Recently I thought it might be interesting to post a list of my favorite video game/computer game soundtracks, in the order said games were released.
With that in mind, such a list would start with the SNES port of the classic computer game SIM CITY. I got this game for a Christmas gift way back in the very early 90's and it was one of my favorite SNES games back in the day. The music was done by Soyo Oka, a woman who also did the music for some other classic SNES games of that era, like SUPER MARIO KART (another fave), PILOTWINGS, and SUPER MARIO ALL-STARS. There's not a LOT of music in this game (only about 30 minutes worth), but what there is I really like a lot. My favorite track is probably the "Town" theme, which has a very peaceful atmosphere to it and brings to mind the work of Bach. Funnily enough, as kids my brothers and I could never hear the "Megalopolis" theme, because we could never get our cities to that size (not even by cheating!)
Top 10 video/computer game soundtracks (in chronological order) #2: SUPER CASTLEVANIA IV (1991)
It's
pretty much a given that a Castlevania game will have great music (I especially
like some of the soundtracks for the Nintendo DS ones), but if I had to pick a
favorite Castlevania soundtrack, it would be this one (another game I played
often back in the day, and replayed not too long ago: it still holds up). The
soundtrack for this game (created by Masanori Adachi and Taro Kudo) not only
features some of the standard classics like "Bloody Tears" and
"Vampire Killer," but also many original new songs as well, some of
which went on to become equally iconic, like "Theme of Simon." What
really impresses me about this soundtrack is the wide variety of moods it
represents: like they could have just gone for a dark, gloomy, Gothic sound for
every stage but that's not the route they took: consider the background music
for the Library stage, which is extremely calming, pleasant-sounding, and
suggestive of a vast, airy environment: the perfect song to accompany a traipse
through a haunted library. It's hard to pick a favorite track with this one,
but I think my choice would be the brief "Password Theme," which has
a very sacral tone to it, like something one would hear in a church.
Top 10 video/computer game soundtracks (in chronological order) #3: Doom (1993)
DOOM came out in 1993, though I didn't get a copy (the FINAL DOOM retail version, which came with a bonus 4th episode) until I got my own PC in the fall of 1998 (though I do remember briefly playing DOOM II at the computer lab at Woonsocket High School in the fall of 1997). I've long been a fan of the MIDI format of music, and I think a lot of it can be traced back to my fondness for this game (in fact, a big reason why my own MIDI compositions eventually became more polished was from using the Voyetra Digital Orchestrator program to open the game's MIDI files and see how they were arranged). The music for DOOM was done by Bobby Prince (who also did a lot of other music for id Software games, including DOOM II and WOLFENSTEIN 3D) and famously many of the songs are quasi-covers of popular metal/grunge bands of the era: the rumor I've heard was that Prince used to be a lawyer and knew just how much he could copy from each song without straight-up plagiarizing it (I remember that when I heard Slayer's song "The Crooked Cross" for the first time I thought, "Wait a minute, I've heard this song in DOOM!"). Having said that, it would be a mistake to think that ALL of the songs in the game are bastardizations, and in fact some of Prince's straight-up original compositions are among of my favorite tracks. My very favorite track in the game is "They're Going to Get You," which is the background music to the 4th map of Episode 2 (one of my top 3 favorite DOOM stages, incidentally): I also used the song in my soundtrack to HARLEM SMOKE.
Top 10 video/computer game soundtracks (in chronological order) #4: Final Fantasy VI (1994)
A
third game from the SNES? To be fair, it WAS arguably the best console of
all-time, overflowing as it was with a wealth of iconic titles that have stood
the trials of history. And few SNES games obsessed me as much back in the day
as FINAL FANTASY VI did (though at that point in time, in the West, we knew it
as FINAL FANTASY III). How obsessed was I with FINAL FANTASY VI? In 1995 I
wrote a trilogy of fantasy novels (the Magic Fantasy Trilogy) that was essentially
one giant rip-off of the game (with some STAR WARS thrown in for good measure).
