♫POLICE QUEST 2 (Introduction Theme) SNES Arrangement - NintendoComplete
67This is my arrangement of the introduction theme from Sierra On-line's 1988 PC adventure game Police Quest 2: The Vengeance, originally composed by Mark Seibert. It has been arranged for native playback on SNES hardware. The audio was recorded directly from a launch-model SNES deck.
Man, it sure is hard to put into words how much I loved Sierra games when I was a kid. King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Quest for Glory, Leisure Suit Larry... so many excellent series!
One of the real treats of playing a new Sierra game was starting it up for the first time and being wowed by the graphics and sound. Sierra always impressed, and Police Quest 2 was no exception. For 1988, this was amazing.
What made it really special was the music - if you had access to the absurdly expensive Roland MT-32 MIDI module, that is. The Adlib soundtrack was pretty naff (and sounded like a poorly made conversion of the MT-32 music), but damn! To hear that introduction, at near-CD quality, playing on a game that played directly from a 5.25" floppy was mind-melting. Of course, it should have been considering that the module cost about $500 at the time.
But anyways, this is one of my favorites of Mark Seibert's works. It sounds like a dramatic 80s cop show theme (and funnily enough, they actually got Jan Hammer, the guy who did the music for Miami Vice, to score PQ3!) and it's wicked catchy.
I based this SNES version off of the MT-32 version of the soundtrack, which was no small feat considering how many channels the original track used, but I managed to cram a good 98% of the original tune into the SNES's cramped 8-channel, starved-for-memory setup.
And if the video looks a bit different from what you're used to seeing if you've played PQ2 before, that's because I didn't record it from the standard US Dos release. This was recorded from the Japanese PC98 port, which was very similar, but added Japanese subtitles and made the main characters look like anime heroes. Strange, huh?
You can see my playthrough of this version here if you like:
https://youtu.be/w4RwlqaFq4M
Hope you enjoy it!
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
Visit for the latest updates!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/NintendoComplete/540091756006560
https://twitter.com/nes_complete