Well, this is definitely the WORST Lemmings track out there.
Keep in mind the sound hardware of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was apparently somewhat primitive. For reference, here's a youtube link to a "
Best of ZX Spectrum Music" playlist. I'll admit that most entries on that playlist do sound at least a
little better than that Lemmings track. Perhaps the person who did the Lemmings tracks was not an expert with the Spectrum ZX sound hardware, and didn't know what to do and what not to do on that hardware to get the best sounds out of it.
This one is also kinda bad. It's a complete change from the usual upbeat music in official Lemmings.
I didn't realize the Gameboy Color version had such totally different music, I always assumed it had same music as the regular Gameboy version. While the first track of the first level of the game arguably doesn't make the best first impression, it does seem to get more upbeat with subsequent tracks (
2 3).
I'm still surprised they even bother to create seemingly all(?) original tracks for that version. What's wrong with just transcribing the music from the regular versions?
The few I heard from that version didn't exactly impress.
[edit: having listened to those 3 tracks on GBC, I wonder if there is some sort of hardware limitation at play as well? I noticed those tracks don't seem to have independent "voices" of music--it seems like every time a note is started or stopped, it does so across all voices, so it doesn't seem like you can, for example, sustain one lower bass note while playing a sequence of several higher melodic notes over it.
But if that's the case I think that's more restrictive than even the regular GameBoy? I don't know the respective hardware capabilities that well but find it hard to believe Gameboy Color would be more primitive and restrictive on its sound capabilities than the older, non-color Gameboy.]