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

Tamashii no Mon – Dante Shinkyoku yori Soundtrack

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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Last Ninja 2 Soundtrack (C64)

Last Ninja 2 Soundtrack (C64), Matt Gray, 1988

The Last Ninja had been a multi-million smash hit, so developer System 3 didn’t upset the apple cart when they created Last Ninja 2: Back with a Vengeance. The main novelty was the change of scenery: protagonist Armakuni is mysteriously transported from feudal Japan to 20^th-century New York City, where he has to defeat evil shogun Kunitoki once again. The new locales added just the right amount of innovation, while the core gameplay largely remained the same. However, System 3 also tweaked and improved important aspects of the formula it was following – better sprite animation, more locations and a greater number of puzzles. The result? A whopping 5,5 million copies sold and ports for the Amiga, Atari ST, NES, ZX Spectrum and MS-DOS following in due course. And let’s not forget the confusingly titled Last Ninja Remix, a slightly enhanced re-release of Last Ninja 2 for 8-bit computers.

Ben Daglish and Anthony Lees’ work for The Last Ninja was one of that game’s main selling points, channelling the required sense of Eastern mysticism into one of the most energy-packed and dense 1980s action game soundtracks. Anthony Lees wrote some material for Last Ninja 2, which unfortunately was rejected by the developer, who deemed it unsuitable for the style of the game. In stepped composer Matt Gray, who had already worked on a handful of 8-bit game scores since entering the industry in 1987. However, Last Ninja 2 was his biggest assignment yet, which he landed after System 3 had made him their in-house composer based on his impressive, quickly composed loading track for Bangkok Knight. After three more years of game scoring, Gray became a dance music producer and remixer, co-creating songs for the Pet Shop Boys, Kylie Minogue, Girls Aloud, Sugarbabes – oh, and Cher’s “Believe”.

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The Last Ninja Soundtrack (C64)

The Last Ninja Soundtrack (C64), Ben Daglish / Anthony Lees, 1987

The Commodore 64 is home to more than a few legendary titles and The Last Ninja is no doubt part of that select group. However, its development turned out to be an unexpectedly protracted affair after the initial group of developers – Budapest’s SoftView – were unable to make progress on the project. System 3’s Mark Cale took the code back to London, with the game’s engine then rewritten for the C64 by John Twiddy. Cale’s vision for the project was an ambitious one. He envisaged an isometric ninja adventure that would create a far more expansive world for gamers to explore than what your regular C64 game accomplished. Blending exploration, adventure elements and arcade-style combat, The Last Ninja struck a chord with both critics and the masses, going on to sell about four million copies (according to Cale) and kicking off a massively successful franchise.

Like the game itself, The Last Ninja soundtrack has become the stuff of legend, again excelling on a platform that had no shortage of outstanding music. Scoring duties fell to the duo of Ben Daglish and Anthony Lees. Daglish had already built a sizeable portfolio of 8-bit computer soundtracks and was well on his way to becoming one of the most heralded game composers of the decade. Lees’ involvement was more of a surprise. He had entered a competition (run as an April Fool’s Day joke) by ZZAP! 64 magazine and his winning composition drew the attention of Cale. Lees would later write music for Last Ninja 2, but his score was rejected as the developers found it didn’t suit the style of the game. Many of the 16-bit computer games Lees would later write for unfortunately remained unpublished, before he retired from the game music scene.

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Descent Soundtrack (Mac)

Descent Soundtrack (Mac), Johann Langlie / Brian Luzietti / Larry Peacock / Jim Torres / Tim Wiles, 1995

Among the titles that ushered in the new era of 3D gaming during the mid-1990s, Descent sometimes gets a bit overlooked. Two years after Doom, Descent took the depiction of three-dimensional spaces in video games to the next level. Through the framework of a space flight simulator, Parallax Software gave players six degrees of freedom to shoot their way through a series of off-world mines. Another first was the use of (almost) exclusively 3D graphics to depict the game’s world, instead of bitmaps. It was no wonder that Descent was able to pull off such technical feats – its co-creators Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog had previously worked on another revolutionary 3D title: Ultima Underworld. Critical acclaim and strong sales figures rewarded Parallax Software’s daring, leading to a number of ports and sequels – and enough fan devotion to crowdfund a prequel decades later!

Tracing the creation of the Descent soundtrack is a mildly confusing affair, thanks to the game’s various ports. The original PC release came with a MIDI soundtrack composed by Ken Allen, Brian Luzietti, Larry Peacock, Leslie Spitzer, Jim Torres and Tim Wiles. Some of these artists had previously worked on other titles by publisher Interplay, while other composers don’t seem to have had much of a career in games outside of the Descent franchise. The score was heavily influenced by industrial music bands of the day like Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly, with this particular genre reaching its peak of popularity in the mid-1990s. The Mac and PlayStation ports released later on used CD audio, including arranged versions of some of the PC MIDI compositions, as well as licensed tracks by Nivek Ogre and Type-O Negative.

