Cybernoid II (Jeroen Tel, 1988)

jeroen-tel's music for hewson's sequel (C64, 1988-10): two songs — title and game over — in charles-deenen's musicfile driver, "MUSICFILE V01-07-1988"; the source is public, so this is the one classic maniacs-of-noise tune whose instruments can be read as numbers (sources: s-realdmx-sid-players, s-vgmpf-maniacs-of-noise).

Facts#

• PSID data: two subtunes, PAL, 6581, "1988 Hewson", loads at $1000 (source: s-realdmx-sid-players).
• Instruments (8 bytes: pulsehi, waveform, attdec, susrel, filcount, fx1, fx2, fx3): bass $05,$41,$08,$89,$00,$53,$64,$80; bassdrm $08,$11,$00,$a8,$f0,$00,$00,$10; snardrm $08,$11,$00,$a9,$f0,$01,$00,$10; arp+filt $04,$21,$00,$c8,$01,$00,$81,$85; melo-1 $0c,$41,$00,$b8,$00,$52,$22,$01; melo-2 $06,$41,$00,$e8,$02,$53,$74,$01; bassfilt $03,$41,$07,$69,$00,$00,$51,$80; solo $05,$41,$00,$b8,$03,$c5,$24,$01; plus tingel, omhoogt, $81lang, basso, solo2 — pulse for bass and leads, triangle with a fast filter count for the drums, sawtooth for the filtered arpeggios (source: s-realdmx-sid-players; instrument-design).
• Drums: 11-frame waveform/pitch lists starting with two frames of noise ($81,$81,$20,$20,$10 … over $34,$0a,$08,$06,$04 …); chords: len,0,3,7-style arpeggio lists plus one long descending run; tune constants: pulserunspeed = $63, dubvoice = $0c, spacewait = $60 and others (source: s-realdmx-sid-players; wavetable-programming, chord-arpeggio).
• The 2014 video Jeroen Tel - Cybernoid II In Game --behind the notes-- (6:02): "This is how Cybernoid II's soundtrack was made!" — the tune against its Turbo Assembler source (source: s-cybernoid-behind-the-notes).
• Who did what: in his own 2010 credit list Deenen puts himself down for "Sound effects" on this title, as on the other Tel classics — the music is Tel's, the effects and the driver Deenen's (source: s-c64com-charles-deenen-interview).
• Listed among Tel's best-known games in the Hugi biography; the Atari ST version (1989) was arranged by Jochen Hippel (sources: s-hugi38-interview-jeroen-tel, s-vgmpf-maniacs-of-noise).

From the other MUSICFILE builds#

Deenen's own test-tune source settles two readings of the Cybernoid II file: its 87-entry note table is the tail of the driver's 95-entry table (note $00 here = gf0 there), and the sequence bytes ≥ $80 are upward transposes of byte & $1f semitones — seq0a: $84,$01 = +4, step 1 (source: s-realdmx-deenen-test-tunes). Armada (1989) reuses this tune's pulse program 4 and arpeggios arp0–arp5 byte for byte (source: s-realdmx-ouwehand-mon-tunes).

Reception (SIDin interviews)#

hermit lists "Cybernoid I,II" among the best SIDs ever (source: s-sidin12-hermit-interview); freedom names "Cybernoid II by Jeroen Tel" with Hubbard's ACE 2 as his favourite game music (source: s-sidin13-tsm-freedom-interview).

Related#

cybernoid · jeroen-tel · charles-deenen · musicfile · maniacs-of-noise · hewson · instrument-tables · turbo-assembler

Sources#

s-realdmx-sid-players · s-vgmpf-maniacs-of-noise · s-cybernoid-behind-the-notes · s-hugi38-interview-jeroen-tel · s-realdmx-deenen-test-tunes · s-realdmx-ouwehand-mon-tunes · s-sidin12-hermit-interview · s-sidin13-tsm-freedom-interview · s-c64com-charles-deenen-interview