Midnight Club 2's Soundtrack Under The Loop

Hey guys, I decided to make a new post! :)

I got my cup of noodles and i'm ready to type, haha.

Let's get the story going.. I thought of a new post regarding MC2 again.

Let me ask you this again.. What really is the actual reason why you continued to play the game?

Now you might be wondering that can be alot of things, like for example:

The gameplay, or either the difficulty or perhaps the graphics?

Well for me it was something different entirely... It was the music.

When we look at the MC2 intro it was very clear to me when I first launched the game that it was something special..

Yes people this will be an active post. You'll have to watch every video I put here, hehe. :)

Regardless, when's truly the last time you've actually seen an intro of a game that's so well polished. The only thing that saddens me is that this was basically the beta version gameplay of the game of early 2002. As you can see which some cars in the game actually currently still have are the paintjobs. For example if we look at the end result that the Saikou and the Torque JX and the Citi Turbo actually still have paintjobs. It's kind of a shame that they didn't add these capabilities of customization. But the music in this intro was so powerful for me at the time. It's crazy! I'm possibly still one of the only guys who actually still has the orginal .bik file for the game on the PC. Hell in the past I even found out how to convert a video to .bik and I made my own MC2 intro. I think this is still possible.. Hmm I might do that one day. Noted. xD

Anyway moving on. When I used to ask people in the past what continued to make them play the game the answer was simple. People played the game more because of the music. Every song in the game has something special going on.

The fact was there was an orginal theme going on for the game the first time you actually do a race in the game versus Moses. I can already hear soundchips of Moses talking like i'm a little shrimp again when listening to this song again. It really feels great and you had an idea of what you were getting into the first time you drive in the game. But the most unique thing about the game is that the game actually has 2 main theme's.

Blu Warta's Midnight Club II Theme.

Which is also really great because as I got older and studied the lyrics alot more you can actually hear him talking about in-game features like for example talking about CTF with the lyric: "For the last chequered flag drop, and it wont stop" And in the 2nd verse he talks about going to New York, London, Tokyo. All references to the first Midnight Club and the 2nd together. I guess Rockstar thought both songs were amazing so they decided to actually have two MC2 themes in the game.. How incredibly rare was that?

The most amazing thing is how the songs weren't plucked out as random or what was the rage at the time. It was carefully designed and picked for every stage in the game. Like in L.A, it was primarily Rap and House influenced music.

And in Paris it was mainly Techno and Deep house and in Tokyo it was mainly Hard Trance and Acid Trance with some Ambient on the side.

Overall of all the 38 songs in the game the game had so much to offer. The way the sound cut into the race or how the songs we're placed made them all so dynamic. And of course the crazier the songs you heard the harder the opponent. In my honest opinion it made the game feel so much more alive. The constant taunting of the opponents would made you want to smash your keyboard or throw away your controller but once you've beaten them and finally listened to their song and driving their car it would feel like a life accomplishment. It's kinda funny because in all the Midnight Clubs the difficulty really stayed the same. It's not easy to win and it does grant the ones with the knowledge of the physics of every MC game.

But upon discovery I actually did what other people probably have never tried.. I tried to extract out the streams.dat instead of the assets_p.dat

I scrolled over the folders and found out something interesting.. Did you know that the Thomas Bangalter songs is actually the real life name of Daft Punk? Yes, I shit you not. Daft Punk was actually featured in the game.

Yes this song you always heard on your removed streams_pc.dat file is Daft Punk.

And when we actually listen to the song and compare it to other songs of Daft Punk you can totally see the similarities. It's funny because I suggest anyone right now to just extract the files from your streams_pc.dat. You can find out the soundclips and even unused song files.. For example multiple drivers in the game had actually sound clips of them driving a bike.. So for example Zen possibly could be someone driving the Saikou XS for example instead of just the Nousagi.

It's all very interesting, but when I actually was like 'hmmm.. I want to know more about this' So, what I did was finish up browsing through the folders but go on discogs.com instead. Now looking up some names like for example: Bipath.

I found out the the author of this pseunonym is actually Satoshi Tomiie which is actually a famous underground House DJ from the 1980s at the time and he made this song specificly for the game. Alot of more of these underground people were featured in the game under pseunonym's. So I got more interested and started to find out even more. So, then I went to look for more artists that I never seen before like Antenna, which is a duo from America which they actually misspelled in the game. 

As Round about Midnight which should be written 'Midnite'. (Because that's how the song is released as) These small details as changing the name to Midnight to comply with the game's ''Midnight'' Club. Like they actually did with the title of the game in honor of the orginal 'Mid Nite Club'. These are all these small details that they put in the game. It's truly fantastic who worked at the sound engineering or atleast the producing of the game's sound management at the time. I could go on with even one more. Let's actually go to my favorite song from the game of all time: Jack Henderson - Syntrax.

Hold on, I just finished my cup of noodles.. It's really good with shrimp. I thought it was a nice touch starting the post with Moses and eating this :D

So here it is. In my opinion the best song in the game. The whole intro the hard bass with the epic breakdown to the drop of the song. The snares in the middle of the song with the slow kicking beat. Yes. It's perfect. And then you have the drop at 3:00 mins and then you see the tokyo lights driving fast in your car. Yeah I honestly think it's one of the best songs in the game and probably this is the song that got me into Hard Trance in the first place. But let's actually stop the BS and make sure you have your information. 

So what I did was actually look up his name because I never actually seen the name 'Jack Henderson' after this game itself. Well I went on wikipedia first and found out it's not a real person. It's some kind of saxophonist or whatever. So I was like 'What the fuck is this?' But then when I went on discogs.com I actually had the same thing. This wasn't a problem because what I did was misspell the name to ''hAnderson''. That actually worked and it gave me 2 songs. Syntrax was there. What strikes me the most of all is that all songs in MC2 are considered rare. All of them. Every artist is under a pseunonym and/or has a misspelled name to make it harder. They are either incredibly hard to find or incredibly unknown. So you basically had the best of the best because it was all underground music.

But to get back to the subject of Jack Henderson, it's basically a pseunonym of 2 guys: Klaus Hänsel, Martin Kaiser. Now at first you're probably thinking who the fuck are they? Well I would say you're right but also not right. because Klaus Hansel is actually the name of a guy you might know as Eric Del Mar. And if that still doesn't ring a bell. Martin's name would be Ray Clarke. If those names dont ring a bell, i'll help you.. You know the Brain 26, 54, 2872, 213798123798? They are all from the same label, and the same guys. How mindblowing is that? So alot of the names that are the Hard Trance or Acid Trance you know are all related. It's really crazy how everyone had a different name while all being part of the same label in Tokyo. So meaning that almost 90% of all the songs of Tokyo are all from the same music label. 

Is your mind blown yet? Mine was.

To finish up the post let me ask you this? What was your reason to continue to play the game? And if it was the music? What's your favorite song from the game?

- Unique.


Let's finish the post with the song that everyone feared/hated/loved. Enjoy.

It tasted good! :)