Hummer Team's Mortal Kombat 3 predates My Heart Will Go On?...

[Calypso76]

Okay, this seems really weird, but I noticed how My Heart Will Go On was in Hummer's Mortal Kombat 3. Nothing special, right? Until you take into account that it was reviewed as early as March 1997 in the Great Dragon, while Celine wouldn't even record the song until two months later.

Question is, how did they know about this song when it wasn't even recorded yet? Fair enough, Titanic was a huge project that was probably being reported about in 96/early 97, but I just can't understand how they put the song in there. I thought it was perhaps added in the MK4 hack (which was probably released at the same time the real MK4 and Titanic came out) but MK3 also uses it.

[MLX]

I'm confused, do you mean the track that plays on the story sequences of Harry's Legend? Is that really an adaptation of My Hearth Will go on?

[Calypso76]

No, the theme was first used in Hummer's MK3 for the Balcony (I think it is) stage, at 4:00 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxTj-f9CfUE

My question was, if this game was reviewed in March 1997, how did they know about Rose's theme from Titanic, which wasn't even recorded until May?

[NewRisingSun]

No, the theme was first used in Hummer's MK3 for the Balcony (I think it is) stage, at 4:00 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxTj-f9CfUE

That's not "My Heart Will Go On"....

[MLX]

I bet Hummer Team just reused the Mortal Kombat 3 track for Titenic & Harry's Legend and it is absolutely unrelated to any of the Titanic soundtracks. It's been proven multiple time that Hummer Cheng reused various instruments channels or sequences of notes in other unrelated track. it's especially blatant with the Sachen games and the later productions (detailed on the associated wiki pages).

[Calypso76]

Speaking of the music in this game, has anyone tried to identify it? Except for the Superman theme, the player select theme, the song from Garou Densetsu Special and The Bank, all the tracks are unknown, and since five of them are based on real music, it's likely the rest is too.

I swear track 8: https://www.zophar.net/music/nintendo-nes-nsf/mortal-kombat-4 sounds kind of like Andy Asteroids. Maybe this was supposed to go to Earthworm Jim 3 but went unused?

[MLX]

The track that sounds especially weird with some fast pacing (I can't check he number at the moment) use the Jing Ke Xin Zhuan overworld triangle. This track is itself based on an earlier composition that Hummer Cheng made at Sachen for Lucky Bingo 777.

(As a more detailed reply as to what I stated in the previous post).

[Calypso76]

Reviving this thread for a very interesting discovery that I apparently made years ago and forgot about until someone recently replied to it on Youtube:

You remember that unbelievably goofy track that plays when you fight Shao Khan in The Pit? The one that sounds nothing like something you'd hear in a MK game?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoCdwd9EOeI

Turns out it is a version of Andy Asteroids for a very early build of Earthworm Jim 3!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjEUTLbjZFI

I almost didn't recognize it myself since it's extremely garbled (try recreating a bluegrass song in 8 bit) but if you listen to the triangle channel you'll quickly recognize it. It doesn't appear in the rom of EWJ3 so it must have been scrapped early in development. Why this track does not appear in EWJ3's rom as opposed to the Psycrow theme can be attributed to the fact that Hummer likely realized they couldn't recreate a 3D/Mode 7 stage on the Famicom, but still wanted to keep the Psycrow battle in (and as we all know, ultimately they didn't)

I did a song check for the other seemingly original songs for MK3 to see if they matched up with any EWJ tracks, but no luck.

[Eadwine]

I believe people have gotten confused about My Heart Will Go On because of Titenic and Harry's Legend. The original release of Titenic had arrangements of music from the Titanic movie, including My Heart Will Go On prominently as the level theme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmrN1uf3MWk When the game was being converted into Harry's Legend, the music was replaced with less recognizable tracks, which is the version found on Super New Year 15-in-1. The cutscene theme from that version of the game is a remix of the MK3 tune heard here. It has nothing to do with My Heart Will Go On, but because of the confusing nature of Titenic where people had heard that it "contained an arrangement of My Heart Will Go On" while playing a version that didn't actually have it, attached it to the closet thing they could find.

[Doomkid]

Wow, hearing Titenic with "proper" music for the first time after so long is mind-blowing.. I need to get the ABAB soft version of this rom added to my Hummer collection pronto.

Reviving this thread for a very interesting discovery that I apparently made years ago and forgot about until someone recently replied to it on Youtube

lol, looks like that was me, based on the YT link you posted!

[Calypso76]

Following the lead I made from Andy Asteroids, in the meantime I did more research, and while this is far from sure, I think the Rooftop stage (track 7 here) is a cover of Who Turned Out The Lights? from EWJ, though maybe I just have a wild imagination:
https://www.zophar.net/music/nintendo-nes-nsf/mortal-kombat-4

The other tracks are still unknown, but knowing Hummer Team's love for 70s folk/soft rock (Blondie, Jim Croce, Jethro Tull) it'd be worth looking there.