Mad Max - Mad Max (NES)

Mad Max

Composer	Rich Shemaria
Arranger	Nick Eastridge
Released	1990-07-??
Length	1:12
BPM	150
Format
Game	Mad Max (NES)
Title Origin	Official
Loops	Yes

Mad Max is the name of one of the two songs that play in Mad Max (NES). The song first plays upon bootup on the title screen, and plays while Max is searching the caves, and when he is in the shop buying items. The song also plays during the final battle with Lord Humungus.

The song was written by Rich Shemaria on sheet music paper. He then wrote numbers next to the notes that represented pitches and lengths for Nick Eastridge's sound driver, that way, Nick could easily implement the music into his sound engine. Rich kept the sheet music for the original composition over the years, and the title on the sheet music is where the title of the song comes from.

Rich holding the original score for the song.

Composition

The song has a 17/16 time signature in one of the first few bars, and a 5/4 time signature in the last bar of the song. According to Rich, this was likely a simple mistake made by Eastridge when he was implementing Rich's music into the game.

The song is plays is mostly atonal, but plays in the keys of G minor and F minor. According to Rich, somehow, the music heard in the game is a perfect fifth higher than what he had originally intended. Nick could have transposed the song to a different key because he liked how it sounded better.

“

I wrote several other pieces that were not used. I looked on my scores but could not find that little two-bar clip that plays later in the game. I found something like it but not quite the same. As you noted, the video music is in a different key than I originally wrote it: up a perfect 5th! I have no idea why.

„