It’s been awhile since I last checked in with Lance Boyle and his cohorts at ZOOM but they’ve been surprisingly busy on the music front. For those who don’t remember the name, Lance was the star of the niche 90’s FMV combat racing series Megarace, and ZOOM has been working on a reboot for the last few years.
The original game from 1993 was a unique mix of pre-rendered backgrounds and score-based combat racing. Accompanying the CG raceways was full-motion video of Lance Boyle, the sleazy emcee who chides and goads players for their performance. While I remember the game being moderately well received it was the music that stuck with a lot of folks.
Created by French composer Stéphane Picq (KGB, Dune), the music isn’t what you’d expect from the melange of cheesy FMV and futuristic cyber sports but it is quite enjoyable in and out of the game. Grungy and thumping, its melodies are belted out by scratchy synths but there’s always a softness to the MIDI backup that keeps it from grating. Over this past Summer and Fall, ZOOM has cleaned up, re-recorded and rocked out the music of Megarace for three different albums releases.
In July they released Megarace Reboot Soundtrack: The Max Petrosky Sessions, a totally updated rearrangement of the original game’s 6-track soundtrack (iTunes, Google, Amazon, CDBaby). While working on new music for the upcoming Megarace Reboot, Stéphane released an album in August with first-ever stereo remasters of the original soundtrack (iTunes, Google, Amazon, CDBaby). It doesn’t sound like much at first but hearing the new and old tracks (from the 2009 GOG.com release) back to back was really a treat.
Finally, after a YouTube teaser earlier in the year, ZOOM released Megarace Reboot Soundtrack: The Steve Crane Sessions, Newsan on September 29th featuring multi-instrumentalist Steve Crane (iTunes, Google, Amazon, CDBaby). The album features a studio recording of Crane’s completely rocked out version of “Newsan”, Megarace’s most familiar track. The rest of the album contains individual tracks for each instrument.
I’d love to see an update on Megarace Reboot itself but these album releases are a sign that things are coming along and sounding better than ever. If all of this has you intrigued about what Megarace looked and played like, have a look at my video of the GOG version from a few years ago.
