Lately I’ve been playing the Arcade Archives version of Bomb Jack (it’s the focus of this month’s High Score Battle after all) and this version’s music differs from the arcade original. You see, the original game featured music from the animated series Mrs. Pepperpot (or Vrouwtje Theelepel, as it’s known here in The Netherlands) and The Beatles song Lady Madonna, but those tracks were replaced with music from Mighty Bombjack.
This also happened to Frogger. The original version featured music from several anime series (Hana no Ko Lunlun, Rascal the Raccoon, Moero Arthur: Hakuba no Ouji and Heidi, Girl of the Alps), which were all excised from later releases.
Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius on Saturn and Playstation featured a remix of KC and the Sunshine Band’s Thats The Way I Like It on the first stage. For the PSP collection release, it was changed to a remix of DDR’S Brilliant 2 U.
I prefer the original, it just fits the stage motif perfectly.
Rainbow Islands used the well known “Over the Rainbow” song in most of the earlier versions, but this song was removed from later versions as not to infringe copyright.
From Wikipedia:
The original arcade game contained in-game music reminiscent of the song “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz. This song was included in the Japanese Mega Drive, PC Engine CD and Famicom releases of the game, as well at the Ocean Software home Computer ports (Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST). However, in later console versions of the game (Master System, NES, Saturn, PS1, and the Japanese Taito Memories and international Taito Legends collections), aside from part of the chorus, the in-game music was changed so as not to infringe copyright. The hidden eight level of the NES version, as well as the Game Boy Color version, simply use the Bubble Bobble theme music.
Didn’t a lot of Saturn shmups have music that was “enhanced” from the arcade versions? I know Battle Garegga and Layer Section/Galactic Attack/RayForce (that’s a mouthful) were two such games.
I also know Final Fight CD on the Sega CD had all new enhanced audio. Would these count?
My initial idea for this thread was to talk about game music that had to be changed because of copyright infringement or licensing issues, but arranged/enhanced soundtracks are also interesting to discuss!
I think a really big one that’s been ongoing is the older version’s of GTA (III, Vice City, and San Andreas). I actually think the steam versions had music patched out, though I can’t remember. I was disappointed they didn’t spend the money for the original songs on the “Definitive” edition
Not sure if this would count, but Arabian had its music changed when it was released by Atari in arcades in 1983. The Japanese version, released by Sunsoft that year in Japan, used the “Can Can” song and the William Tell Overture, both of which would have entered the public domain long before Arabian ever existed as a game, so I have no idea why Atari felt the need to change the tracks outside Japan, but they did.
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD inexplicably removed most of the original music, despite the composer (Hideki Naganuma) having previously worked at Sega.
The North American version of Disgaea seemed to add some American licensed music to the game.
House of the Dead HD is one that really annoys me. The new music while trying to sound like the original just isn’t as good which really brings the game down a few notchs for me.
The original House of the Dead soundtrack is Awsome.