Babylon 5 Game Music

[Crash]

Now this may be a topic that's close to Andy's heart ...
A while ago, I came across 5x 10-12 minute videos on YouTube with all the music from the cancelled 1998 Sierra game; Babylon 5:Into the Fire.

Now, of course, this 50+ minutes of music, along with the user that uploaded it all, has disappeared from YouTube altogether and the only thing we have left is this 32 minute video, which has quite a few bits repeated, and the arrangements of the tracks aren't quite as good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hAtD3zqJMU

A copy of the #4 video, which was uploaded by someone else, is still available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR8fgMPKMXM


So I had a look around to try and find out where those original 10 minute files originated.
I went on some Bab5 Facebook groups but nobody could help.


Babylon 5 Wiki
I was hard at work today, like I always am, and I went and had a look at the Babylon 5 Wiki and found something interesting:
https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Babylo ... ire_(Game)
"Christopher Franke composed and recorded new music for the game, and live action footage was filmed with the primary actors from the series.[3]
Some of Franke's music for the game was included on a separate disc that came with "The Official Guide to Babylon 5 (CD ROM)", also published by Sierra."

On the page for this Official Guide, we get the following, which sounds very promising:
https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/The_Of ... 5_(CD_ROM)
"features hundreds of photos and dozens of Quicktime video clips and sound file from the Babylon 5 TV Series."


I'm gonna try and get a hold of this Official Guide and see what's on those discs in relation to the game music ...

[Crash]

Bit of an update …

Best of Babylon 5 Soundtrack CD
I found that the Soundtrack CD that comes with Official Guide software is none other than this; The Best of Babylon 5:
http://sonicimages.com/Sub/SIR/b5/besto ... 31002.html

There are apparently two subtly different versions; the 1997 one that comes with the official guide and the 2001 version that was sold separately.
This Amazon review sets out the differences:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-re ... B00005NVYJ
In any case, all you're going to get from that disc is the main theme for the game and that's it.


First Ones Forum - Limited-Run CD
I found on the First Ones forum that there was a CD, with only 5 copies made, that had the extended, 10 minute tracks from the Into the Fire game, that I'm looking for but all the download links have long-since dried up:
http://www.firstones.net/forums/index.p ... m-music-cd

I went to their IRC chat and got nowhere, so I've registered for an account, and we'll see if they approve it.


The Music of Babylon 5 - Shortened Tracks
I did already find the following site that has the shortened versions of the battle themes / soundtrack to Into the Fire, but that's not precisely what I was looking for:
https://musicofbabylon5.com/miscellaneous/
Of course, the author of the site made it so that you can only contact him over twitter (which I have no interest in doing) as opposed to email or any other way.

I'll put on here how I get on ...

[Crash]

First Ones Forum
Well, I had limited success on the First Ones forum.
I asked on their IRC chat whether anyone knew where to get a hold of this music and pointed them to the thread where it'd been discussed.
All I got back was "that's an old thread" and that was it.

So I assumed that I'd caught them at an off-time and I registered for a forum account.
Now, even after you verify your email address, it has to be approved by a human admin.
So I registered for the account on Saturday and it's still not been approved.
So I went onto their IRC again to try and jog their memories and that went nowhere either.

So I think we can say that that forum is functionally dead.


B5TV Forum
Anyway, I registered on the B5TV forums instead, which looked to be the most prominent Bab5 community that I could find.
I stuck a message up on there - maybe no-one will get back to me but at least I now know what I'm asking for, which is usually a start.
http://www.b5tv.com/showthread.php?p=462842#post462842

I'll leave that there for a week and then try something else.


In other news ...
xbomber.co.uk's hosting is paid again for another year.
They won't let me claw back a massive discount any more for renewing for 3 whole years. 1 year was the most they'd let me do.


Update 2020.03.02
It's too early to declare victory but things on the B5TV forum are looking promising ...

[Crash]

Got a result from babylonfan on B5TV,
I uploaded the files to xbomber.co.uk so that they don't go missing again:
http://xbomber.co.uk/?dir=Other/Games%2 ... the%20Fire

[AndyThomas]

Oh, I've been slow to notice this one, I'll have a look again when I have a minute! Busier than I ought to be at the moment, ironically enough!