Choicest VGM - VGM #128 - Utopia: The Creation of a Nation - Music 1





Composed by: Barry Leitch

Now we move on to one of my favourite game soundtracks of the early 90s, one that happens to be from a potentially obscure game called Utopia: The Creation of a Nation. Developed by Celestial Software and released by Gremlin Interactive in 1991 for MS-DOS and Amiga, this was one of my early experiences with an isometric city builder/RTS. Keep in mind that this was released just before Dune II and as such was a very primitive RTS (you basically built units and then sent them off to attack an enemy off the map). There was no mini-map, just a separate map screen you had to access. The game also only had a limited set of scenarios and only four music tracks that you had to load up manually.

Although there were only four tracks, they were all composed by the accomplished video game composer, Barry Leitch who has composed soundtracks for hundreds of games including Supremacy, Privateer Righteous Fire and TFX. He also apparently composed many iconic Amiga game soundtracks but since I never really played many Amiga games (except those that were ported to PC) I can't really comment on those ones :).

What you're listening to now is Music 1 from the Utopia soundtrack which I always remember as the intro cinematic music. It's a bit slower than the other tracks but it's got a good beat and it suits the game's theme perfectly, i.e. setting up a vulnerable alien colony and expanding it to become a "utopia". It's apparently aka "Alpha Ceti" on the SNES version of the game (what? This game made it onto the SNES?).

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