The Music of Video Games [167] Magician

[gades9999]

Neil your my hero your music is amazing it helps motivate me in life an awesome game to beat it you must be smart and persistent. Thanks again

[TwinUzis]

This game had the best music you've never heard.

[Alianger]

really impressive for nes, game seems quite ambitious as well.

[monosaturated]

I've always found it impressive that some NES composers could get the sound chip to almost sound like a Commodore 64. This is, truly, some great stuff.

[AJF786]

This game does have cool music.

I especially love the Caverns.

[AJF786]

Just to reiterate, I wish this video played all the songs in their entirety.

Most of the songs in this game are quite lengthy, going for several minutes before looping. That in itself is a rarity for NES music.

The Lake theme is actually my favorite(though the Caverns is pretty good). It's so sad and really gets across the homesick feeling that Paul has by that point in the game.

[AJF786]

I also like how the Forest theme starts out with what seems to be ambient noise(crickets chirping, etc.) before going into the song itself.

Awesome stuff, Neil!

[explod2A03]

@AJF786

I finally got around to uploading the whole thing! All songs are up in their entirety now. Just do a search for 'Magician NES music' or something like that, and it should come up. But I still have to thank Garudoh for breaking the ice on getting some Magician music up on YT in the first place (and getting Neil Baldwin out of the woodwork!). :)

[Renegen1]

Wow, this game is so deep for a NES game. It looks amazing too.

[crazyduck90]

I'm planning to do a guitar cover on the song in the beginning of the game, i mean the one when you start of after the intro screen, it's kind of hard to figure out the chords tho

[1ucasvb]

Agreed, this game has a seriously underrated soundtrack. I'm very happy to see it included in your video game music series.

[1ucasvb]

Too bad you didn't include the best tracks, like the 4th, 5th and 7th in the NSF file you can find online. They're very much unlike a lot of the common video game music you see around. They're very good. I recommend anyone who liked this video to check it out.

[1ucasvb]

My bad, the 7th is the first one in the video. The others are missing.

[dancingmind]

WOW! 3:23's track is seriously kicking. I am in agreement with everyone else here; this is some great music even on first listen 17 years later!

I'm assuming this is a PAL game so no luck getting this even if it's on eBay.

[gamergeek]

ahh this was a great game! hard as hell though.

[GypsyRed]

I've never heard of this game either, but the music is awesome!

[AlucardsQuest]

A kind of rare game, a difficult game, but seriously underrated... especially the music.

[garudoh]

Tell me about it. Of all my vids, I think this is the one with the lowest view count (excluding anything I posted this week). I can't say I've played this game myself, but the soundtrack sports some of my favorite NES tunes ever. Wish I knew who the composer was.

[AlucardsQuest]

I don't think that the game sold or was distributed very well. I'm looking for a copy myself locally with no luck. Looking on the internet would be my next step, but I just bought a bunch of NES games, so I'd better wait.

[neilbaldwin99]

Wow, I've recently stumbled across this video. It's been nearly 20 years since I wrote this NES music (first NES game I did) and it's nice to see it still being appreciated today!

Thanks to everyone for the positive comments.

[garudoh]

I love it when composers find one of my vids. Awesome stuff.

The work you did on this game is amazing, Neil. Like I've mentioned before, I never played Magician, so nostalgia isn't blurring any appreciation I have for these tunes. This is really, really good stuff.

I gotta ask, what's your personal favorite work you've done for a game?

[neilbaldwin99]

The pleasure is all mine. Nice to see your work being appreciated, even if it is very old (and sometimes a *little* embarassing!)

[neilbaldwin99]

Funnily enough, your YouTube stuff got me digging out some old stuff. My best NES work (IMHO) was on 2 titles that never saw the light of day - "Hero Quest" (though you can get the music files and the ROM on the internet because the guy who wrote the game decided to release it into the public a few years back). I had a lot of fun doing that as by then (it was quite late in the NES's life) I'd evolved the music driver to have some really cool features so I got to play around and show off a bit :)

[MrNorbert1994]

@neilbaldwin99 Could you tell me why Erik the Viking and Hero Quest was never released?

[Camwi]

Seriously, that's gotta be such a great feeling. Considering how much work you've put into this series of yours, I know how much you really care about video game music. So actually talking to one of the composers, that's just awesome.

[Camwi]

I was just going to comment on how blown away I was by the music in this game which I'd never heard before and then I saw your comment.

And I'm not trying to blow smoke up your ass or anything like that. I'm sincerely impressed by some of the songs in this video, especially the first two tracks.

Great job, Neil.

[JonGeric]

@neilbaldwin99

my life dream is to be a VG composer i've been a musician for 10 years but i don't know how to make the jump into the market....how did you get your start mr baldwin?...by the way the music for this game is phenomenal

[dadio02]

this is so interesting, man Never heard of it

The music is good...