In many ways FF VI was so ahead of the other RPGs of the time it's not even
funny, be it in terms of graphical power, storytelling, and especially music. I
can't say this game was my first exposure to the work of Nobuo Uematsu (that
would have been FINAL FANTASY IV), but I can certainly say that FF VI was
probably the first time I ever truly recognized video game music as something
transcending mere background ornamentation into a realm of greater artistic
profundity. There was a great quote I read once where someone said about this
game, "For a composer the SNES sound chip is like using crayons. Uematsu
used crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." That this amazing soundtrack
was the product of a painfully humble/modest self-taught musician (one of just
many amazing soundtracks he created, it must be said) is truly extraordinary.
My
brothers and I were so in love with this game's soundtrack we used a boombox to
record much of the music onto cassette tapes, before eventually getting the 3
CD collection (a Japanese import). Looking back, I think one of the reasons why
it resounded with my brothers and I was that we recognized many similarities
that the music had to the prog rock of our youth (the soundtrack to the final
boss fight with Kefka is clearly a riff on the music of Emerson, Lake &
Palmer, a band of which Nobuo Uematsu was a big fan of). Would I say it's my
favorite video game soundtrack of all-time? I'm not sure. But would I also say
that it's kind of the benchmark by which I rate all other such soundtracks?
There, I think I can say yes. It's kind of hard to pick a favorite track as
there are so many good ones, but I've always loved the 3rd Movement of the
famous "Dancing Mad" sequence, which does a mean impression of Bach's
"Toccata and Fugue in D Minor."
Top 10 video/computer game soundtracks (in chronological order) #5: Chrono Trigger (1995)
Another
Squaresoft game, another SNES entry. I got this one for my birthday in 1995,
and while I don't rank it as high as the Final Fantasy games of the era, it's
still an enjoyable enough game, with a killer soundtrack to boot. Yasunori
Mitsuda did most of the music, but when he developed stomach ulcers, Nobuo
Uematsu stepped in and helped out as well (I think he ended up doing 10 songs
for it). Interestingly enough, despite the fact that Mitsuda did the majority
of the soundtrack, my favorite song off it ("Bike Chase") is a Nobou
creation.
Top 10 video/computer game soundtracks (in chronological order) #6: Earthbound (1994)
Last
SNES game on this list, I promise! Yes, I'm aware that EARTHBOUND came out in
1994 (before CHRONO TRIGGER, my last entry) but it was released in the US in
1995, hence its placement here. EARTHBOUND is something of an anomaly on this
list as, unlike the other games I'm spotlighting, I not only never actually
beat it, but never even got that far in it (I don't think I ever got past the
game's 3rd town, Threed). I did, however, watch one of my younger brothers
playthrough and beat it, and because this same brother has played the
soundtrack a lot over the years, much of the game's music (mostly the work of
Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka) has grown on me. Despite the fact the game
was a product of Japan, the music's cultural touchstones mostly harken to
western pop culture, like the Beach Boys and especially John Lennon/the
Beatles. Still, one of my favorite tracks in the game, "The Floating Kingdom
of Dalaam," has a very Eastern feel to it.
Top 10 video/computer game soundtracks (in chronological order) #7: Shenmue (1999) Shenmue II (2001) Shenmue III (2019)
A
bit cheating this, but what the hell, it's MY list, I make the rules. And to be
fair, the games are part of one giant story, and most of them tend to use (and
reuse) a lot of the same songs anyway. I never played the original two games
back in the day (not owning a Dreamcast and all) but finally got to play them
in 2018 when they became available for PC on Steam (and of course, I had no
issues playing the third game). Unlike some of the other games I've featured,
I'm a little fuzzy about who exactly did what songs for these games, though I
believe Takenobu Mitsuyoshi is the main source: other musicians seemed to have
helped out as well, which makes sense seeing as the first game alone had over
200 songs!
