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Quartet Records’ 2018 edition of WarGames is the first release to present Arthur B. Rubinstein’s score in its original film mixes while also preserving the soundtrack album through which most listeners initially encountered it. Created for the film’s thirty-fifth anniversary and originally limited to 1,000 copies, the two-CD set is divided with unusual clarity. Disc one contains the score in narrative order, including the songs as placed within the film. Disc two reproduces the 1983 Polydor LP—with its dialogue, sound effects and distinct album mixes—then adds fourteen alternates and unused versions. Chris Malone restored, remixed and mastered the material from MGM’s half-inch three-track, stereo and album masters, even recovering one missing fifteen-second passage from the film’s stereo music stem. A twenty-page booklet by John Takis completes an edition that treats the original album and the film score as related but fundamentally different objects.
Rubinstein’s music is an essential part of WarGames’ peculiar balance. John Badham’s 1983 film follows teenage computer enthusiast David Lightman as he accidentally accesses a military system, mistakes a nuclear-war simulation for a game and pushes the United States toward a real confrontation. The premise could have supported a cold electronic score or a conventional orchestral thriller. Rubinstein instead combines synthesizers, symphonic writing, pop songs, military gestures and voices. The mixture reflects a story suspended between several worlds: David’s suburban bedroom and the monumental NORAD command centre, adolescent play and institutional terror, glowing computer displays and machinery still operated by fallible people.
“WarGames,” the opening cue, introduces this range without settling on a single dominant theme. Bright electronic motion is placed against larger orchestral gestures, establishing both the seduction of technology and the danger concealed behind it. Rubinstein’s synthesizers do not simply signal that the story concerns computers. They suggest speed, curiosity and the pleasure of manipulating a system. The orchestra supplies scale, but the electronic patterns remain active inside it, as if David’s private game has already entered a geopolitical structure much larger than he understands.
That youthful level is reinforced by “Video Fever,” performed by The Beepers, the group formed around Rubinstein with Anthony Marinelli, Brian Banks and Cynthia Morrow. The song is unapologetically tied to its period: playful electronic effects, processed voices and a catchy new-wave pulse celebrate the fascination of screens and games. Its datedness has become one of its virtues. Rather than imagining computer culture through later ideas of digital alienation, it captures the early-1980s excitement of machines that still seemed novel, physical and full of unexplored spaces. Placed near the beginning of the film-score program, it makes David’s attraction to the computer emotionally plausible before the consequences become apparent.
“Principal’s Office” and the two sections of “A New Grade” keep the music light and agile. Short electronic figures and comic punctuation accompany David’s casual interference with school records, establishing hacking as mischief rather than menace. Rubinstein does not retrospectively burden these scenes with knowledge of the coming crisis. The music inhabits David’s confidence, allowing the tonal change to arrive only after the game begins. That decision gives the complete chronological program an arc that the old LP, assembled from highlights and dialogue, could only imply.
“The Games Begin” is where the score’s components start to pull against one another. Repetitive figures retain the appeal of interaction, but darker harmony and orchestral weight suggest that the system is no longer a passive toy. The recurring “It Could Be War” cues are extremely brief, sometimes lasting less than a minute, yet their placement gradually changes the album’s temperature. Rubinstein builds tension through the return and modification of small ideas rather than relying on one all-purpose danger theme. Quartet’s presentation of these fragments in their proper positions is therefore important: what can seem negligible in isolation becomes connective tissue within the complete score.
“History Lesson” and “Home Movie” introduce the emotional history of Stephen Falken and his dead son, Joshua, whose name was given to the computer system. Here Rubinstein allows voices and gentler melodic material to humanise technology without sentimentalising it. The central computer is not merely an evil machine; it is an extension of grief, abstraction and the desire to preserve something that has been lost. “A Game of Chess?” deepens that idea through music that is exploratory rather than overtly threatening. The system’s intelligence is represented as pattern and process, while the orchestra reminds us that those patterns are operating within a world of irreversible physical consequences.
The transition into “Nuclear Alert” and “Walk Through NORAD” reveals Rubinstein’s skill with scale. The latter accompanies the descent into the command complex, and the music conveys wonder as well as oppression. NORAD is technologically impressive, but its size is also absurd: an enormous enclosed world constructed to manage the possibility of annihilation. Brass, percussion, electronics and sustained orchestral layers make the space feel both active and sealed. “David Captured” follows with some of the score’s strongest suspense writing, shifting between pursuit, uncertainty and the pressure of institutional authority without losing the electronic identity established earlier.
