Sound Breakdown Paradise Halloween Special 2015: Crüe Ball

Welcome, dear readers, to another edition of Sound Breakdown Paradise! Because whilst the release schedule might be spotty 90% of the time, the one thing you can count on with SBP is a yearly booky season entry. And oh boy howdy, do I have a hell of a subject for you today.

Thanks to great teachers like Iron Maiden, Lord Raptor, and, uh, Heavy Metal, we know that Heavy Metal and Horror go together like Chocolate and Peanut Butter; the exact science isn’t quantifiable, but almost every pairing of the combination goes off without a hitch. Even Electronic Arts- back when they were only slightly less morally dubious then they are now (whilst being capable of making some pretty decent non-sports titles to boot)- were aware of this inherent universal truth, and as a result they teamed up with little-known developer NuFX, Inc. to put out perhaps the most baffling licenced tie in product of the 16bit era.

And that product was Crüe Ball.

third tier. That’s to say nothing of the enemies, all of which have some incredibly cool designs that make them all stand out- although the fact the instruction manual gave them all names certainly helped. My favourite was always the little skulls with crazy green hair and sandaled feet, which I’m pretty sure where called “Dead Heads” in the aforementioned manual. Arguably the team spent a little too much time on the personality and not enough on refining the ball physics or the table layouts, as the former is a bit too spacy and loose to be in any sort of control of, and in the case of the latter, the bottom tier of the table designs- which never changes- is mapped out in such a way it’s very easy to get your balls stuck in loops, or get sent right down the middle.And then, at the 11th hour of development, MTV more or less shoved a Mötley Crüe licence on the team and the game became Crüe Ball. It’s not quite a Bio Metal scenario, as some very minor attempts to tie the band into the game were made, but ultimately the game was far along enough that nothing substantial could be done to reflect the licence. It doesn’t exactly damage the game- the wonky ball physics do a good enough job of that- but it does wind up feeling like a manipulative marketing ploy. Which, y’know, it was.That isn’t to say the game is without merit or interest, though. In fact, it does manage to get another of the core elements of the overall package mostly right.Crue Ball (hereby spelt without the umlaut, for my own sanity) was lucky enough to have two figures who worked on real pinball machines involved in its production; artist Mark Sprenger, who worked on tables like Diner and High Speed; and most importantly to this article, Brian Schmidt, one of the composers for the legendary Black Knight 2000 table. Listening to the music in the video above, it’s no wonder NuFX wanted him involved in the project; he managed to capture the spirit of classic Heavy Metal surprisingly well with limited technology- I’m no expert on the ins and outs of Pinball, but I can hear that the backbone of Black Knight 2000s music and sound is definitely an FM Synth-based chip of some description.

The music to Black Knight 2000 has more ties to Crue Ball’s then simply style, mind you; despite the three years between them and the (possibly) different technology, both games use remarkably similar waveforms across their songs. For comparisons sake, here’s the Main Play music from BK2000, and here’s Dr. Feelgood from Crue Ball. OH, yes, speaking of, remember above I said that NuFX tried to arbitrarily tie their game into the band of it’s namesake? Well, one way they did that was the inclusion of their supposed mascot Alister Fiend as a central character, seen prominently on the box art and throughout the short cutscenes and level breaks in-game. The other was the inclusion of YM2612’d versions of the songs Dr. Feelgood, Live Wire, and Home Sweet Home. Dr. Feelgood is used as the game’s “theme song”, appearing over the title screen and in the Bonus Rounds, Live Wire is used in a few places throughout the game, and Home Sweet Home is used as the Ending music. For comparisons sake, here are the original versions of the songs; Dr. Feelgood, Live Wire, Home Sweet Home. Obviously, expecting one-for-one transitions would be an unfair expectation, but for the most part the songs made the transition pretty well; Dr. Feelgood and Live Wire loop a lot faster, certainly, but they're close enough that they would’ve been instantly recognisable to die hard fans of the band; Home Sweet Home is easily the song that made it over the best, going on for longer then the other conversions before looping and containing more elements from the original song- and it has to be said, accurately recreating intricate guitar solos is not an easy thing to do by any stretch of the imagination, so props to Brian for going the whole nine yards and doing just that.

Now we get on to the real meat and potatoes of the article; the original tracks. The very last thing I covered for this series was the 16bit Incredible Hulk game, a title which combined a beloved hero with music that though videogamey at points, generally tried to closer replicate a very 90s take on funk music, something that kind of clashed with the licence and didn’t do a very good job of reflecting the feel and ambiance of the game as a whole. Here, Brian tried to do something very similar, opting to create music that felt less like video game music and more like "real" Heavy Metal- or as close to it that the YM2612 chip could manage. Rather then each song trying to convey a different theme in terms of reflecting the individual levels (at least in part because they’re largely identical), it kinda feels like Brian was trying to make the soundtrack come off more like a Heavy Metal album in terms of both feel and flow, which is a fairly high concept for a Pinball simulator, but one that

really works in the game’s favour. As mentioned above, the waveforms sound fairly similar to those from Black Knight 2000, and for better or for worse they’re decent approximations of the instruments they’re supposed to represent. One of the Mega Drive’s upsides is that the thicker, warmer, yet sometimes harsher sound of it’s native sound chip meant it had a slight upper hand with this sort of music, at least in the raw intensity if not in the accuracy of the sound. Even the DAC drums, though not as meaty as the ones from BK2000, are clean, crisp, and stylistically appropriate- I can easily imagine hearing that snare sound on a “real” metal track. The only two criticisms I have of the music is that almost every single song on the soundtrack uses a snare rush at the end of various bars/sections of the songs, which does get a little bit repetitive, and that the waveform used for bass guitars is a bit of strange one to use; it sounds great, but I’ve always thought it much more closely evoked a synth bass then a Fender. Although to be fair, it’s entirely possible that Brian Schmidt was programming the music using a custom sound driver instead of programing the songs directly with the chip (and I could just be spoilt by the many games that have THAT Mega Drive Bass Sound™, which would have been perfect for Crue Ball).Fast Lane is the first song used in-game, and even on a soundtrack that’s trying to sound less like game music it stands out as a pretty triumphant example of First Level Syndrome, with a very memorable and catchy melody. I was always fond of the little bass licks at the end of certain sections, and the song definitely picks up quite nicely from about 41 seconds onwards- it’s also one of only two in-game songs that doesn’t loop all that quickly, which is a nice bonus. Rather Be Happy picks things up with some “brighter” guitar sounds, making it the “soft” song on the “album" by comparison. It also clear distinction between the bass pattern and the rhythm/lead guitar patterns, which is always a winner with me. Epicenter arguably brings the first real instance of mad FM Synth shredding, and the non-typical beat during the intro and breakdowns certainly make it a standout song- one of my favourites, were it not for the fact that Volume 3 was typically the table I’d loose my last ball on. Grab It also has an interesting rhythmic quality to it, with one section have a more clearly defined swing to it’s beat, and the “main” section of the track contrasting that section with harsher guitar sounds and a more typical Metal beat. The transition between the two sections isn’t quite as smooth in reverse as it is in obverse and it’s one of the quickest-to-loop songs by far, but that guitar lead in the swing-ier sections totally works for me, so it gets a pass. As a kid, Too Far Away was probably my favourite of the

~ Decon (15/10/15)

All images were sourced from MobyGames