Markus Siebold, who wrote the C64 music for Turrican II, has died
by The RetroMake desk 26 October 2026
The German SID musician, known on the Commodore 64 scene as Ranger and Vogue, composed the music for the C64 version of Turrican II. Protovision reported his death on 23 September; no date of death has been published.
What we know
- The C64 games publisher Protovision reported the death of Markus Siebold on its website on 23 September 2026.
- Remix64, reporting on 26 September 2026, gave his age as 57 and his years as 1969-2026.
- Siebold wrote the music for the Commodore 64 version of Turrican II: The Final Fight, published by Rainbow Arts in 1991, and for Manfred Trenz's Enforcer in 1992.
- None of the reports published so far gives a date or a cause of death.
Markus Siebold, the German musician who wrote the Commodore 64 music for Turrican II: The Final Fight, has died. Protovision, the publisher of new C64 games, reported his death on its website on 23 September 2026, mourning "the loss of a legend and a friend". Remix64 followed on 26 September under the headline "Markus Siebold 1969-2026", saying he had "recently passed away at the age of 57". A memorial on 8bitlegends.com by Alex Goldblat, a C64 musician who writes that he knew Siebold, is dated 21 September. None of the three gives a date or a cause of death.
On the C64 scene he was Ranger and, for a time, Vogue, according to 8bitlegends and C64-Wiki.
Turrican II
Turrican II was programmed by Manfred Trenz and published by Rainbow Arts in 1991, and Lemon64's credits list Siebold as its musician. His own account is in a Remix64 interview from April 2001. Trenz contacted him after seeing a demo by his group, Plasma. First, he said, the game needed a better sound routine, which Edwin Determann and Dave Hogendorf of Scoop Designs programmed, and he remembered visiting Trenz in Duesseldorf while he composed the music and Trenz programmed the game. Asked which of his own tunes he liked best, he picked the end music of Turrican II.
Protovision's notice names the title theme as the piece he was best known for. 8bitlegends points out that the better-known Turrican II soundtrack, on the Amiga, is Chris Huelsbeck's, and that the C64 title and high-score themes are Siebold's own compositions.
After the game
After Turrican II he wrote the music for Enforcer, another Trenz game, released in 1992, and then, as he told Remix64, "quit composing on C64". He also composed on the Amiga with Soundtracker and on the PC with Impulse Tracker, and by 2001 was writing on hardware synthesisers. C64-Wiki records that he was to write the music for Katakis 2, announced in 2011, which was finally released in 2017 as Crush; Protovision's notice lists Crush, the Metal Dust trailer and his albums among the work it recommends. 8bitlegends lists later SID music for scene productions and for C64 games released in 2023 and 2024, alongside about two dozen self-released albums.
Asked in 2001 what he wanted to say to the scene, he answered: "I miss it and I'll never forget the great time we had."