Parallax Commodore 64 Title Tune

[Paulwe1]

I always somehow thought that if Ender's Game were a video game, this would be the theme.

[zzzz17650]

iconic

[johhny449]

The ending is the greatest...wow :)

[Redline748]

used to just let myself get hipnotised to this, no wonder I had odd dreams lol, for me this was the most amazing soundtrack on C64

[jamesdiss]

I recall this game wasn't actually that good, but a series of keystrokes would play a movie with a soundtrack that included a snippet from Jeff Waynes 'War of the worlds'.

[TeesterX]

@jamesdiss I liked the game. The bloody crusher to get to the 3rd stage was ridiculously tough though!

[TeesterX]

The modern 'updates' of this tune are just pale echoes. This is the original, and by far the best version.

[mihe40]

Cooler Sid- Sound,Hervoragend arrangiert

[PoorlyJudged]

Finest C64 music ever - or at least top 3.

I used to record the track "from the air" onto a cassette tape and play it around the house. Terrible fidelity but the brilliance of the music shone through!

[AssemblerGuy]

@PoorlyJudged You did that too...? *Sniff-sniff and a few nostalic tears*

[HardWarUK]

@PoorlyJudged Me too! Then played it on the walkman and then told my non C64 friends, "listen to this". 1 in 10 gave it 5 seconds, the other 9 listened to the whole thing with a glaze on their eyes!.

[survivor303]

spotify:track:0SrjkFfb69VPruJP­iBDO9G

[TubeYouber]

This is 11 minutes of pure awesome

[dasraiser]

as much as i love c64 music, i prefer playing it on british 50hz as its slightly slower than the american 60hz .

[TeamRocketReviews]

@dasraiser Do you mean this was released in the US?

[dasraiser]

@TeamRocketReviews well this version of the song maybe around 50Hz so i was mistaken, sounds faster than i remembered, also i dont know if this was released in the US, shame if not, its a fantastic game and i love the atmospheric despairing sounds when out of the ship :D

[motiv999]

to be honest. It's fucking amazing.

[punkoid76]

Galway was always second to Hubbard, his tunes may be more "hypnotic" but they lack Hubbards skill in producing what sounds like much more than three channels. Sanxions loading music kept this off the Zzap 64 number one spot because it was a far superior piece.

[tommyrytkonen]

Aswell, this makes me miss my old C64, besides being one of the top two games, this is one of the most memorable and enjoyable themes.. Take care and... Anyone who has an un-abused TAC2 for sale ;) Take care, folks :)

[VITRUVVII]

This game was cool too!

[TheMikakoivu]

Ending sounds totally like the Time machines album by Coil

[dnrobs]

never liked this or knucklebusters,gary penn had weird tastes,although MG did some good stuff.

[storhemulen]

Brilliant tune. One of the best for the 64.

[Benoit1911]

Wow, I'm too young so I never got a Commodore 64, but this awesome track gave me the envy to buy one and to try the game...

[MixingLaboratory]

WOW!!!!! This is a Masterpiece!!! OMG....... What a beautiful piece of SID music. This beats a lot of other C64 Music!!!!!!

[angelodomino]

imho, Martin was better than Rob..Rob is a Music Genius though...pfff...Rob is brilliant also..very hard...

[narrakel]

wow, und das auf dem ollen Brotkasten :)

[angelodomino]

Commercial music isnt good...and Good music isnt commercial...i looooove this Amazing track..thanks Galway!!

[stevensantosss]

amazing



[SimoWill75]

I'd have kept the beginning and cut the end. I was never a fan of how this finished.

Read an interview years ago with Galway , he never liked the end either! haha.

[telbee]

@SimoWill75 I think the end is amazing! Then again, the whole tune is outstanding, so it's just a shame it's not on youtube in its entirety... :)

[SimoWill75]

@telbee Really? From 8:45 onward? 2 mins of noise?

Not having a go at you, just find it strange you prefer that over an extra 2 mins of actual music at the beginning.

[monkyman26O]

@SimoWill75 i think the noise was supposed to some sort of end of the song ambience.

[subsonicdeathmonkey]

Awesome.

[MrEnterthehole]

neva forget ;)

[angelodomino]

awesome good....A+++ 

[sockcutter]

This brings back some pleasant memories. One of the few games that I actually paid for and I remember the day I loaded it up in teh old 1541 drive and typed LOAD"*",8,1 and was totally mesmorized by this awesome tune.

[ReDtOmAtOsTyLe]

maaaan need a dubstep remix of this!

