electric dreams | Through the Shattered Lens

Electric Dreams is a film about a love triangle between a man, his neighbor, and his personal computer.

Miles (Lenny Von Dohlen) is an architect who wants to develop a special brick that can withstand earthquakes. One of his colleagues suggests that he buy something called a — let me check my notes to make sure I got it right — com-put-er. Apparently, computers can do anything! Miles is skeptical but he decides to give it a try.

(In all fairness, this movie came out at a time when there were no iPhones or even laptops and personal computers were viewed as being strange and exotic. )

Miles get his computer and it’s basically one of those boxy computers that used to populate computer labs in high schools across the country. As soon as I saw the computer, I wanted to play Oregon Trail. After the computer overheats and Miles tries to cool it down by pouring champagne on it (!), the computer comes to life. Now voiced by Burt Cort, the computer develops a crush on Mile’s neighbor, a cellist named Madeleine (Virginia Madsen). The computer hears Madeleine playing her cello and composes its own music to play with her. Madeleine hears the music and assumes that Miles must be a great composer. Soon, Miles and Madeleine are falling in love and the computer is getting jealous. The computer composes more more music for Miles but grows angry when Miles doesn’t give the computer any credit. Even though the computer can’t move from the desk and has to be plugged in to work, it still manages to wreck havoc with Miles’s life. When this movie came out, the idea of someone’s entire life being electronically monitored and recorded probably seemed like an out-there idea. Today, that’s just a normal Tuesday for most people.

Electric Dreams is a mix of romance, comedy, and science fiction. The scenes of Miles and Madeleine falling in love are mixed with scenes of the computer basically having a nervous breakdown and conspiring to ruin Miles’s credit and even trap him in his apartment. Electric Dreams is probably the most good-natured film ever made about a computer run amuck. The computer doesn’t mean to hurt anyone, it’s just jealous and feeling neglected. It’s a weird mix but the movie is so dedicated to its premise and Lenny Von Dohlen and Virginia Madsen are so appealing as the romantic leads that it works. Electric Dreams proves that true love can conquer all, even in the Computer Age.

VGM Entry 33: Amiga 500
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

It was around 1988 that European computer gaming really started to make the transition over to the Amiga 500 from the Commodore 64. While the Amiga line had been around since 1985, the Amiga 500 launched in 1987 and was designed to be a much more cost effective, mass consumer-friendly product.

With a change in platform came a change in composers, oddly enough. Rob Hubbard is mentioned in a measly nine game credits on Lemon Amiga, and Martin Galway not at all. Suddenly David Whittaker, a Commodore 64 composer with an expansive library but little fame, ruled the roost. If we consider again a simple Lemon Amiga search result, his name pops up in 86 different Amiga titles. Platoon (Ocean Software, 1988) was not actually originally his, but as a faithful port of Jonathan Dunn’s 1987 C64 original (unless of course the music appeared in the movie itself; I’ve never seen it) it makes apparent the audio improvements the Amiga could offer. Whittaker’s Platoon was not necessarily better than the Jonathan Dunn original if we consider what the two artists had to work with, but he certainly did not squander or misuse the expansive new options that the Amiga 500 brought.

Whittaker’s most famous work would arrive the following year. Shadow of the Beast (Psygnosis, 1989) was a 12 song collection which really helped to solidify what we might think of as the Amiga 500 sound. The old Commodore 64 crew typically failed to carry on their legacies in the Amiga era, true, but most of the composers who replaced them did get their start programming for the C64 and enjoying the works of Hubbard and co. Artists had to be very selective about the styles of music they pursued in the C64, given its limited capacity, and what I think you hear on soundtracks like Shadow of the Beast is a continuation of those styles set to pretty decent instrument samples. This song could easily be translated into a SID piece and retain its original character. The actual C64 conversion sounded bad, as it turned out, but only because Fredrik Segerfalk did a shoddy job of it, not because the music was incompatible.

My favorite Amiga 500 tune by far though is Crystal Hammer (reLINE Software, 1988) by Karsten Obarski. The game itself is a mere Breakout copycat, but Obarski really made it shine. From what I can tell it was one of his only game compositions–Sarcophaser (Rainbow Arts, 1988) is another good one–and the brevity of his works is quite a shame. He made his name known more as a software developer, creating the highly criticized but frequently employed Ultima Soundtracker for the Amiga. Despite having almost no involvement in Commodore 64 composition whatsoever, Obarski’s music sounds just as indebted to Rob Hubbard as the rest of them. This is especially apparent on Sarcophaser, where you can get a feel for how the standard SID sounds and the more original style of Crystal Hammer existed side by side.

Chris Hülsbeck was a bit of an exception to the rule of new names on the new platform. One of his most shining moments was the Amiga 500 port of R-Type (Electric Dreams, 1989). Though Hülsbeck did, to the best of my knowledge, create the loadscreen music to the Commodore 64 version of R-Type as well, he chose two completely different songs. Never fully conforming to the ‘standard’ sound of any system, Hülsbeck was going to forge ahead with his own unique sound, and the product might not be backwards compatible.

That being said, while I have no doubt that Hülsbeck composed the Amiga title screen–it is unmistakably his style–I can’t say with certainty that he actually wrote the C64 one. Ramiro Vaca is additionally credited as a musician on the C64, as is Darius Zendeh on the Amiga, and I am not sure what role either played.