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California Games & Louie Louie

Posted: 09/07/2007 - 23:28
by xo
Is it just me, or is there a striking resemblence between some music from California Games and Louie Louie by the Kingsmen? I don't remember the subtune but I just heard The Kingsmen on last.fm, maybe even for the first time (or perhaps duing my childhood as well, can't remember.) Maybe the resemblance is too weak...

Posted: 10/07/2007 - 6:06
by LMan
It's subtune 1, it was the intro tune I think. Subtune 33 covers Wipe Out by The Surfaris, appropriately for the surfing part. Subtune 47 sounds like the bassline from the old "Batman" tune. Don't know if the other melodies in the SID are covers from something...

Posted: 10/07/2007 - 6:29
by Waz
One word to you xo: STIL!

STIL (SID Tune Information List) is full of information like that. Indeed it does mention that subtune 1 is the Louie Louie cover (as LMan points out) and the other subtunes he mentions are also covers too.

Oh, and subtune 34 covers the Jaws theme - appropriate when you fall off your surfboard and the shark appears!

If you haven't already done so, and if you have HVSC installed, then there's an easy way to display the STIL information when you play a SID. In Sidplay2/w, it's this:

* Go to Settings/HVSC
* Put in the location of the _root_ HVSC folder (for example C:\C64MUSIC)
* Tick the relevant boxes relating to what STIL entries you want displayed
* Click OK

There, done. Now when you use the directory-based UI to open a SID tune, up comes the STIL info.

If you just want to look up STIL manually, check the DOCUMENTS folder in your HVSC. It's all there, including what to do if you don't spot anything that should be there...

Posted: 10/07/2007 - 7:38
by Tonka
Yep - definitely Louie Louie. It even states it in the credits, AFAIKR.

Always puzzled me why Epyx never got themselves a decent C64 musician. The games were so great, and the music was always plinky, plonky poop.

Quite like the Super Cycle music though - reminds me of a 'Wings' song...

Posted: 10/07/2007 - 7:52
by omoroca
Waz wrote:One word to you xo: STIL!

STIL (SID Tune Information List) is full of information like that. Indeed it does mention that subtune 1 is the Louie Louie cover (as LMan points out) and the other subtunes he mentions are also covers too.

Oh, and subtune 34 covers the Jaws theme - appropriate when you fall off your surfboard and the shark appears!

If you haven't already done so, and if you have HVSC installed, then there's an easy way to display the STIL information when you play a SID. In Sidplay2/w, it's this:

* Go to Settings/HVSC
* Put in the location of the _root_ HVSC folder (for example C:\C64MUSIC)
* Tick the relevant boxes relating to what STIL entries you want displayed
* Click OK

There, done. Now when you use the directory-based UI to open a SID tune, up comes the STIL info.

If you just want to look up STIL manually, check the DOCUMENTS folder in your HVSC. It's all there, including what to do if you don't spot anything that should be there...
Or if this is too much work for you, simply go to SIDFind! and enter "california games".

The first STIL entry of the first search result says it: "Louie, Louie".

Posted: 10/07/2007 - 12:11
by xo
Thanks guys, I'll use that next time. :)

Posted: 10/07/2007 - 12:26
by xo
Tonka wrote:Yep - definitely Louie Louie. It even states it in the credits, AFAIKR.

Always puzzled me why Epyx never got themselves a decent C64 musician. The games were so great, and the music was always plinky, plonky poop.

Quite like the Super Cycle music though - reminds me of a 'Wings' song...
There's definitely a long way to Myth, but it had its charme.

Posted: 12/07/2007 - 9:27
by merman
From a technical point of view, the half-pipe "subtune" is interesting - starting off with a 16-second intro and then choosing a random section after that. (And there's also the very funny earthquake that happens at random when you crash, destroying a letter of the Hollywood sign in the background).

As for Epyx's music - there's some good stuff in there (I like quite a few of the Winter Games tunes).

Posted: 12/07/2007 - 17:00
by Waz
merman wrote:From a technical point of view, the half-pipe "subtune" is interesting - starting off with a 16-second intro and then choosing a random section after that.
In fact, it plays the opening bar for the first seven seconds, it constantly chooses a random section from one of sixteen sequences every twenty three seconds too. Trust me, it was an absolute pain to rip correctly, but I was so pleased that I managed it in the end so that everyone could enjoy that tune.

I've got fond memories of that game, buying it on tape many years ago and then upgrading all my US Gold games to disk when I got my 1541. The lovely folks at USG even did me a good deal where they charged me £5 to upgrade California Games, The Games: Summer Edition and The Games: Winter Edition on tape to the "Sporting Gold" disk compilation with them all on. Excellent :) Not to mention getting my disk original of World Games that way too.

Actually, Don Kwed still holds the flying disk record on my disk original of California Games. Damn, I must beat that at some point ;)

And the caber toss in World Games is an ace tune - no one's got close to doing the bagpipes so well on a C64 before or since...