Vultan's Theme (Attack of the Hawk Men)

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Vultan's Theme
Composer Freddie Mercury
Released 1980-12-05
Title Origin Official

Vultan's Theme (Attack of the Hawk Men) was composed by Freddie Mercury and the rock band Queen for the 1980 movie, Flash Gordon. The tune's popularity caused it to be "borrowed" by a couple composers of video game music. None of the games that use the song ever gave the credits to Queen, but the song is very recognizable because the "flying" bars. Due to the hardware constraints of the time, no game actually uses a recording of the song, they all use a lo-fi rearrangement with the same notes. This coupled with the freer copyright laws of the 1980s allowed to song to be used over and over again without any lawsuits. The Apache Strike Theme borrows from the song as well.

Games

Vanguard (ARC)

Platform - ARC.png
Vanguard (ARC)
Vanguard - ARC - Energy.png
Arranger Unknown
Released 1981-??-??
Format UNK

Vultan's Theme is heard when the player touches an energy pod and gains temporary invincibility for as long as the song plays. The game's developer, Tose, used the song without permission. The song is played on a SN76477 audio chip.

Vanguard (A26)

Platform - A26.png
Vanguard (A26)
Output - TIA.svg
Vanguard - A26 - Energy.png
Arranger Dave Payne
Released 1982-??-??
Length 0:10
Format UNK

Like the arcade game, Vultan's Theme plays when you touch an energy pod. The music fidelity is notably lower on the Atari 2600's TIA chip.

Vanguard (A52)

Platform - A52.png
Vanguard (A52)
Vanguard - A52 - Energy.png
Arranger Dave Payne
Released 1983-??-??
Format UNK

The Atari 5200 port is much closer to the arcade version than the Atari 2600 release, and the tune matches up with the arcade release quite closely. Vultan's Theme plays every time you touch an energy box, and each time the game begins. The song is played on the 5200's POKEY chip.

Vanguard (A8)

Platform - A8.png
Vanguard (A8)
Output - POKEY.svg
Arranger Unknown
Released 1983-??-??
Length 0:15
Format SAP

Like the arcade game, Vultan's Theme plays when you touch an energy pod in the Atari 800 game. It sounds close to the Atari 5200 version, most probably because the Atari 8-bit version was a hack of the mentioned console one, but is altered a bit.

It was rendered on POKEY, being a tune number 2 in the SAP rip.

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