The Greatest Game Music - Reviews of truly outstanding game music

Hero Quest II: Legacy of Sorasil Soundtrack (Amiga CD32) – Review

Hero Quest II: Legacy of Sorasil Soundtrack (Amiga CD32), Patrick Phelan, 1994

While it was based on a popular fantasy board game license, Hero Quest didn’t exactly set the video game world on fire upon release in 1991. Ultimately, it didn’t leave much more than a reasonably positive impression with reviewers and gamers. Still, developer Gremlin Interactive must have felt that there was enough life left in the license to squeeze out another Hero Quest game. Hero Quest II: Legacy of Sorasil was released in 1994, reusing its predecessor’s engine and isometric view. The game didn’t deliver much in terms of new ideas or innovations and consequently reaped the same muted response as the first Hero Quest. The fact that Legacy of Sorasil hit store shelves towards the end of the Amiga 1200’s lifespan didn’t help – and its showing on the Amiga CD32 was doomed by the console’s quick demise.

Hero Quest’s biggest achievement might have been its music. Neil Baldwin (on the NES) and Barry Leitch (ZX Spectrum) delivered a couple of classic fantasy scores that both made full use of the limited sound capacities of their respective platforms. For the Hero Quest II: Legacy of Sorasil soundtrack, scoring duties went to Patrick Phelan. Phelan had only entered the game industry in 1992, but quickly established himself as one of Gremlin Interactive’s go-to composers, working on its Zool, Lotus and Top Gear games. Interestingly enough, on the Lotus and Top Gear series, Phelan took over from Leitch, who had scored earlier franchise iterations – and this trend would continue with Legacy of Sorasil.

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Hero Quest Soundtrack (ZX Spectrum) – Review

Hero Quest Soundtrack (ZX Spectrum), Barry Leitch, 1991

Board games are arguably a lot easier to turn into video games than say movies. They already function as games, have a set of clearly defined rules and often enough feature just enough backstory to efficiently set up the game’s world. The sheer number of Dungeons & Dragons video games is testament to the close connection between both worlds. The success of the Dungeons & Dragons table top games of course inspired others to follow in their footsteps. In 1989, US board game manufacturer Milton Bradley tried their hand at a fantasy-themed title called Hero Quest. Despite its generic presentation, the game was fairly successful around the globe, with a number of expansions, new editions and even novels published.

The inevitable video game ports of Hero Quest arrived in 1991 on several home computer systems and the NES. Developers 221B Software Development looked after the computer ports, while Eurocom handled the NES game. Unfortunately, that title was ultimately cancelled and never officially released. As for the various computer ports, they were reasonably well received by video game journalists, although reviews ranged from very strong to merely middling. While some scribes welcomed the game’s accessibility, others bemoaned its low difficulty level and that Hero Quest stuck too close to its original board game mechanics.

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Viva Piñata Soundtrack – Review

Viva Piñata Soundtrack, Grant Kirkhope, 2006

There was a time when Viva Piñata was touted as one of the fledgling XBox 360’s most important franchises, even accompanied by a tie-in television show. Ultimately, Viva Piñata didn’t go down in game history as anything close to a gamechanger or a classic like some of developer Rare’s previous titles. Still, the game’s colourful graphics and fairly novel gameplay – essentially it’s a first-person life and gardening simulation – left a positive enough impression with reviewers and gamers. In fact, the feedback was strong enough for Rare to release a sequel titled Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, giving the developers the opportunity to implement features they had to leave out of the first game due to time pressures.

The story of who ended up writing the music for Viva Piñata is somewhat typical for Rare games, in that composers ended up working on several projects at once, swapping scoring responsibilities in the process. Initially, Steve Burke was tasked with creating the Viva Piñata soundtrack, with veteran Grant Kirkhope doing sound design. Once Burke got busier with Kameo: Elements of Power though, Kirkhope was asked to take over the music for Viva Piñata as well. In the process, Kirkhope used material he had previously composed for the aborted Dream project on the Nintendo 64 (which later morphed into Banjo-Kazooie).

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Perfect Dark Soundtrack (Nintendo 64) – Review

Perfect Dark Soundtrack (Nintendo 64), David Clynick / Grant Kirkhope / Graeme Norgate, 2000

If you want to kick off a debate amongst seasoned console gamers, try “Is Perfect Dark better than GoldenEye 007?” According to reviewers, the answer is usually ‘yes’. After all, this is the game that gave Rare the opportunity to finetune their approach to developing a first-person shooter, after they had created a genre classic with GoldenEye 007. Arguably pushing the Nintendo 64 to its limits, Perfect Dark provided such a wealth of content and degree of polish that it was hard to see how a console shooter in 2000 could be any better. Then again, GoldenEye 007 had arguably been the more groundbreaking title, popularising console FPS games. As a result, Perfect Dark didn’t have quite the same impact, as it was ultimately an immense refinement rather than another quantum leap.

Naturally, for the Perfect Dark soundtrack, Rare would call upon the same talents that had created the music for GoldenEye 007 – easily the best score for any Bond game. Complications were afoot though. Initially, the task of writing the Perfect Dark score fell to Graeme Norgate, who was working on Jet Force Gemini at the same time. Norgate began to lay the groundwork for the music, choosing a palette of instruments and completing a number of compositions. However, mid-way through the three-year development process, Norgate and half of the development team left Rare to form Free Radical Design (best known for their TimeSplitters trilogy).

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GoldenEye 007 Soundtrack (Nintendo 64) – Review

GoldenEye 007 Soundtrack (Nintendo 64), Grant Kirkhope / Graeme Norgate, 1997

It’s no exaggeration to say that GoldenEye 007 was a game changer. By the mid-1990s, games based on movies had (justly) developed a disastrous reputation, and the fact that GoldenEye 007 was released a full 18 months after the movie didn’t help matters. And of course, this was a first-person shooter designed for a console, rather than for a PC – back then the natural home for FPS titles. But in the end, none of this mattered. GoldenEye 007 went on to sell more than eight million copies, becoming one of the most successful games of its console generation. Its reception among reviewers was just as enthusiastic and there’s no doubt GoldenEye 007 has left a lasting legacy – who could forget its legendary multiplayer mode? Not bad for a title developed by an inexperienced team that spent a full three years completing the game.

Like the game as a whole, creating the GoldenEye 007 soundtrack was no easy feat – after all, this was one of Rare’s first Nintendo 64 titles. Initially, Graeme Norgate was tasked with writing the score, having previously worked on Rare’s Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Land. However, Norgate was also working on Blast Corps at the same time and it became obvious that additional resources were needed. Thus Grant Kirkhope – while still working on Donkey Kong Land 2 – was drafted to join Norgate on GoldenEye 007 (he left before completion of that project to work on Dream). The challenge for both composers was to write music for a console that for the first one and a half years of the game’s development didn’t exist yet.

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