The Greatest Game Music - Page 2 of 13 - Reviews of truly outstanding game music

Top Gear Rally Soundtrack (N64)

Top Gear Rally Soundtrack (N64), Barry Leitch, 1997

After two generally well-received entries in the Top Gear franchise, developer Gremlin Interactive must have felt that the series needed a bit a of shake up. That was probably correct, given Top Gear 2 had felt like an expansion pack of Top Gear – and considering that these two games didn’t look very different from Gremlin’s earlier Lotus trilogy of racing games. The result was Top Gear 3000 – the original trilogy’s black sheep, with its sci-fi trappings and weapons system. While swiftly forgotten, Top Gear 3000 kicked off the Top Gear franchise’s experimental phase. The results of this attempt to reinvent the series and keep it relevant hit the Nintendo 64 in quick succession: Top Gear Rally, Top Gear: Overdrive, Top Gear Rally 2 and Top Gear Hyper-Bike. Reviews for all these titles were fairly strong, with reviews commending Top Gear Rally for its realistic gameplay and accurate physics.

The Top Gear Rally soundtrack saw the return of a familiar name: Barry Leitch, who had of course scored the first two Lotus games and Top Gear in the early 1990s. The second half of the decade saw him returning to racing games with a vengeance – after Top Gear Rally, Leitch wrote two (!) unreleased soundtracks for Twisted Edge Snowboarding, before penning music for Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA, California Speed and San Francisco Rush 2049. For Top Gear Rally, Leitch took an unusual approach – rather than emulating CD-quality sound, he used 8-bit samples (“[…] probably the only N64 game ever to use [them]”, Leitch mused in an interview). Like on a 16-bit machine, the samples were produced live off the hardware – which made Top Gear Rally one of the most advanced examples of this production technique, due to the N64’s comparatively advanced audio capacities and number of samples available.

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Top Gear 2 Soundtrack (Amiga)

Top Gear 2 Soundtrack (Amiga), Patrick Phelan, 1994

At least in its SNES incarnation, the Top Gear franchise remains quite fondly remembered to this day. However, looking at contemporary reviews, it’s obvious that the series has always proved somewhat divisive. More than a few critics pointed out that the Top Gear games presented a no-frills, arcade-style approach to racing that produced solid, but not necessarily spectacular results. The fact that developer Gremlin Graphics (later Gremlin Interactive) used the Top Gear games to effectively regurgitate its own Lotus titles only amplified the feeling of ‘been there, done that’. That being said, Top Gear 2 remains the franchise’s best-regarded entry – while it played like a mere expansion pack of its predecessor, it made enough tweaks to improve upon Top Gear.

That was on the SNES though. Once Top Gear 2 reached the Amiga in 1994, reviewers were decidedly less pleased with the game, highlighting its lack of innovation and the fact that it didn’t meet the standards set by the Lotus games a few years earlier. The one area in which the Amiga port ultimately did excel was its soundtrack, matched within the Top Gear franchise only by Barry Leitch’s Top Gear Rally. After Leitch had set the musical foundations for the Top Gear and Lotus franchises, Patrick Phelan had taken over composing duties on both series, further developing their electronica-heavy scores and mixing in contemporary mid-90s influences.

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Ihatovo Monogatari Soundtrack

Ihatovo Monogatari Soundtrack, Tsukasa Tawada, 1993

Looking at the gameography of Japanese developer Hect, it’s easy to assume they produced few titles that were in any noteworthy, instead focusing on undistinguished simulation games. But look more closely and you’ll find Moon Crystal, a surprisingly polished NES platformer, released in 1992. And then there’s the following year’s Ihatovo Monogatari, easily Hect’s most ambitious – and unusual – release. An adventure purely built around exploration – no riddles, battles or other interruptions present – Ihatovo Monogatari was based on the writings of Japanese author Kenji Miyazawa. The game’s locations and characters drew upon a variety of Miyazawa’s stories, while “Ihatovo” was a fictional word Miyazawa had created to refer to a rural utopia inspired by his hometown of Iwate. Naturally only released in Japan, Ihatovo Monogatari’s distinctive nature has seen it continuously garnering praise as one of the SNES’ hidden gems.