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Dark Law: Meaning of Death Soundtrack

Dark Law: Meaning of Death Soundtrack, Satoshi Nagano / Michihiko Shichi, 1997

By 1997, software supply for the SNES has dwindled to a trickle – but intriguing new games for the ageing console still popped up here and there. One such title was developer Sakata SAS’ Dark Law: Meaning of Death, the sequel to 1991’s Dark Lord. While the premise of its fantasy narrative was fairly pedestrian (ancient evil returns – and kidnaps the damsel in distress!), Dark Law surprised with its unexpected take on RPG gameplay tropes. Focused less on combat and more on exploration and puzzle solving, Dark Law was considerably less linear than most other JRPGs. Instead of following a clearly delineated path, gamers would select from a series of short stories or scenarios that ultimately all turn out to be connected with each other. And true to its ominous name, Dark Law: The Meaning of Death dealt with unusually sombre subject matter (at least for a 16-bit RPG).

To craft the game’s soundtrack, Sakata SAS hired a team of game musicians going by the name of Target Laboratory. Led by veteran composer Yusuke Takahama, Target Laboratory had been active since the mid-1990s. Four of its members worked on Dark Law – Takahama himself as sound producer and Nobuo Horie on sound effects, while Satoshi Nagano and Michihiko Shichi handled composing duties. Both artists – fairly new to the industry – had collaborated on previous Target Laboratory projects such as 1995’s Kat’s Run: Zen-Nippon K Car Senshuken and Tokimeki Card Paradise: Koi no Royal Straight Flush. Nagano’s career seems to have trailed off after a few more Target Laboratory games. Shichi joined developer Omega Force and became sound designer and director of their Samurai Warriors and Dynasty Warriors franchises – before joining tri-Ace and sound directing high-profile titles such as the later Star Ocean games and Resonance of Fate.

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Shiren the Wanderer 3 Soundtrack (Wii)

Shiren the Wanderer 3 Soundtrack (Wii), Hayato Matsuo, 2008

The Shiren the Wanderer franchise is one of those video game series that has generated a surprising number of titles, despite never being blessed with outstanding sales numbers. Upon its release in Japan in 2008, Fushigi no Dungeon: Fuurai no Shiren 3: Karakuri Yashiki no Nemuri Hime was the seventh game in the long-running franchise of roguelikes. Making matters rather confusing, in 2010 Atlus USA released the game in the USA as Shiren the Wanderer (not to be confused with the 1995 SNES original). For the purpose of this review, we’ll stick with Shiren the Wanderer 3. Like more or less all other Shiren the Wanderer titles, the game generated respectable reviews and decent sales, without leaving a particularly strong impression either way. What a number of reviewers did remark upon was that the game’s difficulty had been toned down somewhat from its predecessors, making this a more accessible entry in the franchise.

While the first Shiren the Wanderer game had been blessed by what is Koichi Sugiyama’s best work outside of the Dragon Quest series, Hayato Matsuo had taken over franchise scoring duties since 2001’s Shiren the Wanderer GB2. For that score as well as on 2002’s Fushigi no Dungeon: Fuurai no Shiren Gaiden: Onna Kenshi Asuka Kenzan, Matsuo had relied extensively on material previously written by Sugiyama. Matsuo took a more individualistic approach on the Shiren the Wanderer 3 soundtrack, which features only a few reprises of Sugiyama’s melodies. The score came at a fortuitous time for Matsuo, hot on the heels of his magnum opus Hellsing Ultimate. Unfortunately, no soundtrack release has been forthcoming for Shiren the Wanderer 3 – maybe developer Chunsoft was wary of releasing a four disc-album for a Wii title that hadn’t been a commercial smash hit.

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Shiren the Wanderer Soundtrack (SNES)

Shiren the Wanderer Soundtrack (SNES), Koichi Sugiyama, 1995

It’s a bit surprising that it took publisher Enix a full seven years to create spin-off games for its monstrously successful Dragon Quest franchise. Enix’ first attempt to widen the Dragon Quest universe was 1993’s Torneko no Daibouken: Fushigi no Dungeon for the SNES. The game was successful enough to kickstart its own franchise: Mystery Dungeon. The next entry in this burgeoning series was Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, again released on the SNES. One of the system’s few roguelikes – replete with randomly generated levels and a punishing difficulty level – Shiren the Wanderer in turn sold sufficient copies to create yet another franchise of its own. Looking to put their own creative stamp on the Mystery Dungeon series, developer Chunsoft differentiated the game from its Dragon Quest brethren by setting it in a fantasy version of feudal Japan.

For the game’s soundtrack, Chunsoft sought the services of a known quantity: Koichi Sugiyama, who had provided the music for all of Chunsoft’s previous Dragon Quest games and by this stage was one of game music’s most famed composers. While the Dragon Quest titles allowed Sugiyama to indulge in his fondness for Western classical music, their pseudo-medieval/fantasy settings didn’t give him much of an opportunity to draw upon Japanese musical influences (apart from Dragon Quest III’s “Jurong”). For Sugiyama, the Shiren the Wanderer soundtrack was a chance to remedy this situation, ensuring that his music matched the game’s visually distinct character.

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