I was thinking about a lostlevels topic (hi smeg) which was about unused music in games, and I realized I'm interested in a tangent topic: entire scores which weren't used, whether due to a lack of the game being released or other reasons.

so....let's trivia time!

Thunder Force VI is the most immediately obvious example - an album was released containing the music, but the game went into vaporware hell for a while, and when it was finally recently made, it had a completely different soundtrack (right?). The music was used in an obscure doujin game with some of the Thunder Force team working on/condoning it, but that game is generally quite poorly regarded (right again?).

A case where both the game and the score seem to be missing: Ultima X: Odyssey. The ill-fated follow-up to Ultima Online was going to feature orchestral music composed by Chris Field and performed by The Northwest Sinfonia (who you may have heard of). The music, I believe, was actually all composed...but after that, it's a little weird.

You see, there's some samples out there on the net (you can download the ones I've been able to collect here (10mb). Although I'm not the biggest fan of orchestral music in games, I rather like these (especially the city theme and "gothic combat"), even if they don't fit the Ultima name at all. Note how three songs have track numbers? Those and the song names led me to this - a tracklist for an album which, as far as I can tell, never actually existed or was announced at any point!

There's like three total sites on the internet (including that one) which indicate this album exists, and all of them are obscure, non-notable music info aggregators you've likely never heard of. I've tried emailing Field about this, but got no reply, and I'm kind of at a loss where to look up more info. I suppose I could drill the Ultima community, but I don't know where to begin. Another day, maybe. I imagine EA is still holding on to the music for future usage...

(there's actually a short video about the music of the game, although it's basically fluff)

Finally, the generally unnoticed PSP After Burner game (After Burner: Black Falcon, by Planet Moon Studios of all people...) features music by the band Trans Am - replacing an original score. As this topic details, this switch came about through the intervention of the lead art designer (on behalf of the entire team, apparently). While I suppose I shouldn't second-guess the developers, I can't help but wince when I read something like this:

Well, whatever.

Know anything like this? Share!

I remember talking to Jeremy Soule about his scores for Sovereign and The Awakening, both of which he completed.  It's too bad the game's weren't released.  He actually feels his career took a hit because they were big titles that he spent a lot of time on and didn't get exposure from.  Who knows, maybe someday he'll get permission to release them on DirectSong or something.

I guess of note are the "Unreleased Songs" from both Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy Tactics.  I've always been fascinated by both sets.  Perhaps we could do an interview with Basiscape about that music sometime in the future.

Thunder Force VI is the only one I had been aware of. Well, I'm not sure if this qualifies, but much of the music in games is compressed. So one could argue that we rarely hear what it actually sounds like. I first noticed (and heard of) this phenomenon when Turok 2 came out for the N64. The soundtrack released on CD does sound markedly improved over the in-game audio, although it was not marketed as being different. I made the connection independently, when I read a review about Turok 2 and the game developers said they had to compress the music to make it fit on the N64 cartridge. So it seemed reasonable to conclude that the music on the CD was what they made prior to compression. This is even more apparent now, and popular, with Nintendo DS soundtracks. Was this happening with the NES and SNES, this compression of audio data? I don't know. But it certainly happened with the N64 and does happen with the DS.

Fascinating topic.  I hadn't heard the story about Ultima X, so I'm really looking forward to checking out the tracks you uploaded -- thanks!  I can think of a few things along the same lines, like the tragically canceled Sam & Max: Freelance Police.  I know Mark Griskey (KOTOR II) had already written at least some of the music, and I think I remember hearing that some of the tracks were floating around the 'Net afterwards, although I'm not sure.  Then there's the Dirty Harry game that seems to have dropped off the face of the earth after the publisher fired the developer working on the license.  Lennie Moore (Outcast) even recorded an orchestra for it, but I don't think any of that music ever got released.  And most recently is Tiberium that just got canceled but had music written by Christopher Lennertz & Tim Wynn (Warhawk, The Simpsons Game).  Super disappointing ends to all of those, really -- they sounded really promising, and I was pretty excited about them myself.  I wonder what happens to the music…does it all just get crated up in a warehouse like Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Richard Jacques score for EIGHT DAYS was going to be EPIC but alas the game was officially cancelled by Sony earlier this year.

Surprised no one's mentioned Castlevania Resurrection yet, the canceled CV-game for the Dreamcast. There was a rip of 9 tracks floating around a few years back, but for some reason the Castlevania Dungeon removed them from their site. Anyone know why? I thought it might be because they discovered they were fake or something, but I haven't heard anything about it. When I listen to the tracks, I really wish this game hadn't been canceled, some of them, like "Have Mercy" and "By the Whip", are very good and give the impression that the Resurrection soundtrack would have been a unique and worthwhile addition to the series canon. If anyone's interested in hearing them, I could upload them.

There's plenty of music from Sonic X-Treme.

From the news page:

I downloaded the tracks you mention years ago, but I thought there were more than nine?

That's referring to the Order of Ecclesia sample CD, if you browse the rest of the soundtrack-section, all of the other CDs are still available for download. Kind of funny that Konami only had a problem with a 5-track sampler CD and not with the Dungeon hosting virtually every other CV CD in existence. Just goes to show that they don't really give a shit about people downloading their music as long as its not from a newly released game.

The Resurrection tracks were taken down a long time ago, and apparently they've been taken down several times, see here. Can anyone explain this mystery? Is Kurt still around at this forum?

Yeah, there was a lot of short incident music as well. I was referring to the longer, more stage-like themes.

Didn't some of Star Fox 2's Music get released due to a beta version being avalaible on emulator?

There's an SPC rip from the ROM.

There is also a game rip for the Mega Man X8 demo that was taken from the PS2 version of Mega Man X Command Mission. There are some differences and varations that where dropped from the final version. For those who enjoyed "Primrose" I'd suggest checking it out.

Also, X5 in the Rockman X1~6 box had a few extras that were thrown in; I thought "Armageddon" was pretty cool.

Soule actually did release some of his work for the game via MP3.com some time back. Combined with two tracks that were released as part of the game's promotion and an interview with Soule narrating a piece of music, there are about 27 minutes of the music floating around here and there.

A few that I'm aware of:
-Chris Franke, formerly of Tangerine Dream, scored a never-released Babylon 5 game. Apparently there's a promo disc out there, as one of the battle themes made it into Song of the Week.

-The original Fallout 3, which was canceled, nevertheless had a tech demo put out with a full score which has been ripped. Unfortunately, the music is pure garbage.

-There was a Chinese or Taiwanese game that Hiroki Kikuta was helping to develop. Despite going into a beta, it was never released and his music has never surfaced (can't for the life of me remember the name though).

-Jazz Jackrabbit 3 also made it to the tech demo stage before cancellation. A good assortment of Alexander Brandon tracks from the game are available in their raw IT format.

Did the Biohazard 1.5 music ever get leaked somehow?  I remember the track from the Playstation underground video and I always thought the song sampled was awesome. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enM1ylXRuYM

Grr, it looks so much cooler than the finished product.  I can't believe they scrapped it.

Good topic Dais. I hadn't known about the Ultima X music. Very cool.

I really liked the unused "Deep Sea" tune. The one they used, an arrange of X2's Bubble Crab, was better suited for nostalgic purpose but it would've been nice to have used the later "unused" one in a "part II" of the level.