[angelodomino]

This track is soooo good....Hans Zimmer...get this man an awesome job!!!..

[Joliie]

What an iconic piece of music, your just back in your old bedroom with dim lighting and a screen, which is your source of tanning :)

Galway, Whittaker and Hubbard are among my favorite game SID composers.

[naxxox]

Martin is the best composer of C64 and Parallax is his masterpiece.

[bollwerk69]

Ein Superlativ folgt bei diesem Meisterstück dem nächsten - Galway ist der Meister des c64Sounds!!!!!

[bollwerk69]

Das Beste vom Besten!

[sanftegewalt83]

this tune is so awesome, everytime i hear it i could cry!!

[KaslarProductions]

This song fucking sucks after about 10:56

[mmonicque]

I just died because of the greatness of this song

[dschonsie]

@mmonicque i want to offer my sympathies to your family 

[KIartext]

this is just EPIC

[xSteigix]

awsome



[catturd]

This is awesome. It was better than the game.

[Freiheitsliebe2009]

intergalaktisch...

[20RoyalSuperKing]

Amazing what that likkle sid done, one of my all time faves, and insects in space! Thanks

[EvilViolencePerson]

The more and more I listen to this, the deeper it gets stuck in my head.

[HardWarUK]

2 pilots crashed on the 15th mission. R.I.P. lads. Drink at 8pm in the pilot's bar!!!

[Saturnome]

Never played a C64. But man I know what great music is. It's this.

[MrMegazuki]

Took me a couple of years to find the 'secret' song at 06:42!

[rdbdavies]

It sounds exactly like a techno version of Forever Autumn by the Moody Blues at the beginning lol. My favourite is the Ocean Loader 5, I downloaded the SID file a few years ago and converted it to mp3 so I could use it as the ringtone on my phone.

[TeesterX]

@andwilmor The game was great also, but you're right about the tune too. Great composition.

[MrStarfishPrime]

Great music and great game

[TheAshun]

this tune needs time to sink in you

[sedden]

Ulan hala duyduğumda bile kendimden geçiorum ya. yehh bee.. Yokmu eski C64 delisi aranızda :S

[Larrylarp]

Composer genius Martin Galway meets game designer genius Jon Hare. And Parallax was the result. AWESOME!

[Larrylarp]

Wow... it's fucking amazing what a talented composer could do with the SID.

[andwilmor]

I pop back every few weeks for a listen of this. It's not only a great Commodore 64 piece of music, it's a great piece of music full stop!

[hagelbraker]

Oh man I can listen to this all day

[jdbrown371]

The coolest part of the Parallax splash screen is how it looks like the "Star Gate" sequence from 2001 a Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. I know that's where the got it from! No doubt!

[ufo8mycat]

I had this as part of one of those great 6-game compilations that were so common with C64. I think the others included Head Over Heels and Ace of Aces. Unfortunately, the cassette for Parallax never worked!

[MaSSiVe0101]

Amazing!!!

[ramog]

Martin Galway was making music b4 I knew what

a midi keyboard was!!

[DragstMan]

This is missing the intro part :(

[cablegunmaster]

Never heard of this but its awesome what people managed to do with this limited amount of resources.

[Snorkeldrek]

Great fuckin' music!,and only on three channels...,and don't forget Rob Hubbard!!(They were the masters back then on the sid-chip)

[niobyte]

A truly epic and excellent piece. Always been one of my favourites by Martin Galway. Along with Arkanoid, Game Over, Green Beret, Insects in Space and the masterpiece "Times of Lore". 5/5

[the1marauder2]

Such a hard game, such an amazing song. Still gives me goosebumps to listen to it all these many years later. Love that chippy sound. I can still remember sitting in my basement on the C64 just listening to the song while doing other stuff. Miss those days.

[Scorpionesse]

Thanks a lot for this song! I remember loading this game from cassette just to hear this song. For a little boy it was just so epic. And it still is. Just pure greatness.

[metalwaralcatraz]

All time C64 best muzak !! Thanks Martin Galway !!

[mapleavenue77]

Found this game difficult. Always lived to tune though.

[the1marauder2]

One of my favorite C64 songs and one of my favorite games. Galway for the win!

[michelkoch]

Amazing, bring me back the good old times please)C;

[iillDUDAllii]

press play on tape  ;-)

[inphanta]

Great tune, but to be pedantic, this is actually the title tune and not the loader.

