2000 Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Fix & Foxi – Episode 1: Lupo Soundtrack

Fix & Foxi – Episode 1: Lupo Soundtrack, Manfred Linzner, 2000

One day, historians will determine how many hundreds of licensed platformers were released for the Game Boy and the Game Boy Colour. Then again, we might never know the exact number – the market share of both platforms was so large that even local releases promised commercial success. Case in point: Fix & Foxi – Episode 1: Lupo (and no, there was no second episode, so maybe things didn’t turn out as planned). The game was based on an animated TV series, which in turn was an adaptation of a weekly German comics magazine first published in 1953. The magazine ran for decades and boasted a circulation of several hundred thousand per week at the height of its success. Of course, abroad the two anthropomorphic foxes and their friend Lupo weren’t particularly well-known, so this Game Boy Colour title remained an obscure Germany-only game.

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Kessen Soundtrack

Kessen Soundtrack, Reijiro Koroku, 2000

Since their inception in the mid-80s, Koei’s many historical strategy games had always been more of an insider proposition. It felt a bit like series such as Nobunaga’s Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms were reserved for those gamers who were willing to spend hours parsing menus and stats, while carefully planning their next move. Several of these titles had made it to the US market but never turned into eye-catching best-sellers. That changed with Kessen, one of the PlayStation 2’s launch titles. Set once more in feudal Japan, Kessen emphasised spectacular visuals and battlefield action, attracting far more attention internationally than any previous Koei game. Ultimately, Kessen was successful enough to spawn two sequels. However, several contemporary reviewers pointed out that the game lacked the usual complexity and depth of a Koei strategy game, making for an entertaining but shallow experience.

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Medal of Honor: Underground Soundtrack (PS1)

Medal of Honor: Underground Soundtrack (PS1), Michael Giacchino, 2000

Medal of Honor strove hard to create a first-person shooter experience that left an impression on players beyond the mere satisfaction of shooting bad guys before they could shoot you. However, the fact that the game progressed the FPS genre in terms of subject matter wasn’t its most revolutionary aspect. Instead, that particular achievement would have been the wide-spread critical recognition of game music’s quality outside of the gaming community. Michael Giacchino‘s Medal of Honor score fashioned itself on John Williams’ action scoring of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Astonishingly, it matched the elevated standards that come with such role models. As a result, bloggers, film score collectors and music fans in general – many for the first time – took note of the music produced for a video game.

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Mickey’s Speedway USA Soundtrack (N64)

Mickey’s Speedway USA Soundtrack (N64), Ben Cullum, 2000

For a few years, it felt like Rare just couldn’t help producing outstanding games for the Nintendo 64, titles that were bound to be classics – Blast Corps, GoldenEye 007, Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo-Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini, Perfect Dark… it seemed that Rare couldn’t go wrong. That winning streak came to an end in late 2000 with Mickey’s Speedway USA. The verdict from reviewers was almost universally that yes, this was a decent enough game, with the usual depth and amount of content one had come to expect from a Rare title. But compared to its spiritual predecessor Diddy Kong Racing, Mickey’s Speedway USA fell decidedly short – unlike GoldenEye 007, this was not a game that transcended its origins as a licensed title.

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Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream Soundtrack

Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream Soundtrack, Yoko Kanno, 2000

Occasionally legend is indeed more intriguing than reality. One such case is Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream, a Japan-only Dreamcast title that initially made waves for having been developed by a predominantly (or even exclusively) female team. Unfortunately, a look at the game’s credits quickly shows that this wasn’t the case, although women indeed held key design roles. Ultimately, Napple Tale didn’t need these sorts of urban myths to stand apart from the competition. While not particularly challenging, the game created a wonderfully whimsical, dream-like 2.5D world that mixed platforming with RPG elements. Around this framework, developer Chime Corporation wrapped a narrative that dealt with how the passing of seasons impacted the personality of the game’s characters.

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Perfect Dark Soundtrack (Nintendo 64)

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.

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Sakura Taisen GB Soundtrack

Sakura Taisen GB Soundtrack, Kohei Tanaka, 2000

While seeing Sega franchises appear on Nintendo consoles has become common, back in 2000 – when Sega still had a stake in the console wars – the situation was very different. It was all the more surprising then that Sega decided to port one of its franchises – Sakura Taisen – to the Game Boy Colour (it’s worthwhile mentioning that less than one year earlier, the Neo Geo Pocket Colour had received a Sonic the Hedgehog port). Maybe not surprisingly, Sakura Taisen GB’s developers didn’t attempt to replicate the scale of previous franchise titles on the small handheld console. Instead, the game proceeds more along the lines of a dating-sim, with players controlling a character who spends a month training and living with the Hanagumi group of theatre actors/defenders of the planet.

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Warriors of Might and Magic Soundtrack (GBC)

Warriors of Might and Magic Soundtrack (GBC), Matthew Simmonds, 2000

By the late 1990s, the Might & Magic franchise was going strong, with several successful mainline games and the recent establishment of the Heroes of Might & Magic series. Not surprisingly, publisher The 3DO Company was keen to branch out further, making the most of the valued brand name. Unfortunately, its first attempt to do so in 1999 via 3d-action RPG Crusaders of Might and Magic didn’t cause much excitement. Interestingly enough, The 3DO Company tried again with a similar game concept a year later. However, Warriors of Might and Magic wasn’t met with much more enthusiasm amongst gamers and critics than its predecessor.

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