Awesome Music / Matt Furniss

• Although Matt Furniss composed music for a lot of consoles and home computers, perhaps his greatest and best-known work can be found on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. To wit:
  • No doubt you're familiar with the tunes of the Mega Drive version of Mortal Kombat (1992) (y'know, the one that actually had blood and fatalities). The original arcade game's music was by Dan Forden, but the Sega port's music was arranged by Matt Furniss. And it is awesome— in some cases, even more so than the arcade version.
  • Chuck Rock (originally composed by Martin Iveson, but arranged for Mega Drive by Furniss) was catchy enough with its music. Its sequel upped the ante with even catchier music in some levels.
  • The Mega Drive version of Zool, with music coded by Furniss, generally stuck pretty close to Patrick Phelan's original Amiga soundtrack, with one exception: the "green" level, which goes off in a completely different direction.
  • Mickey Mania was a prime example of Surprise Difficulty. Thankfully, its soundtrack makes up for it.
  • His partly arranged, partly original soundtrack for Lemmings 2 for the Sega Genesis also deserves mention - for example, the Circus Tribe's upbeat remix of "Sobre las Olas", the Shadow Tribe's sneaky jazz beat, the Egyptian Tribe's frantic, silly theme, or the Highland tribe's poppy take on "Scotland the Brave".
  • Wiz & Liz. Just... the entire soundtrack. He makes a Name Entry song awesome.
  • Puggsy. Again, it's hard to choose a favorite track, but try the beach,castle, water, cove, lighthouse, and redwoods levels just for starters.
  • Pitfall The Mayan Adventure. Sure, the CD-ROM version naturally had the best soundtrack, but the Mega Drive version holds its own pretty well, with a few significantly different tunes in typical Furniss fashion. And the percussion... oh, the percussion!
  • Legend of Galahad. Isn't this title theme just epic?. Granted, that's not fully Matt Furniss' doing; it's a pretty straight cover of Matt Simmonds's theme from the Amiga version, Leander, but porting a tune like that to Mega Drive is itself an accomplishment! And the rest of the soundtrack, as found in the related videos, is just as good.
  • Wolfchild. Again, hard to pick one track. (Have I mentioned that Matt Furniss is consistently good with his tunes?)
  • And last, but absolutely not least: Alien 3.
• Of course, Furniss' work wasn't limited to the Mega Drive. He also did the music for a first-party Nintendo title— namely, Excitebike 64. In particular, check out the Kyoto and Dallas themes.

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