-- SOUNDTRACK DETAILS -- *** NOTE *** This document must be kept with the rip if you are offering it for download on an FTP. The following should be with this: (1) Rip Details (this document) (2) Soundtrack ------------------------------------------------------------ T O P D O L L A R P R E S E N T S ------------------------------------------------------------ Title: WING COMMANDER PROPHECY Composers: George Oldziey & Cobalt 60 Status: Complete rip of the in-game music Source: Original .MGI files MP3 quality: VBR, using LAME 3.92 with alt preset extreme Tagged with: MP3/Tag Studio Rip created and mastered by: Top Dollar -- USAGE -- If you would like to host this rip on your website please contact me at my email below BEFORE doing so! This rip took a lot of time and work to complete. -- DISCLAIMER -- This rip was made from the original .MGI files. These source files were saved at a quality of 705 kbps and 22 kHz. This was the best quality I could get without the masters of the composer. To encode them as good mp3s, I had to upsample the source files to 14H and 44 kHz. There should be no quality loss from this, but please understand that this time, I couldn't provide a rip from a CD-quality recording and therefore, any lack of quality you might notice probably results from the facts mentioned above. -- LINER NOTES -- About the music: This is one of those game scores that evoke nostalgic feelings in me. For other people, this might apply to one of the countless Final Fantasy scores or the (awesome) Chrono Cross. But for me (who got into japanese video game score much, much later), this was one of the first games I would have bought the accompanying OST. Some might say: But there WAS an OST for it. Yes, indeed, BUT: The OST featured nothing from the score by Oldziey and only two songs by Cobalt 60 featured in the game. So I skipped this one. Wing Commander has always been an epic and exciting space opera and the scores never made a difference. This especially applies for the Wing Commander games 3, 4 and Prophecy that featured life-action cutscenes with a high production value and famous actors like Mark "Luke Skywalker" Hamill, Tom "Biff" Wilson, Malcom "Alex" McDowell and John "Gimli" Rhys-Davis. It goes without saying that a cinematic experience called for a cinematic music. And George Oldziey delivered. When Chris Roberts left Origin, the Wing Commander saga was ready for a restart. With a new mysterious alien race called the Nephilim replacing the defeated Kilrathi and a rookie replacing veteran Blair as the main character, the overall tone of the saga changed to a dark, mysterious mood. This also affected the score: While 3 and 4 featured epic and heroic scores in the vein of Star Wars, Prophecy's score has a more dark and ominous atmosphere. I suggest listening to "Suspense 2" for a sample of the creepyness that makes this score so special in comparison with the other WC scores. Also noteworthy is the decent use of electronic ambient together with trademark synth orchestra of the WC saga. The music for the simulator missions was provided by the industrial combo Cobalt 60. Although definitely a matter of taste for score purists, no one can deny they provide an adrenaline-pumping, frantic sondtrack for space combat. About the making: First of all: This rip almost wouldn't have happened. Recently, when I got interested in ripping the WCP music, I went the way everyone unaware of GAP would go: seeking the respective game's community for extraction tools. Eventually, I found a DOS tool that extracts files from the .tre files, Origin's container file format. So I extracted the files (one by one, with the occasioal error message) and converted the .mgi files to WAV files with another tool. The Cobalt 60 tracks never were a problem, but the dynamic music engine stored the score in three long files, 10 minutes each which made editing the single tracks a pain in the ass. Ergo, at first my plan was to arrange several small suite mixes out of the files to avoid the editing problems. I already mixed some cool suites with cool names referring to the WCP plot (among my favourites were: Nephilim Advent, Zero G Graveyard and Prelude to Kn'Thrak), but the drawback was that the WAVs were heavily pested with clips and pops so mean I couldn't erase them with CoolEdit or EAC. So if you might be unsatisfied with the current sound quality...it was a lot worse. To make long story short, the rip wasn't considered worthy of the great score and got deleted. Then, my royal dumbness learned of GAP (Game Audio Payer) a great Windows-based extractor/player for the majority of the PC games. This great tool encouraged me to give WCP another try. Then, all went very fast. Also, looping the single tracks into something listenable wasn't as hard as I thought. Simple copy & paste, CoolEdit smoothened the rest. An Envelope here, some fixes there... here is the result. Enjoy! -- TRACK LIST -- 01 - Prophecy 1:58 02 - Galactic Hives 1:48 03 - Ahead 1:55 04 - Tones from the Sphere 1:53 05 - Alien Space Junk 1:54 06 - Quram 1:52 07 - Ashes to Lives 2:10 08 - Colony 328 1:58 09 - Darwin was Right 1:46 10 - Cult of Sivar 1:38 11 - Suspense 1 3:12 12 - Enemy Arrival 0:25 13 - Battle 1 1:36 14 - Ominous 1 1:39 15 - Victory 1 1:53 16 - Suspense 2 3:08 17 - Battle 2 1:28 18 - Mission Failed 2:41 19 - Suspense 3 2:36 20 - Battle 3 1:41 21 - Ominous 2 1:35 22 - Capital Ship Destroyed 0:09 23 - Victory 2 1:57 24 - Battle 4 1:47 25 - Friendly Down 0:09 26 - Suspense 4 4:05 27 - Battle 5 2:03 28 - End Credits 2:00 29 - Bonus Track - Prophecy (by Cobalt 60) 4:07 ---------------------- Total Time: 0:57:09 Track 01 - 10, 29: Composed & Performed by Cobalt 60 Track 11 - 28: Composed by George Oldziey -- CONTACT -- Enjoy this rip? All requests, comments etc to: salaciuscrumb@gmx.net -- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -- Very special thanks goes to Parjay whose RE0 rip inspired me to get into game soundtrack ripping by myself. -- COMING SOON -- Star Wars Rogue Squadron III - Rebel Strike Complete rip -- COPYRIGHT -- All original music (c) George Oldziey, Origin and Electronic Arts. This soundtrack edition (c) 2003 Top Dollar THIS SOUNDTRACK OR TRACKLIST MAY NOT BE ALTERED IN ANY WAY, SOLD OR OFFERED FOR DOWNLOAD WITHOUT WRITTEN (EMAILED) PERMISSION FROM MYSELF (see contact info above). (c) 2003