrion of Buzzerblog, a noted blog about game show news, did some investigative journalism about a rumored long-lost episode of the show called “Auld Lang Gone,” where a contestant was visibly injured in the bonus round, causing it to be unaired. You can read about that tale over at Buzzerblog here, and it made me think about this album as a response.

    This album features 10 songs about various things, from pop-driven songs about geography, to twangy country about families, to songs about bugs and Carmen Sandiego herself. A lot of these songs have fairly simple, cutesy lyrics, which tells me this album is clearly aiming for a younger demographic. Which is not a bad thing, children’s music can be fun and exciting like its adult counterparts without being fluff Yanni-esque fare.

    So, you’d think an album based on the game show where a bunch of guys sing a capella would have Rockapella show up everywhere, right? Well, technically yes. Prominent member Sean Altman produces and co-writes most of the album with longtime collaborator David Yazbek, and does a handful of backing vocals on a lot of the album.

    If you want to listen along with me, I’ve put up the entire album here. Legalities aside, the album’s been out of print for over 25 years, and with the exception of two songs here, the album isn’t available on YouTube or streaming services like Spotify. If that ever changes, or a record label objects to me having this music for some kids album freely available to download, I will take the link down.

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