Few of the online reviews praising Ihatovo Monogatari years after its initial release fail to mention the game’s soundtrack and for good reason, as it truly is one of the 16-bit era’s most intriguing scores. It was the work of Tsukasa Tawada, who by 1993 had already amassed a significant body of work on the NES, Game Boy and TurboGrafx. However, not much of his discography stood out much – his most substantial works so far had been Earth Defense Force, the SNES port of Dungeon Master (written with Hikoshi Hashimoto) and the aforementioned Moon Crystal. However, Ihatovo Monogatari catapulted Tawada into the limelight – his next assignments would include sound designer on the Dragon Quest franchise, before becoming one of Nintendo’s go-to composers for Pokémon games. And clearly the Ihatovo Monogatari soundtrack still holds special meaning for Tawada, made obvious by his 2019 piano arrangements uploaded to his Youtube channel.

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Racing Hero Soundtrack

Racing Hero Soundtrack, Hikoshi Hashimoto, 1989

Starting with Hang-On in 1985, Sega commenced a run of classic arcade titles that made full use of the company’s revolutionary Super Scaler technology, providing a spectacular illusion of 3D gaming unrivalled by anything on home consoles. However, not all Super Scaler games are equally well-remembered. Take Racing Hero, an obvious update of the Hang-On formula of lighting-fast motorcycle-racing. With its colourful, impressively fluid graphics, varied courses and solid gameplay, Racing Hero was hardly a disappointment upon release – but it also didn’t do a lot to differentiate itself from previous Sega arcade racers (which by now had turned into a genre of their own). And since Racing Hero wasn’t included in any arcade compilations on consoles, the game has mostly slipped from view when fans consider Sega’s arcade glory days.

Still, there’s much to like about Racing Hero – including its soundtrack. It was the debut work of Hikoshi Hashimoto, who would kick off a decades-long game music career with this title. Of course, previous Sega arcade racers like OutRun had set the bar high with their pioneering scores. Thankfully, Hashimoto proudly and successfully walks in the footsteps of his predecessors, crafting a score that feels like a summary of everything that made these 80s arcade soundtracks such a blast. It’s certainly an auspicious debut by a composer out to prove himself – and as it turns out, Racing Hero ranks as the best score of Hashimoto’s career.

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Skeleton Krew Soundtrack (Sega Genesis)

Skeleton Krew Soundtrack (Sega Genesis), Nathan McCree, 1995

Games released at the end of a console’s life cycle often end up somewhat lost to the ravages of time – not entirely forgotten by posterity maybe, but still mostly passed over for the incoming generation of new platforms. Skeleton Krew (we’re deep in the midst of 1990s edginess) by Core Design is one such title. An isometric shooter for the Sega Genesis, Amiga and Amiga CD32, Skeleton Krew failed to elicit much interest from gamers and reviewers back in 1995. Its gameplay featured few innovations, while Skeleton Krew’s six levels meant the fun was over fairly quickly. The game’s one standout feature was its presentation (once you looked past Skeleton Krew’s slightly desperate attempt to be all dark, violent and gritty). Clever use of the Amiga and Genesis’ colour palettes, highlighting the surreal H.R. Giger-inspired bio-mechanical artwork, set the game apart from the competition.

And then there were the soundtracks. For the Amiga CD32 version, Martin Iveson composed a jazz/trip hop score, mirroring what was en vogue in contemporary music when Skeleton Krew was in development. The soundtrack for the Genesis port went for a more esoteric approach. It was written by Nathan McCree, who just came off Star Wars homage Soulstar. Now he would deliver a work that was almost diametrically opposed to that earlier game’s busy orchestral sounds. Given the time of Skeleton Krew’s release and its genre, one might have expected an industrial metal or techno score. Instead, McCree goes for something very different: glitchy, dark ambient compositions, a genre that’s immensely difficult to pull off successfully, particularly on a technologically limited platform like the Sega Genesis. As such, McCree’s work is almost unique among 16-bit soundtracks.

