Last Ninja 2 (Matt Gray, 1988)

system-3's 1988 sequel, scored by matt-gray as its in-house musician: a full soundtrack of loaders and level tunes written "from mid-January until early April" 1988 — "about as big a project as you would want to undertake, but everything just seemed to work without any real hitches" (source: s-c64com-matt-gray-interview).

Facts#

• The chance came when Mark Cale phoned in November 1987 for a Bangkok Knights loader (rob-hubbard had done the in-game and was leaving for the US); after a drink Cale offered an exclusive contract, "and that was that. In mid-January of 1988, I started work on The Last Ninja 2" (source: s-c64com-matt-gray-interview).
• "I did the Central Park tracks first, which was important in order to stamp some sort of 'sound' on the game … I was given a fairly free hand to produce what I thought would be most suitable and luckily, every time I took in new tracks for each level, I got the thumbs up." Completed "within 14–16 weeks" (source: s-c64com-matt-gray-interview).
• Gray's proudest work: "the entire The Last Ninja 2 soundtrack … especially the Central Park tracks, as they seem to mean so much to so many people"; the Central Park loader and in-game are two of his three favourite own tunes; the team he credits: John (programming), Hugh (graphics), Tim (storyboards), Mark Cale (vision) (source: s-c64com-matt-gray-interview).
• The Mansion loader was covered in the NES homebrew Stuck in Castle Nessenstein (2005) (source: s-vgmpf-matt-gray).
• 2014: the Reformation Kickstarter included "an accompanying album of extended remakes for the entire soundtrack" and, among the new SID "imaginary sequels", "Last Ninja 2 – The Lost Level" composed in the old matt-gray-player (sources: s-c64com-matt-gray-interview, s-matt-gray-dominator-source).

More detail and the Ninja Remix rescoring#

• "I started on LN2 in January 1988 and it was completed by May with about a month gap. 13 tracks were made and they used them all … not have to do any SFX. A dream project really" (source: s-retrogamesmaster-matt-gray-interview). Central Park followed on from the Bangkok Knights loader, whose bass imitated Hubbard's Sanxion — "a fast bass line with a small hat on each note … all one channel"; "a few tracks on LN2 … have a dance music influence … it was early 88 and sample tracks were becoming big news"; sub-tune 3 shares a chord progression with Anastacia's I'm Outta Love — "I wouldn't call it a rip off" (source: s-vandalism63-matt-gray-interview). Mark Cale "didn't want endless cliched sounding oriental music … the main idea was to make it dramatic and powerful"; "electronic rock soundtrack type pieces" for the New York setting (sources: s-rvg-matt-gray-interview, s-arcadeattack-matt-gray-interview).
• Ninja Remix (the cartridge re-release): Gray had left, reyn-ouwehand wrote new intro music, and since "there's no room for two music drivers, and Reyn couldn't work in Matt's driver", the whole soundtrack was rewritten in the MoN driver — no loading tunes, The Dungeons (LN1) in the intro, Central Park replaced by a cover of Daglish's Wastelands, The Street a bouncier cover of Gray's Central Park, The Sewers a cover of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence; "The whole experience is lighter and poppier" (source: s-remix64-ninja-remix).

• Heard by others in 2002: Tognon calls luca-carrafiello's Central_Park_Loader_Y2K "one of the Matt Gray LN2 cover very innovative", and Carrafiello names the soundtrack right after Wizball among the SIDs that took his heart (source: s-sidin01-carrafiello-interview); lasse-oorni: the Last Ninja 2 and 3 soundtracks "contain also nothing but brilliant tunes to me" (source: s-sidin02-cadaver-interview).

Why it came out the way it did (2015)#

Asked why this soundtrack in particular stayed popular, matt-gray refused a formula: "I just did what felt right to me and system-3 gave me a lot free reign … If there was a formula I'd have bottled it by now." It was his in-house job at the company, and among all his C64 work he still picks a Central Park track from it as his own best (source: s-sidin15-matt-gray-interview).

Afterlife in SIDin (2005–06)#

• Tognon's 256-byte tiny-sid-compo entry Random Ninja (7th, 2005) remixes "the end part of 'Last Ninja II – Central Park' in the Chris Holm edition" with two voices and a noise-register choice of waveform per pattern — "I listen to it for hours..... due to LN II magic sound" (source: s-sidin09-tiny-sid-256b).
• Last Ninja 2 was his reference test for the catweasel Mk4 card ("I always test a C64 with this tune"): "40% right, the rest is horrible" through the card, perfect in the C64; the printed sid2midi dump shows the intro's voice-3 two-octave triangle arpeggio (F#4 377 → 1511 → 755 Hz, ADSR 00a9), the bass and lead entering at 0:03 with pulse $40, ADSR 0f00 and a 32-per-frame pulse sweep, and no filter anywhere (source: s-sidin09-catweasel-6581).

Related#

matt-gray · matt-gray-player · system-3 · driller · dominator · rob-hubbard

Sources#

s-c64com-matt-gray-interview · s-vgmpf-matt-gray · s-matt-gray-dominator-source · s-retrogamesmaster-matt-gray-interview · s-vandalism63-matt-gray-interview · s-rvg-matt-gray-interview · s-arcadeattack-matt-gray-interview · s-remix64-ninja-remix · s-sidin01-carrafiello-interview · s-sidin02-cadaver-interview · s-sidin09-tiny-sid-256b · s-sidin09-catweasel-6581 · s-sidin15-matt-gray-interview