1998 Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack

Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack, Yoko Kanno, 1998

After a somewhat rocky start (that initially didn’t even see all episodes screened), Cowboy Bebop went on to become one of anime’s cultural milestones – on both sides of the Pacific. Setting itself apart from almost anything else produced for TV animation in either Japan or the USA, Cowboy Bebop merged disparate genres and visual styles in ways that helped the series introduce many new Western viewers to anime. Its cross-cultural appeal was partially due to its use of tropes familiar to Western audiences – Western, pulp fiction, film noir and cyberpunk (all within a space opera setting). Shinichirou Watanabe’s creation turned out to be popular enough to spawn a movie sequel and feature on many ‘best of’ lists in the years that followed.

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I.Q. Final Soundtrack

I.Q. Final Soundtrack, Takayuki Hattori, 1998

Thankfully, the 32-bit era still had a place for games that were visually extremely simple yet featured addictive gameplay. One such title was 1997’s PlayStation puzzler Intelligent Qube. It was designed by Masahiko Sato, a professor and digital artist working at the Tokyo University of Arts. Controlling Intelligent Qube’s protagonist, gamers had to clear wave after wave of approaching cubes by marking spots on the stage – floating in the blackness of space – waiting for the cube to roll on top of it. Like the best puzzlers, Intelligent Qube used such an extremely simple gameplay premise – according to Sato designed within an hour – to build an engrossing experience. The result was critical and commercial acclaim – by the end of 1997, the game had sold an astonishing 750,000 copies and won the Excellence Award for Interactive Art at the 1997 Japan Media Arts Festival.

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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 later years. Still, Psybadek remains a bit of a mystery. This is 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. Yet, 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.

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Sentinel Returns Soundtrack

Sentinel Returns Soundtrack, John Carpenter, 1998

Sentinel Returns was the entirely unexpected sequel to 1980s computer cult puzzle game The Sentinel. That 1986 title was one of the first games to feature solid-filled 3D graphics. Its successor wasn’t as revolutionary, but it still had a striking visual appeal all of its own. The world of Sentinel Returns was an entirely surreal one, unsettling and gloomy. It was full of bizarre flesh-meets-metal inhabitants that only had a vague resemblance to real life objects.

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Xenogears Soundtrack

Xenogears Soundtrack, 1998, Yasunori Mitsuda

During its late-1990s heyday, Square – bolstered by the success of its Final Fantasy franchise – created an astonishing number of new IPs. However, none of these experiments was as madly ambitious and head-spinning as Xenogears. Designed as an early concept piece for Final Fantasy VII and then morphing into part of a planned six-part series spanning millennia, Xenogears served up one of the densest narratives ever seen in a video game. Its storyline was heavily based on philosophical concepts by Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung (and likely influenced more than a bit by Neon Genesis Evangelion). Throw in a pronounced anti-religious streak that jeopardised the game’s American release, and you have one of the 32-bit era’s most remarkable games. Sadly, Xenogears was held back by time constraints and the development team’s relative inexperience, leading to a bare-bones presentation of its second half.

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