Romeo Knight - Ballblazer (feat. Beastie Boys)
Russell Lieblich - Ballblazer (original SID tune)

I swear I'd never post a track featuring the Beastie Boys aside from this context. Perhaps one could make a difficult and intensely geeky argument about digging through SID files on a Commodore 64 or c64 emulator being comparable to digging through crates of records, but I certainly wouldn't qualify c64 remixing as ‘hiphop.’ So, with that said, this remix was too irresistable not to post.

Romeo Knight (Eike Steffen) has been composing chip music since 1987 and recently his “Speedball” remix was voted Remix of the Year: 2005 over at Remix64. [In a tie with Makke's Artura(Dublin Delight Mix)]

This posted remix is based on Ballblazer, one of the first games from Lucasfilms’ newly formed Games Division. It was released on the Atari 5200, 7800 and the Commodore 64. Essentially an easily played soccer-type game, Ballblazer is set in 3097 and each player manuevers a Rotofoil hovercraft over a large, green checkerboard field. The object being to grab the Plasmorb (basically, the ball) and get into position to force it into the opposing player's goal.

The original Ballblazer score was composed by Russell Lieblich, who also worked on ‘classics’ like Web Dimension and Master of the Lamps. He graduated with a Master’s in Music from UC San Diego after doing under-grad work in physics. (Seems appropriate, right?) Lieblich produced music for Intellivision and Activision while performing live jazz shows at night. He died in January 2005 in Long Island, New York at 53.

Ballblazer Remix available at Remix.Kwed.Org. Orginial SID tune available from The High Voltage SID Collection.