Helikopter Jagd (C64, 1986)

martin-galway's title music for Ocean's Helikopter Jagd — the tune on which he first used pulse-width sweeps, and therefore the starting point of the Galway "driver personality" built on pulse-width-modulation. Galway: "I didn't develop pulse-width modulation until the next project, which at the time was called Cyclone. It later came out as Helikopter Jagd. On Roland's Ratrace I guess you could say I was still mastering the C64" (source: s-newman-driving-the-sid-chip). The wiki dates the release 1986 after Newman; Galway himself lists it as "Cyclone" among his games in November 1986 (source: s-sidmusic-galway-interviews).

The story from Commodore Zone#

• The music is a cover: programmer Tony Pomfret asked for "the B-side from the Limahl single 'Neverending Story' I bought the other day" — a Giorgio Moroder filler tune whose style Galway respected. Galway was still freelancing when he "worked on that music first in 1984"; nobody expected Ocean to publish a Neverending Story game, "it was very much just a cool tune to do" (source: s-sidmusic-galway-interviews).
• "It was the first tune I did pulse-width sweeps on, but didn't get released 'til after a bunch of other games had come out I think. The sound blew everyone away." (source: s-sidmusic-galway-interviews)
• The tune also appeared, as "Neverending Story", on the Mupados Datahits cassette of "stereo dance-form" versions sold by WHSmith, which disappointed Galway (source: s-sidmusic-galway-interviews).

Why it matters#

The datasheet promised that sweeping the pulse width gives "a dynamic 'phasing' effect" (sid); this tune is the sourced moment when a game composer first built a lead sound on that promise. Galway's later self-description — exploiting "different features of the SID chip first" to carry a tune (source: s-remix64-galway-interview) — starts here.

Related#

martin-galway · pulse-width-modulation · sid · commando

Sources#

s-sidmusic-galway-interviews · s-newman-driving-the-sid-chip · s-remix64-galway-interview