The Guardian newspaper has recently been running a fascinating series of booklets on the First World War, and recommended a site called firstworldwar.com.  Checking them out they have a great range of vintage recordings, by famous names such as (more…)

Here’s a fabulous resource for anyone who’s interested in mini and micro computers (such as Multics, PDP-11s, VAXs and so on) - the site Bitsavers has a huge repository of documents (scanned as PDFs) as well as software for mini and microcomputers from the 1950s to the 1980s.

More Ernie Pike has come to light in my never-ending quest to fill my life with sentimental Edwardian-era music.

Actually, this is possibly of interest to scholars, this time, as it’s one of the earliest recordings of The Mikado, from 1906.  The notorious stage piracy of the time (and I don’t mean The Pirates Of Penzance) meant that G&S were very careful with their productions, sometimes opening both British and American productions on the same night to stop rival companies opening on the same day.  Richard D’Oyly Carte, the organiser of their opera company, was keenly aware of this, and refused to release the scores for these recordings, so the orchestral arrangements are somewhat different to the D’Oyly Carte productions, and therefore are deprecated by scholars.  Which is a shame, but it’s glorious to hear Pike (even if only as one of the chorus) with frequent collaborator Peter Dawson, singing something you still see performed today.  (By the way, don’t be fooled that only one of the titles is linked - click on the gramophone horns).

And there’s more - the Internet Archive has added two Herbert Payne recordings from 1907 - In My Aeroplane For Two and Rowing To Hampton Court.  I’ll update my virtual Pike library with these as well..

You could, I suppose, download the entire High Voltage Sid Collection, SidPlay for Windows (or MacOS, or the WinAmp plugin) and  listen to everything and decide your own.  Or you can follow my idiosyncratic, biased and - at times - insultingly abusive list to find your favourites.  (Disclaimer: other ratings lists, such as the HSVC Top 100 or  Best Of Various, are available.)

OK, so here we go…

37,981,378. Ghost Chimes by Uzzy
Undoubtedly the best thing I’ve ever written.  It’s pants.  Don’t listen.  But that’s the obligatory blogger’s self promotional link taken care of…

10.  Future Knight by Ben Daglish
A pedestrian, sleep-walky game with a title tune that, sadly, didn’t play during the game.  Just listen to the music; you’re not missing much.

9. Phantoms Of The Asteroid by Rob Hubbard
Hull’s favourite son (well, apart from William Wilberforce, maybe) wrote this lovely set of choonz for a Mastertronic £1.99 game of the same name.  Interestingly, they’re all in 4/4 and have an obvious break every 256 frames.  Nice…

8. Rasterscan by Jason C Brooke
JCB’s first appearance in this top ten.  Rasterscan was an obscure budget game, which featured no enemies to speak of, only obstruse and arcane puzzles that were a pain to solve, a control method that was more fiendish to master than Wizball and a gameplan that was no good if your were even remotely colourblind.  That said, I started playing to listen to the soundtrack.  Then I got into it and it was one of those games where entire hours go by and suddenly…  it’s three in the morning.  But if I could only just solve those other two puzzles…

7. Morpheus by Steve Turner
Probably the worst game complete sequence of all time (about four seconds), plus a game that - as Braybrook said in his “Mental Procreation” column in Zzap! - has a spaceship that shoots toothpaste.  Never mind, it was good fun cracking the protection with my Expert Cartridge.

6. Snowball Sunday by Lou Gray
Who was Lou Gray?  Why was the only thing he ever wrote released on a demo on Compunet? How come that one is over 37 million places better than the best thing I ever wrote?  Inquiring minds want to know.  Incidentally, Snowball Sunday is quite seasonal, so enjoy…

5. Melt Your Brain by Oliver Klee
Released at a demo party, MYB uses three IRQs (or was it four?).  If you don’t know what that means, just ignore it and enjoy.  I had a “whose stereo an play loudest” competition, playing this tune, and ruined my speakers.  True story.

4.  Wizball by Martin Galway
Number one on many people’s lists, this must have been one of the first multiplayer games of all time.  I hit 999,999 with two different friends playing “cat” to my wizard, and I managed 999,640 on my own - on a black and white TV, which is even more remarkable bearing in mind how colour-oriented this game is.  But just listen to the high score music and you don’t want to play again.  Which is a shame, because it’s a really playable game…

3. Kentilla by Rob Hubbard
A strange text adventure that I never got the hang of.  But then, with quarter of an hour of the best almost computer music anyone ever made on any platform, ever, why worry?  It did include a section that sounded like a homeless person wheezing on his last cigarette before begging change from some callous bloke in a suit who will undoubtedly express his opinion that the other person should gain employment at the earliest possible opportunity.  But given the limits of the SID chip, you’re talking genius level here.  Actually, even without those limits you’re still talking genius.

2. Krakout by Ben Daglish
Good game.  Perhaps not as good as Arkanoid.  But better music.  Don’t get me wrong.  Arkanoid is about 11.  Or 12.  Perhaps 13.  But Krakout…  I find myself returning to this one over and over again.  It has two or three good tunes in there, really cracking (or should that be kraking?) good choonz.  Anyway, this is my list.  Don’t like it?  Write your own list then.  I’m not going to tell you what my favourite is if you’re going to be like that.

I’m not.

Oh, all right then…

1. Pi R Squared by Jason C Brooke
The game involved picking up formulas from a bunch of spinning circles.  You could slow yourself down or speed yourself up, or choose to change to another circle, but that was about it.  Zzap! 64 rated PR2 about 40% I think.  Much underrated.

The only complaint I ever had was that the levels were too short.  About three minutes for the level, but seven or eight for the music.  Even more annoyingly, the tune played on the title screen was only about the first twenty seconds of the main tune, which rapidly becomes annoying.  So not only do you have to play the game to hear the beautiful music, the title screen will put you off it forever if you don’t start playing pretty quickly.

But is it the best piece of music for the C=64 ever written?

Well, in my opinion, yes.  However, this is a list of “my favourite”, not “the best”.  So in true cop out fashion, I’m afraid you can’t disagree with me, because it’s my favourites.  Of course, you can come up with your favourites and post them on your blog and say they are “the best”, but that won’t make them my favourites, no matter how much you want them to be.   Because these may not be “the best”, of course, they’re just…  well, you got it.  Sleep well.