Action Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Actraiser Renaissance Soundtrack

Actraiser Renaissance Soundtrack, Yuzo Koshiro, 2021

One of the most fondly remembered games of the first generation of SNES titles is Actraiser. Only the fourth SNES game to be released in Japan, Actraiser was developer Quartet’s first project. It was the beginning of an auspicious career that would see the company create some of the most memorable SNES projects. Actraiser was the rare game that offered something unique at the time – a combination of side-scrolling platforming action and city-building simulation. The whole concept was held together by Actraiser’s mythical narrative, pitting a protagonist with god-like powers against the forces of darkness. Unfortunately, 1993’s Actraiser 2 met with a less enthusiastic response, after it focused entirely on (punishingly difficult) platforming. And so, the franchise stopped dead in its tracks, seemingly forgotten by new rightsholder Square Enix – until out of nowhere, the company announced remake Actraiser Renaissance in September 2021.

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Blast Corps Soundtrack

Blast Corps Soundtrack, Graeme Norgate, 1997

Developer Rare arguably rose to fame and worldwide success with its Donkey Kong Country trilogy. However, it’s usually the Nintendo 64 era that is considered Rare’s golden age – no surprise, as the company seemed incapable of not churning out classic after classic for a while. That winning streak began with Blast Corps, released just in time for the console’s launch in Europe. The title was based on an idea by Rare founder Chris Stamper. For years, he had wanted to make a game about destroying buildings – simple as that. Beginning production in 1996, a team of just four developers (sometimes expanded to seven) fitted a gameplay concept around this idea: a nuclear missile carrier was out of control and steamrolling ahead on autopilot. To clear the way, the player controls an array of sometimes bizarre vehicles (including a giant one-armed robot with a rolling attack).

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Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! Soundtrack

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! Soundtrack, Jonathan Geer, 2020

What do you do if you have delivered two successful instalments of your cooking simulation franchise and are wondering where to take things next? If you are developer Vertigo Gaming, the answer is: don’t change your winning formula, but have some fun with the premise. In other words: the core loop of clicking on the right ingredients at the right time while juggling multiple food orders didn’t change much. Reviewers did point out issues with the game’s UI and occasionally punishing difficulty level, but by large and enjoyed Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! (and its appetising art style). Where things took a left turn was with the game’s narrative. Set in a post-apocalyptic USA, your restaurant empire has been blown to pieces and now you’ve hit the road with a couple of helpful robots who’ve let you turn their van into a food truck.

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Gauntlet IV Soundtrack

Gauntlet IV Soundtrack, Masaharu Iwata / Hitoshi Sakimoto, 1993

In an industry dominated so much by spin, it is refreshing to see a corporate history description as honest as developer M2’s: “Gathered a bunch of friends who used to play Gauntlet together at the arcades and ported it to PC (X68000) for fun. Presented it to TENGEN/ATARI GAMES, who then sold it for the MegaDrive title after some back and forth.” It’s a perfectly succinct description of how Gauntlet IV came about – although it is worth pointing out that at least the game’s title was a clever bit of marketing. Technically, Gauntlet IV was a significantly enhanced port of the original Gauntlet, adding three new gameplay modes. However, naming the game after an eight-year-old title that had already been ported many times to other platforms probably didn’t look like a promising strategy. So, a roman numerical was added, and Gauntlet IV was instead sold as a sequel.

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Nessa no Hoshi Soundtrack

Nessa no Hoshi Soundtrack, Kiyoshi Yoshikawa, 1997

The 32-bit era deserves to be remembered as one of gaming’s most experimental periods. Moving from two-dimensional pixel-based graphics into the polygonal 3D space forced developers to get creative and develop new gameplay concepts – sometimes through what feels in retrospect like try-and-error. One such experiment that now seems somewhat bizarre was Nessa no Hoshi. The game was an incongruous mix of first-person adventure and 3d-fighting games. The fact that Nessa no Hoshi was set on an alien desert planet might explain the game’s less than appealing graphics, presented in many dreary shades of brown. Still, there was significant ambition behind this game. It made extensive use of full-motion videos, to the point that Nessa no Hoshi was published on two CDs. The fact that developer Itochu was part of one of Japan’s largest companies might explain the surprising amount of resources invested into the game.

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Speed Limit Soundtrack

Speed Limit Soundtrack, Matija Malatestinic, 2021

There have been many love letters to classic video games of the 1980s and 90s. That means if a developer wants to turn heads with yet another homage, they will have to come up with something special. With Speed Limit, Gamechuck opted for a distillation and combination of staples pulled from the history of arcade games. Their title brought together elements of run and gun platformers, racing games, isometric shooters, vertical shoot ’em ups and even faux-3D flight simulators à la Afterburner. On top of all that, Gamechuck threw in several movie-inspired setpieces. Whether the game was ultimately the best of various worlds is up for debate. Reviews were generally respectful but couldn’t help point out Speed Limit’s brutal difficulty level that made memorisation of oncoming enemy hordes necessary.

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Starship Rendezvous Soundtrack (PC-88)

Starship Rendezvous Soundtrack (PC-88), Masaharu Iwata / Hitoshi Sakimoto, 1989

At first glance, there is precious little setting Starship Rendezvous apart from the glut of doujin games released during the late 1980s and early 90s on Japanese home computer systems. The game’s laggy, basic top-down shooter gameplay is spread across only four levels. To make matters worse, gamers could only shoot one bullet at a time – and then had to wait for it to leave the screen. At least enemies would only notice players when they ended up in their direct line of view. Then again, none of this was really the point of the game – that would be the “boss” fights against female characters in various states of undress. Yes, it’s an adult game, and per (almost) usual, the gameplay is a mere afterthought.

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