ReMix:Cybernoid: The Fighting Machine "AY YO" 4:20

We FINALLY have a Spectrum ReMix on the site, as our flood of new & obscure games continues with this chiptastic EDM arrangement of Cybernoid (Spectrum) from Binster (Martin Binfield):

"It is a remix of the Spectrum 128K Cybernoid music. I feel that there is a distinct lack of love for the Speccy, and the 128K has a highly competent AY sound chip with a distinctive sound. The C64 version of Cybernoid features different music and often overshadows the (in my opinion, superior) Spectrum music, so I hope to address the balance somewhat with this remix. It's a bouncy bit of fun, making use of delightful FM bass sounds and a little light orchestration in the backing. It was, as ever, produced in Reason. Cheers!"

There were tons of more variant ports back in 'dem days, due to more noticeable differences in specifications/limitations of each platform. I have no idea how they decided which games to do completely new music for, but I'm guessing it sometimes just had to do with the difficulty of porting the sound, where doing something from scratch was actually easier... At any rate, there were a lot of ports to/from C64 & the Speccy, so it's cool to get a mix where the music was different. Liontamer writes:

"AY YO, Spectrum representation on OCR, finally! :-) Much like C64 music, I relish hearing a source tune like this get arranged because it allows the chance for a listener to fully appreciate the composition. Both the Spectrum and the C64 had very limited channels, meaning that if the action in a shooter like Cybernoid got fast and furious, the soundchip would often need to drop parts of the music to free up the audio to provide sound effects. We should be able to have our cake and eat it too when it comes to VGM!

Many of the personalization techniques Martin employed in Xenon 'Xoldin' Out for a Xero' are very much on display here - e.g. richer sounds (dat BASS); fun energy; regularly varied leads, accent writing, and textures - though this one has a more relaxed tempo and a different sound palette. For more great music hearkening back to the chippy days of the C64, Amiga, and Spectrum, I highly recommend you get Martin's original albums Quixotica and Quixotica 2 at OverClocked Records! :-) Major props for him putting one in OCR's "Zed Echs" column; we were LONG overdue! May Binster's musical cup always run over. Keep 'em coming, bro!"

Couldn't have said it better myself - great stuff!