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Octogeddon Soundtrack

Octogeddon Soundtrack (PC), Big Giant Circles, 2018

“Every game before Plants vs. Zombies, I was just making a game. Now, after making Plants vs. Zombies, I’m making a game in that shadow.” That’s how developer George Fan described the not necessarily easy task of following up one of indie gaming’s biggest successes. But while Octogeddon didn’t sell by the bucketload like Plants vs. Zombies did, it still ranked as another success for Fan, with consistently strong feedback from reviewers and gamers. Like Plants vs. Zombies, Octogeddon works from a deliciously silly concept – this time it’s a homicidal octopus that swears revenge after seeing his friends served as sushi, vowing to destroy the world’s most famous landmarks (think Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty etc.) Fan decided to mix the arcadey nature of the gameplay – including hilarious weapon/tentacle upgrades – with rogue-like elements that helped to keep the game’s early levels challenging, even upon repeated playthroughs.

The Plants vs. Zombies soundtrack – courtesy of Laura Shigihara – had become one of game music’s first indie breakthrough successes back in 2009. Shigihara didn’t return for Octogeddon and instead, scoring duties went to Big Giant Circles (aka Jimmy Hinson). Looking at Hinson’s discography, the charming, action-packed 2D aesthetic and gameplay that Octogeddon sports was right in his ballpark – consider his previous chiptunes-pop smashes Pocket Mine and Extreme Bike Trip. Other scores released since those fairly succinct works had given Hinson the opportunity to create more expansive soundtracks – and Octogeddon is his most successful attempt at a full album-length score yet. He’s is helped on a few tracks by Fan, who has his material arranged by Hinson, ensuring a coherent album flow.

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Tamashii no Mon – Dante Shinkyoku yori Soundtrack (Soundware Version)

Tamashii no Mon – Dante Shinkyoku yori Soundtrack, Masumi Ito / Yoshiyuki Ito / Fiori Wakakuwa, 1992

Turns out 2010’s God of War clone Dante’s Inferno wasn’t the first video game based on Dante Alighieri’s 14^th-century poem The Divine Comedy. But maybe that’s no surprise, given the work’s towering literary status and its vivid imagery of Hell’s nine circles, which make it ripe for adaptations into other media. Another game inspired by The Divine Comedy was Koei’s Tamashii no Mon – Dante no Shinkyoku yori (literally: Gate of Souls – From Dante’s Divine Comedy). As one might expect, players assume the role of Dante, as he struggles to find his way through the depths of hell. The developers cast the game as an adventure title with platforming and melee elements, while making excellent use of the ageing PC-98’s graphical capabilities. The clever use of a limited colour palette combined with excellent sprite art truly brought the game’s nightmarish settings to live.

For the game’s soundtrack, the developers turned to the trio of Masumi Ito, Yoshiyuki Ito and Fiori Wakakuwa, who composed the Tamashii no Mon – Dante no Shinkyoku yori soundtrack under the moniker of hyym. There’s little information available on Wakakuwa’s work – his only other credits seem to be Koei’s Super Mahjong Taikai and Inindo: Way of the Ninja. The opposite is true for the wife and husband team of Masumi and Yoshiyuki Ito. Starting out their careers as arrangers and composers on various Koei titles, they continued to arrange game music into the mid-1990s for numerous album releases – including Super Metroid, Virtua Fighter and Donkey Kong Country. They then moved into anime scoring, with Masumi Ito also launching a career as a singer with several solo albums and Yoshiyuki Ito working as Head Music Producer of Lantis – both artists amassing an impressive discography of 100+ titles each.