Rubinstein’s action writing is busy but rarely shapeless. “The Sneak,” “Maneuvers,” “I Can’t Swim” and “Helicopter Pursuit” use rhythmic cells that can be expanded, interrupted or passed between electronic and acoustic forces. “I Can’t Swim” is particularly effective because the danger remains tied to David and Jennifer’s physical vulnerability rather than becoming abstract spectacle. The score continually measures vast military systems against young characters who are improvising from moment to moment. Even when the music grows expansive, there is usually a nervous smaller motion running underneath it.
The passages surrounding Falken provide necessary stillness. “Off to See Falken,” “WOPR” and “Falken’s House” move away from NORAD’s dense mechanical energy toward something more reflective. Falken’s withdrawal from the world is not presented as peaceful wisdom; the music retains distance and unease. Rubinstein recognises that the scientist’s despair and the military’s certainty are opposite responses to the same problem. One has abandoned responsibility, while the other has turned it into procedure. The score’s several interrelated motifs allow these ideas to touch without assigning each character an obvious identifying tune.
From “Launch Detected” onward, the music becomes increasingly compressed. “Closing the Mountain,” “Who’s First?” and “Joshua!” bring back earlier electronic patterns at a more urgent scale while brass and percussion intensify the sense of an approaching deadline. Yet Rubinstein avoids writing a straightforward heroic climax. David’s solution is intellectual: he teaches Joshua the concept of futility by making it play tic-tac-toe against itself. Appropriately, “Tic-Tac-Toe” is constructed around repetition and permutation. The musical process mirrors the computer’s rapid exploration of every possible outcome, turning a child’s game into the key to nuclear strategy.
“Winner None” supplies the score’s real resolution. Its title is a concise statement of the film’s argument, and the cue relaxes the accumulated tension without offering triumph. Humanity has not won; catastrophe has merely been avoided. “End Credits” gathers the score’s colours into a broader conclusion, while Yvonne Elliman’s “Edge of the World” places the story within the format of an early-1980s soundtrack song. Elliman’s polished vocal may seem removed from the terse suspense cues, but its emotional directness belongs to Rubinstein’s deliberately heterogeneous design.
Disc two demonstrates how differently this music was originally sold. The 1983 Polydor album is a dramatic montage rather than a continuous score presentation. Dialogue excerpts—“Shall we play a game?”, discussions of launch procedures and the computer’s final conclusion—are inserted between re-edited musical selections. Sound effects and alternate mixes make it feel like an audio souvenir of the film, designed to revive particular scenes rather than reveal Rubinstein’s complete architecture. Such albums can be frustrating when they are the only available edition, but preserving this one is valuable. It documents how WarGames entered popular culture and how soundtrack production in the period often blurred score, song and spoken-word record.
The bonus section makes the set more than a simple pairing of old and new programs. Alternate versions of the title cue, “Principal’s Office,” “History Lesson,” “Nuclear Alert,” “Maneuvers,” “Joshua!,” “Winner None” and the end credits expose choices made during post-production. Choral versions of several cues show how voices could enlarge the score’s almost mythic dimension, while the film mixes demonstrate why restraint was sometimes preferable. These variants are genuinely informative rather than merely exhaustive.
The 2018 film mixes also possess a different character from the expanded 2008 Intrada release, which Rubinstein supervised and which was newly remixed from the original twenty-four-track session tapes. Quartet’s decision to return to the MGM film mixes restores the balances, edits and spatial relationships heard in Badham’s picture. The sound is clean and detailed without erasing its early-digital-era personality. Electronics remain distinct from the orchestra instead of being blended into artificial uniformity, and percussion has force without overwhelming the smaller thematic lines.
WarGames is not based on one unforgettable melody. Its strength lies in the interaction of many motifs and musical languages, just as the film’s drama arises from systems speaking to one another without fully understanding the consequences. The complete score can occasionally feel fragmented because so many cues are short, but its chronological assembly reveals a remarkably coherent movement from play to terror and finally to recognition. Quartet’s edition succeeds because it does not replace the flawed but enjoyable 1983 album with a supposedly definitive alternative. It preserves both experiences, then supplies the intermediate evidence. The result is not simply more WarGames music; it is a clear account of how Rubinstein’s score was written, shaped for the film, repackaged for listeners and finally reconstructed.
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