Clearing up some confusion with the Red Alert:Counterstrike/Aftermath soundtrack
I’m going to write another quick note about the music from the Red Alert: Counterstrike and Aftermath add-ons for the PC version of Command and Conquer: Red Alert. As some C&C fans may notice on the soundtrack playlist, all of the song names from Counterstrike sounded quite odd. It was as if it were just mere filenames. Right now, it’s time to settle this once and for all.
Here are the correct track names, confirmed by Frank Klepacki in an e-mail discussion I had with him many years ago:
- 2nd_hand -> The Second Hand
- Chaos_2 -> Chaos
- Vr_2 -> Voice Rhythm 2
- Shut_it -> Shut It
- Backstab -> Back Stab
- Under_3 -> Underlying Thoughts
- Twin_mix -> Twin Cannon Remix
If my memory serves me right, Arazoid did not appeared in the game’s soundtrack playlist and another song, Journey, never appeared in the INI files nor inside the game files. One of the songs from Aftermath, MechMan 2, had another song title named, “Running Through Pipes”.
May 28, 2008 at 5:33 am
Hello and congrats on your diligent fact finding efforts regarding FK’s music in C&C games. I’ve been an avid enthusiast and collector of Klepacki’s music in all of WW’s C&C RTS titles up until YR (i.e., everything including Sole Survivor except for Renegade), as well as all relating information I could find about alternate versions, track names and so on for years myself. I’ve even modded by YR to include a 108 ingame track list of all of those in ADPCM format from the various mix files (as well as 5-6 choise remixes), but that’s a story for another time…
I just wanted to let you know that the track “Backstab” (it was actually just one word) in RA:CS/AM also had the name “Slow Motion”. Also, it’s news to me that RTP of Aftermath was actually supposed to be named MechMan 2, so thanks for that as well.
Keep up the good work.
-Prokopis
P.S.: If you regularly check FK’s jukebox to verify facts about C&C games’ music, you may find it a bit easier to just keep the following file around and do some quick searching in there without having to load the site all the time: http://www.frankklepacki.com/listxml.php. Just be sure to view it in a text editor and not a web browser, otherwise it won’t be as tidy. Hope that helped.
May 28, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Hi Prokopis,
Thank you very much for your comments. Regarding “Slow Motion”, this song title is incorrect and I confirmed it with Frank Klepacki long while ago. Some of the Counterstrike/Aftermath CDDB tracklists are incorrect, so it’s best to ignore them.
June 8, 2008 at 9:14 pm
You forgot the track “Await”. It was actually meant to be used in Red Alert, and the track is present in the game files, but its misnamed (await_r). Because of this, the game can’t see the track, and it never appears.
Counterstrike had the track renamed in the game files, so the tune appeared again. Since it was meant to be a normal RA track, it just popped into the middle of the playlist, instead of appearing at the bottom like the new tracks.