One
thing that interests me about the SHENMUE games is that, unlike many other
Japanese games I've played that often make much use of Western/Anglosphere
music/imagery and what have you (because, I presume, such things must have
seemed exotic and foreign to the Japanese audiences of the time), the SHENMUE games
seem very Asiatic in design, not just in setting, visuals/imagery, tempo and
philosophy/worldview but also in their use of music. I'm not saying ALL the
music sounds very Asian (as quite a wide variety of musical styles are
featured, everything from jazz to hip-hop to techno), but a large majority of
it does, and I kind of like that. It's hard to pick a favorite in a series that
has so many killer/iconic songs, but I've always had an especial fondness for
the Day theme of South Carmain Quarter (from SHENMUE II):
Top 10 video/computer game soundtracks (in chronological order) #8: The Movies (2005)
I've always felt that this game never got the love it should have. It only ever got one expansion pack back in the day, when by all rights it should have had several: I would have loved a pack introducing more sets and costumes, and maybe one that would have added some new genres as well (Action, Comedy, Romance, Horror and Sci-Fi were all well and good, but it would have been cool to have stuff like Drama, Historical/Period movies, and so on). I played it quite a bit when it first came out, and have replayed it on and off throughout the years (most recently, last year). One thing I really dig about this game is the music: I like how both the background music (and the music you can use in your films) changes as the years progress, from lush orchestral/Big Band stuff in the 30's/40's/50's to rock and roll in the 60's, funk in the 70's, synth-pop in the 80's, and techno in the 90's. A nice little touch... the music in the game was composed by Daniel Pemberton, who has since gone on to become a Golden Globe-nominated film composer in Hollywood (he did the score for The Counselor!) One of my favorite songs in this game is this one, which is both the title song and also the song that plays in the background whenever you release a new movie:
Top 10 video/computer game soundtracks (in chronological order) #9: Sid Meier's Civilization VI (2016)
I consider myself a big fan of Sid Meier's CIV series, though in truth I've really only played the 4th, 5th, and 6th entries for any great length of time. CIV VI is by far the one I play the most (according to Steam, I've logged over 1,500 hours playing it). A big reason for that is simply because I love the game's music so much. The title song/main menu music "Sogno di Volare" (Eng. "The Dream of Flight") was composed by Grammy winner Christopher Tin (he of the "Baba Yetu" fame), but the game's actual main composer/arranger is Geoff Knorr, assisted by Roland Rizzo, Griffin Cohen, and Phill Boucher, and an army of guest musicians, including the entire Prague FILMHarmonic Orchestra.
One thing I like about the CIV VI soundtrack is that each civilization in the game gets 4 variations on a main theme, that changes every two eras (so that each has an Ancient, Medieval, Industrial, and Atomic theme): the first version is usually very simple, but each variation introduces new layers of complexity, until you reach the final version, which features the theme played by a full symphonic orchestra. Each civilization also has a number of secondary/ambient themes (some of which are just as good as the main ones). When you factor in that the game features 50 civilizations, that means a staggering amount of music, well over 600+ songs (and I've heard them all!). The game also went out of its way to make music that was culturally appropriate to each civ, even getting Mongolian throat singers for Mongolia's music, for example. I can think of few other games that have such a global, multicultural soundtrack.
Over time, I've developed a variety of favorite songs from the game, and there are some civs I'll almost always include in my games just because I like their music so much: Poland, Zulu, Rome, Aztec, Egypt, Mongolia, India, Canada, France, Greece, and Zulu are some of my preferred ones. I think my favorite song of all in the game might be the Byzantine "Atomic" theme, which truly is a thing of awe and majesty: based on the Akathist hymns "Ti Ipermaho" and "Kontakion of the Mother of God" it's almost enough to convert you to the Orthodox faith:
Top 10 video/computer game soundtracks (in chronological order) #10: Perfect Tides (2022)
The most recent addition to this list, a friend clued me onto this game's existence last year, and I quickly became obsessed with it, to the extent I now have it in my Top 10 favorite games of all-time, and consider Meredith Gran a genius writer/artist/game designer (see also her comic OCTOPUS PIE). Of course, one reason I love the game so much was the music made for it by Daniel Kobylarz, 22 tracks of pure goodness that perfectly compliment what's happening on the screen. I often listen to these songs while driving to and from work and just listening to them makes me happy, like snuggling under a warm blanket: I'm excited to hear that he'll be doing music for the game's sequel as well (due out in 2024). My favorite track in the game is "Island at Night," an incredibly atmospheric and moodily poignant song, especially when you hear it in the 4th part of the game, which is set in winter: walking around the deserted streets of a small island town under a starry sky at night, with the sound of snow crunching beneath your boots and with this song playing in the background, perfectly captures a beautiful mood that's almost impossible to describe in words...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i35-BjmWeBo&list=OLAK5uy_nWJyHki6SVANlVGxDrVEJ6ZY9cW2DFh0o&index=21
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