[b6gm6n]

oh wow, i found it...forgot all about it, tell i lie, the end of this loader is just amazing, i remember once in a pokey (no pun) flat in the UK in the mid 80's loading this game with a friend just to see the horror on his face as the tune started as i pressed 'stop' on tape... listen i said... 9-10 mins later and a rudimentary joint we were both in absolute awe of the GALLWAY! amazing man, a genius a legend.

[mrblonde2]

haha, had a similar experience about 20 years ago...and I'm 35 now ;-)

[BrokenMinister]

Martin Galway the man. I love his every song he did for great C=64. This masterpiece is my fav one. Hail the King,

Hail the Martin Galway

[waxfrenzy]

A magnificent piece of work.

My first experience of Parallax was not on the C64, but on the '100 Most Remembered C64 Tunes' demo on the Amiga. So there you go.

[FerralVideo]

I believe they call this "Needlessly Awesome".

If there is such a thing.

A ten/eleven minute long loader theme. Wow. Most people have probably only ever heard the first two minutes before just jumping into the game.

[bokkpokk]

The sound at 8:42 makes all my strands of hair raise to the occasion. Dunno why, gotta be something primal.

[HardWarUK]

Most artistic and real music I have ever heard, And it is from ta C64 game - whowoudathought?!

[szubaark]

Amazing what the Sid could do. Most of us are adults now and the C64 still impresses us.

[cevansinz]

Man, that's such a trippy piecy. I played the hell out of this game and never figured out how to finish it. Awesome tune.

[Hmpfgrmbl]

Well my alltime favorite C64 tune is definetly the Wizball theme. Check it out if you don't know it! Never heard this one before but I like it. Somehow psychedelic.

[gutsploder]

Wouldn't it be great to get a game home now for the PS3 or 360 and be just addicted to playing it because the music played such a huge role in the game.?

[zombiemod]

I didn't really like the game much but this tune is amazing, a combination of the Day Of The Dead Soundtrack and Thompson Twin's "Saint", maybe even some Jean Michel Jarre as well.

23 years old already!!! ffs

[HardWarUK]

I believe you can buy a DVD with all the Zzap issues in pdf format along with all the games that were on the tapes...... Thinks it £15 ($25) for 100+ magazines. Well worth it! :) Just google Zzap...

[HardWarUK]

I laughed back in the day, in America, when I read a review of this game by an American reviewer who had never heard anything like it! He said it was 'painful in a good way'! I still remember that to this day! :)

[therideguide]

Pure audio genius. How Sanxion managed to keep this tune from Zzaps music chart Number 1 is beyond me, perhaps there was just a greater following of Rob Hubbard. Galway will always be my favourite C64 composer of all time. Galways tunes were alot more hypnotic than Hubbards 'In yer face' tunes. I still think Hubbard was good but I think there was more passion in Galways music. Each to their own though.

[MrMegazuki]

@therideguide

As Galway said himself, Hubbard was the rythm and drums wizard. Galway based his stuff on his guitar solo playing.

[ftimesf]

@therideguide I agree with you to an extent and I was lucky enough to work as a programmer at Ocean but Hubbard is still amazing... In a different way of course.. Galway's tunes are just as hypnotic as you say.

[madcapoperator]

@therideguide precisely, galway was very much insired by stuff by tangerine dream so that hypnotic trancentral feeling is emmitted here. Hubbard's approach to writing a tune was clearly based more on the 3 minute pop or rock song than anything but equally as amazing. Those two along with johnathon dunn produced some of the best tunes not only for video games but ever.

[BrokenMinister]

@therideguide G and H are both geniouses in their field. I just love this fuckin era and Im blessed that I got to witness all this great music. I wish this is the tune they play in my funeral.

[TeesterX]

@BrokenMinister You're spot on there mate!

[michelkoch]

Great !!!

[musisausi]

Amazing !!!

[alucardthe69th]

I'd give my nuts to hear Pete Tong play this, just, once. LOL

[andwilmor]

This is one of my favourite pieces of Commodore 64 music and it still stands up well now. Brilliant!

[scottmcuk]

Can't believe the SID still sounds fat today!

[ValiantSaint]

I remember getting this game free on the front of a magazine (Zzap, perhaps?) I played it to death.

I agree with a lot of the comments on here about how involving the whole C64/Amiga scene was back in the day. Maybe it felt like that because I was about 11 at the time.

[IntrinsicPalomides]

Yeah it was either Zzap64 or Commodore User 64/Amiga. I still have have a mint condition issue 1 Zzap64 from May 85 complete with all the original flyers :) No tape though heh. Still an amazing read, and as fresh today as it was back then.

