Ocean Loaders (C64)

From Video Game Music Preservation Foundation Wiki
Revision as of 13:19, 16 March 2016 by TheAlmightyGuru (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search
Ocean Loaders
NoBox.png
Platform: Commodore 64
Year: 1985
Developer: Ocean Software Ltd.

Any fan of the Commodore 64 has probably heard a couple, if not all, of the Ocean Loaders. Back in the 1980s it took several minutes to load a Commodore 64 cassette tape. That's a long wait to sit around and do nothing for a kid hopped up on sugar. Ocean Software wisely made use of this downtime by adding a full screen loading graphic to look at and some catchy loading music to listen to. Back in 1985, Martin Galway (the primary composer of Ocean at the time) had intended to write unique loading music for every game released. He and David Dunn wrote a loader for Daley Thompson's Decathlon (C64) and Galway wrote another for Hyper Sports. However, Ocean was able to put out games at a faster rate, and frivolous additions like loading music weren't important enough to delay release dates. Because of this, many games use the same loading music.

Screenshots

Issue - Screenshots.svg

This page needs more screenshots.

Icon-Help.png

Music

Although there are as many as 11 loader tunes created for Ocean games, only five of the are widely accepted as true loader music. These five were used on several games, where the others were only used once or twice.

Ocean Loader 1 was composed by Martin Galway and was first used on Hyper Sports (C64) in 1985. It was not the first Ocean game to feature loading music, but this was the first loader song to become popular. At about 2:03 there is a strange 4 beat gap in one track of the music. Although Galway intended the gap to be there, many listeners of the day assumed that there was a bug in the music, which is probably what led Galway to remix the tune.

Ocean Loader 2 is Galway's remix of his Ocean Loader 1 and was first used in the game Comic Bakery (C64) in 1985. It's sounds similar to Loader 1, but there are several changes. Most notably is that it's slower and the 4 beat gap has been removed. This loader is the most used of all five loaders being in almost every game that Ocean released from late-1985 to mid-1987.

Ocean Loader 3 was composed by Peter Clarke. It was first used on Slap Fight (C64) in 1987. It cleverly begins the same as the first two loaders and then quickly changes into a completely different sound. Those who were familiar with Galway's loaders were no doubt excited to be tricked by the new one. This music was used for about a year from mid-1987 to spring of 1988.

Ocean Loader 4 was composed by Jonathan Dunn and first used in Target Renegade (C64) in April of 1988. The music style is a quite a bit different from the first loaders and a welcome change.

Ocean Loader 5 is Dunn's remix of Loader 4. It was first used at the end of 1988 in the game Operation Wolf (C64) and the last loader track to be used by several games.

Recording

# Title Composer Length Listen Download
01 Ocean Loader 1 Martin Galway 3:31
Download
02 Ocean Loader 2 Martin Galway 4:23
Download
03 Ocean Loader 3 Peter Clarke 2:47
Download
04 Ocean Loader 4 Jonathan Dunn 3:10
Download
05 Ocean Loader 5 Jonathan Dunn 3:10
Download

Credits


Issue - Missing.svg

Source verification is needed.

Icon-Help.png

Albums

Project: Galway

Project - Galway.jpg

2003-??-??

Game Rip

Format

Download

SID.png

Download

(Info)


Ripping Commodore music is a very arduous process that is beyond the scope of this site.

Links