Marten has amazingly kept a post from over a decade ago regarding the music links below. I've now added all five tracks in addition to the Main Title Theme I originally shared. Thank you so very much, Marten!
In the spring of 1998, my wife and I were asked by Sierra's music and
writing staff to critique a new soundtrack and a new story line. You've
probably heard of Sierra's infamous "Un-named Game"? We were given a CD of
the music written for the "Unnamed Game", as composed by Gary Spinrad --
the man responsible for the soundtrack of "Phantasmagoria 2". Cindy
Vanous, who had written two preliminary scripts for the game, gave us a
copy to read so we'd better understand the music -- and so we could give
her some feedback on the plot.
Actually, the 'un-named game' has had several names....
The first working title was "Ascension", but was soon dropped when Origin
Software released a game of the same name. It was then changed to "Athyr"
(which is when I became involved in the game.) Unfortunately, because of
some less-than-above-board-politics at Sierra, Cindy's first script was
canned. Things became a bit heated and Cindy ended up quitting Sierra.
She later returned -- sort of on a 'consulting' basis -- and she wrote
another script. The game title was changed again as well, to "Raven's
War." Once again, things became very nasty (as she puts it) and Cindy hit
the road.
At this point, the whole project has more or less been scrapted. Cindy
says it's now "dead". I have a couple of screen shots (well, 'pictures'
anyway, since it wasn't on the screen yet) from the game which look similar
to QFG5, though a bit more primitive. In the very rare event this project
is picked up at some later date, I'm under a non-disclosure agreement so I
can't discuss any of this publicly. But now, because this probably WON'T
happen, I thought it would be alright to share one of the songs from this
game with a couple of people.
I've encoded a MP3 of one of the CDA tracks Gary created and sent me. This
is the ORIGINAL version of the Un-named Game Introduction (Athyr). The
music was later changed a bit, but I like this version much better. After
hearing quite a bit of Gary's non-published music, I realized this guy must
have studied a bit of Scottish music theory during his musical training.
You hear it in a lot of his songs. When I was asked to critique the game,
my first comment was that the story must be set in Scotland, based on the
music. I was later told that's why Gary changed the music, trying to weave
out the 'Scottish' feel, since it had nothing to do with Scotland.
I think you're really going to enjoy this music; it's a real shame it will probably never be heard except by very few people. There's only five tracks that were written for the game before it went belly-up. By the way, NONE of the instruments you'll
hear are real - it's a combination of various MIDI synths, including the Sound Canvas. I had a list of the synths used, but I can't find it at the moment.
Sierra FanfareAthyr Title ThemeMountain SceneThe SwampThe Forest
