2005 Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales Soundtrack

Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales Soundtrack, Yury Poteyenko, 2005

It would be easy to assume that with their quartet of pirate games, Russian developer Akella simply surfed on the coat tails of a certain Hollywood franchise and its (initially) humongous success. But Sea Dogs saw the light of day in 2000, three years before Johnny Depp made pirates cool again. And again one might assume that the title of its sequel – Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales – was an attempt to find a name that was as close as possible to Pirates of the Caribbean, without breaching copyright rules.

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Homeland Soundtrack

Homeland Soundtrack, Hayato Matsuo, 2005

Nintendo’s GameCube wasn’t blessed with a vast number of system exclusives – and what made the situation even more frustrating was that many games were only released in specific territories (out of the nearly 650 GameCube titles, only 281 ended up on store shelves in Japan!) As a result, there’s not a huge number of hidden GameCube treasures waiting to be unearthed – but those that do exist can be particularly obscure and little-known. Case in point: Homeland, an online RPG by Dragon Quest developer Chunsoft, was only released in Japan. It proved innovative in several ways – one of only four online games for the system, it was the only GameCube title where the console acted as a server. And instead of allowing parties of just four (like the GameCube’s Phantasy Star Online), Homeland let players band together in groups of up to 36!

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Kameo: Elements of Power Soundtrack

Kameo: Elements of Power Soundtrack, Steve Burke, 2005

It’s hard to say whatever curse it might have been, but throughout the 2000s, developer Rare struggled with cancellations or lengthy delays on several of its games. This fate also befell Kameo: Elements of Power, which was in development for a full five years. Initially announced under the name of Ariel’s Quest for the GameCube, production was moved to the Xbox after Microsoft purchased Rare. Ultimately, Kameo: Elements of Power became one of the launch titles for the Xbox 360. Given its protracted development time, it was no surprise to see just how polished Kameo was, with its lavish fantasy visuals praised by nearly every critic. Views on the game’s playability and length were slightly more divided, but while Kameo didn’t manage to capture the magic of Rare’s classic Nintendo titles, it enjoyed strong enough sales and a generally warm reception.

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