"BGM" from Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1990)
Composer: Tim Follin
Album: No Official Release
Developer: Software Creations
I can't pinpoint what it was that made me decide upon "BGM" from Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos (S:TQftSoD) this morning. It must have been some conglomeration of video game songs that. It might ahve been some combination of music that was playing from Super Meat Boy, and Little Nemo - The Dream Master that for whatever reason made me immediately recall this odd treasure of a game and the music. When I thought of this game, I first thought that the music I would immediately recognize was going to be the opening title music, but what it turned out to be was the background music.
Also, I decided to keep the "BGM" (for "BackGround Music") as the title because there was no official soundtrack release and I was unable to locate an official title for the song. Hell, even what is now known as the Super Mario Bros. theme was originally titled "Above Ground BGM." I guess you could thank Satoe Terashima and Kinuyo Yamashita for setting the high standard back in 1986 for coming up with titles like "Wicked Child" and "Poison Mind." Anyway, moving on.
What immediately stands out to me is the "dinging" noise that opens the song that is very reminiscent of someone tapping on the side of a bottle or vial that may or may not be holding some type of magical elixir. The other two things are, that this is a roughly two minute song, which may not sound like a long song, but for a song on the NES, it is a long song, playing until around 1:52 before it starts to loop. This is probably due to the fact that the rest of the soundtrack consists of five short, less than 30 second songs, and two longer songs ("Title" and "Ending") which run 2:47 and 1:20 respectively. The other thing that I am blown away by this song are the number of digital instruments used in this one song. Composer Tim Follin talks a little bit about the music in Solstice in a documentary from 1990, which is pretty crazy when you look at his method for creating the piece of music here.
And you know, even though I was never able to get very far in Solstice, I do have fond memories of playing this game with one of my friends in elementary school (let's call him RedDeth), as well as panicking when I temporarily lost the password that was essentially the Konami Code. Either way, I hope you at least find this 27 year old bit of Nintendo music as entertaining as I at least find it to be.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
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