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Dick Tracy Soundtrack (Game Boy)

Dick Tracy Soundtrack (Game Boy), George Sanger, 1991

The success of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman kicked off the first wave of comic-book movies to hit cinemas. Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy – released the following year – might have looked like it was riding on the caped crusader’s coattails, but in fact the project had been in development since the early 1980s. It turned out to be one of the decade’s more artistically and financially successful comic book movies, with its extravagant visual design drenched in primary colours still impressive decades later. Unfortunately, none of the film’s many video game adaptations – mostly for 8-bit platforms – could hope to match that kind of visual splendour.

Prolific developer Realtime Associates handled Dick Tracy’s NES and Game Boy versions – which meant gamers had another soundtrack from in-house composer George Sanger to look forward to. Interestingly enough, the NES and Game Boy ports turned out to be sufficiently different from one another to warrant one score for the NES game and another one for the Game Boy title. Of course, Sanger wrote both soundtracks, with the Game Boy one coming out on top. The NES version is jazzier, but in its adherence to that genre’s stereotypes, it’s also less interesting than the ambitious Game Boy equivalent. What also helps is that the compositions on the Game Boy score are significantly longer and more substantial than on the NES.

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Little Orpheus Soundtrack

Little Orpheus Soundtrack, Jessica Curry / Jim Fowler, 2020

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture had been another commercial and critical success for The Chinese Room, but the following years saw the company going through a rough patch. Thankfully, after having to lay off all staff in 2017, directors Dan Pinchbeck and Jessica Curry bounced back soon enough when Sumo Digital acquired The Chinese Room, leading to 2020’s Little Orpheus. An Apple Arcade exclusive, Little Orpheus received acclaim for its substantial gameplay, outstanding presentation and original concept. The game follows the adventures of Ivan Ivanovich, tasked in 1962 with travelling inside the earth’s supposedly hollow interior to confirm whether it is fit for colonisation. After Ivan returns from his mission three years later, a tough-as-nails general interrogates him about what happened during his absence – and tries to figure out whether the fantastical tales of Ivan’s adventures could possibly be true.

As with other titles by The Chinese Room, Little Orpheus was a high-concept piece, channelling a number of influences and ideas. As such, it required a soundtrack that thoughtfully supported the game’s aesthetics and narrative. Jessica Curry had delivered these kinds of scores for several previous Chinese Room games. In the process, she had emerged as one of video game music’s leading composers through her impressively subtle and emotionally rewarding Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture soundtracks – the latter deservedly netting her a BAFTA Award. After those games’ meditations on life and death, the Little Orpheus soundtrack was an opportunity for Curry to dabble in more colourful and brighter moods, with the game taking inspiration from Saturday morning B-Movie serials and classic adventure movies like Flash Gordon, Sinbad and The Land that Time Forgot.

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Psybadek Soundtrack

Psybadek Soundtrack, Mike Clarke, 1998

Including Psybadek in a list of “The WORST Playstation Game[s] Ever Made” (as a YouTube reviewer does) is probably taking things a bit far – remember that there were loads of horrendous shovelware for Sony’s console, particularly in its latter years. Still, Psybadek remains a bit of a mystery. Here’s a game by one of the 32-bit era’s most successful and trendiest developers (Psygnosis), released in between heavy-hitters by that company like the WipeOut, Colony Wars, Destruction Derby and Formula 1 titles – and according to both contemporary and more recent reviewers, Psybadek falls flat on its face, with nary any redeeming features. At least Psybadek’s mix of racing and platforming elements showed that the developers were thinking outside of the box, even if that genre combination was ultimately poorly implemented.

As Gamespot noted in their review though, there’s one aspect where Psybadek – unexpectedly – shines: its score. Their claim that “the soundtrack is easily one of the best in video games anywhere” might sound like hyperbole. However, this is indeed one of the era’s strongest electronic game scores and far better than what you would expect to find in a game with such an otherwise poor presentation. Thanks be to veteran composer Mike Clarke, who had delivered numerous soundtracks for Psygnosis since the early 1990s, including one of the best metal scores ever to grace a video game: Formula 1.

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