[szubaark]

I heard this sid first in a Ash&Dave Demo

"Terminal City"..

[woulfe42]

although i was only like 12 at time, i still remember my cousin letting me play on his com64. Which was a big think i quess. I kinda remember this song but not really the game i'm still a gamer after 18 years later and have to agree that gaming back then got u more involved you felt emotionaly attached even though the graphics sucked monkey balls if they could just some how make games with the same music,storyline,and overall feeling with todays graphics that would for me be the ultamatie game.

[honda1979]

Yes I totally agree with you woulfe42, i was also about 12 when i started gaming on the C64, I think gaming was a lot better back then, maybe its just because of the age you were then and because you were growing up at that time. All in all the C64 will remain my ultimate memories of gaming, a combination of the music and excellent gameplay.

[woulfe42]

recently i saw on youtube where you can download some C-64 and the early gen nintendow sys. like shadowrun for free i played them again for awhile but the feeling wasn't the same probably because i'm jaded with the new graphics interface that all the gaming provides now. But the plots still suck on the new games when are they ever going to make some remakes

[vhulheim]

I always liked this song and the theme music for Spell of Destruction, another c64 title. In europe the title was Wizardry.

[Ironlord2015]

Yep, truly one of the best, EVER, not just in C64 gaming, but in the history of computer and video game music FULL STOP. The ingame tune is bloody amazing too, really pleasant music that you could almost float off to :-D The best days of gaming too, when you could buy a fantastic (sometimes lol) game for the measly sum of £2.99 Not any more sadly :( Happy Days, fondly remembered forever.

[i4wood]

Thank you....

Just discovered this after reading an interview by Galway on Lemon64....

This could become my all time favourite, move over Ocean Loader....

[cyronix99]

best game song ever!

[prowokator]

Nice. The beginning reminds me of some tune in the Night/Dawn/Day of the dead movie, can't remember which one of them had that.. or was it some other zombie movie.. :P Well anyways, really cool song, as usual from Galway! Thanks for posting

[hillninja]

i think the tune sounds like dotd dude

[Simon0]

yeah me too,. i think its day of the dead.

[robbiew73]

This was a huge hit of a game when released and I remember sitting with my mate in his room just listening to how long the tune would last.. I think we got blinded by the raster splits on the title sequence after 10 minutes of Galway sonix and watching those 8 sprites scroll around the screen. :)

I'm surprised this hasn't ever been converted to a modern PC/console.

[pollgar]

God the good days of gaming

[Lavalambtron]

I think there are great games now, but back then everything was new, it was fantastic.

[conradragzoff]

I worked at Fedco back when this game came out--we had that game on the display computer, and I'd hang around it for the ENTIRE intro just so I could hear the cool music!

[wanchope6700]

The best piece of music written for any computer game. This is simply astounding, even more so when you consider that this was squeezed out of an 8 bit computer. Martin Galway is a genius.

[vhulheim]

there was another commodore 64 game called Spell of Destruction that had an absolutely amazing theme song. better than this one imo. I still have the game and the disk but not the commodore :( I can't find that game anywhere for some reason, anyone else remember it?

[bloodspatt]

makes me wanna dig out an emulator... i always get nostalgic with them, but theyre not even close to the c64 scene of the day, with BBS's - 300 maud modems, proper pirate boards, demo making, ripping the music outta games..

times were so much more fulfilling with the old c64.. ;)

cheers for the tune!

[666amanda]

Looking for this everywhere!  :) Thanx 4 posting! Can you tell me where i can get the Music from? Wud sound gr8 on my fone LOL .. Amanda xx

[gdreyband]

I get all of the music from the High Voltage SID Collection, (HVSC).

[666amanda]

thanxx  :)

[canttelthetime]

@666amanda i recorded this tune on my phone, but when it rang people looked at me disbelief?. i used to load up this game just to hear this music.

[nicholasthetaylor]

@666amanda There's a free addon for firefox called downloadhelper, so you download this video using that. Then get yourself VLC (A free really good media player), then use the convert tool in the file menu to convert this to mp3. YOU WILL LOVE IT. Also, be sure to check out Reyn Ouwehand's cover of this tune. He's an ex-c64 musician that is just brrrrilliant... watch it and see!

[607462]

ooooooooo those childhood years. dont make em like this anymore

[ratix98]

lol you didn't include track 2! that was simply the best one out of the bunch. i do love the fact that you mentioned me. i find this somewhat funny because i was showing my friend my account and i said just search my name and this came up. :P