[Shadow Hog]

This is the track "After Burner" as it appears in After Burner II. (Well, it's a little bit higher-pitched and features a still from the Famicom port for some reason, but I seriously can't find a better version on YouTube and it kinda works for my point, so whatever.) It definitely plays in Stages 4, 15 and 16. This is also the version of the song that the Genesis port and the 32X port used.


This is the same track, "After Burner", but suddenly there's a melody, starting around 39 seconds in. I notice it's missing from the VGM rip I have, and I can't say as I've heard the melody in use in the playthroughs I've watched. Nevertheless, it's a very real part of the song, considering the melody was present in the remixes in Bayonetta, Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed and After Burner Climax.

So, where exactly did this melody come from? What version first featured it? Obviously it wasn't the original arcade release... I do notice that the Master System version has it (PSG, FM - forgive that they're in-game, there isn't really a good just-music version of these on YouTube that I could tell) - is that where it originated from?

[Black Squirrel]

Interesting

http://segaretro.org...sic_JP_Box1.jpg

Apparently there were in fact two separate releases of After Burner II (perhaps?). The second is known as "with melody version"... according to the official 20th anniversary soundtrack (and trust me that has plenty of versions to compare things to)

After Burner
After Burner II
After Burner II (with melody)

it affects "Final Take Off" too (this vs. this)... and supposedly "Maximum Power" but the differences there must be pretty small

I believe there's no dumps of the "melody" version... if it even exists.

This post has been edited by Black Squirrel: 14 May 2013 - 01:07 PM

[muteKi]

As an aside, there's also an additional melody line in Final Take Off in the versions with the melody in this song. It follows the SST Band arrangements of the song in that case as well. There's a similar inconsistency in arrangement between the various versions of Burning Point (Thunder Blade's boss music), with basically everything aside from the original arade having a different, longer intro (of course most other versions also use it as level BGM, and not just the boss music, like Super Thunder Blade).

I've long wanted to have someone put in those melodies in the 32X After Burner, since to my knowledge nothing's happening on those PSG channels otherwise.

[Andlabs]

Maximum Power is very different. In fact, go listen to the Hang-On attract music, then After Burner's Maximum Power, then After Burner II's.

But yes as far as we know these melody versions were first released on the OST before finding their way onto the home ports... IIRC the US C64 version has it and I know the PC Engine port has it so I guess devs picked and chose.

IIRC After Burner the song doesn't get a lot of airplay in the game itself due to the way the music playback was changed between After Burner and After Burner II and that the songs are now no longer distributed evenly between the levels; Final Take-Off, however, does get quite a bit of play.

[mentski]

The mystery of the melody versions of the After Burner soundtrack still elude me, too.

It's a well known fact that the songs were rearranged in After Burner II from the original After Burner, but there has never been a known dump of the arcade version with the melody versions intact, despite countless ports playing the melody, and the recording of the arcade version with the melody (from that second video) that can be found in the Saturn port of the game.

Loading the arcade ROMs of ABII in the Hoot music player does show an interesting thing though: The two songs with an additional melody, After Burner and Final Take Off, both have one sound channel unused - which leads me to believe AM2 removed the melodies before final production for unknown reasons.

Quote

There's a similar inconsistency in arrangement between the various versions of Burning Point (Thunder Blade's boss music), with basically everything aside from the original arade having a different, longer intro (of course most other versions also use it as level BGM, and not just the boss music, like Super Thunder Blade).

Interestingly, there's an unused arcade version of the complete arrangement of Burning Point, too:

This post has been edited by mentski: 15 May 2013 - 09:55 AM

[ICEknight]

Odd, I've always thought that melody was just part of the SST Band arrangement, which they decided to include in Bayonetta because it sounded cool. Mind blown. =|

mentski, on 15 May 2013 - 09:40 AM, said:

Loading the arcade ROMs of ABII in the Hoot music player does show an interesting thing though: The two songs with an additional melody, After Burner and Final Take Off, both have one sound channel unused - which leads me to believe AM2 removed the melodies before final production for unknown reasons.

Now that's interesting. The plot thickens...

[mentski]

Additional note: On the Sega Ages version of After Burner on the Saturn, the melody versions of the songs are marked as "Rev.A" in the soundtrack, whilst the versions heard in the final arcade version of After Burner II are marked "Rev.B/Arcade". It also has the arrangements from the original After Burner marked as "AB1"

(To unlock them, I think you have to press the right button 3 times on the options screen, that gives you a second menu with an option called "BGM mode". It's all CDDA though so can obviously be played by other means, too)

This post has been edited by mentski: 15 May 2013 - 12:08 PM

[ThunderPX]

Holy shit, just yesterday I had the random urge to look this theme up and get confused by this exact thing. What mentski says is interesting, though... Perhaps there was some sort of (perceived) rights problem with the melody that didn't get cleared up until a little later? Or the composer just completely dropped the ball and forgot to tell anyone they were still going to add melodies to some of the songs.

[Andlabs]

Since Hiro is a Sega employee I think it's the latter... unless there was a special edition we don't know about.

[ICEknight]

Late reply but, for posterity's sake, CASE SOLVED.

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 16 January 2015 - 07:20 PM

[Xeta]

Dunno if this has been mentioned, but just for the sake of it:

Spoiler

The After Burner theme was reused and made into an epic level theme in Shinobi 3DS. (You know, the one where you're fighting on top of the plane.)



I actually heard this version first and was shocked when I heard the Genesis theme.

Also, I believe "Red Out" was reused for the boss in said level.



Yeah, I was a Shinobi fanatic at one point. =V

[ICEknight]

Xeta, on 16 January 2015 - 08:25 PM, said:

The After Burner theme was reused and made into an epic level theme in Shinobi 3DS. (You know, the one where you're fighting on top of the plane.)

Yeah, I was a Shinobi fanatic at one point. =V

...Maybe you should try the good Shinobi games. =P

[Xeta]

As a matter of fact, I have played that game too - I was also crazy about it! So fun to play on my PSP! (Heck, I timed myself and beat the game in one hour and seven minutes, *WITHOUT* using savestates.) That was a little later on, though.

...I'd bring up the PS2 game, but that would be going too off-topic. Anyway, back to whatever discussion about After Burner's music was going on, I just wanted to bring up something interesting.

[Black Squirrel]

ICEknight, on 16 January 2015 - 07:05 PM, said:

Late reply but, for posterity's sake, CASE SOLVED.

And I think Sega Game Music Vol. 3 After Burner is the album in question.

[mentski]

Black Squirrel, on 17 January 2015 - 09:57 AM, said:

ICEknight, on 16 January 2015 - 07:05 PM, said:

Late reply but, for posterity's sake, CASE SOLVED.

And I think Sega Game Music Vol. 3 After Burner is the album in question.

Actually, although those tracks might have been on that CD, they're specifically referring to re-recording the melody tracks for this boxset:
After Burner 20th Anniversary Box

I find is impressive that they took the original sound data that was until now only playable on a dev kit, and essentially made a sound ROM from is that *should* work on actual arcade hardware.

I wonder if it'd be possible to rip the ROM from the game files and make a custom MAME set?

This post has been edited by mentski: 17 January 2015 - 11:02 AM