The Greatest Game Music

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T2: The Arcade Game Soundtrack (Sega Genesis)

T2: The Arcade Game Soundtrack

T2: The Arcade Game Soundtrack (Sega Genesis), Matt Furniss, 1993

Game developers certainly didn’t pass up the opportunity to make the most of the blockbuster juggernaut that was Terminator 2: Judgment Day. At the time the third-highest grossing movie worldwide (behind Star Wars and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial), James Cameron’s work prompted numerous video game adaptations. In fact, when Midway ported their arcade rail shooter Terminator 2: Judgment Day to home consoles, they had to change its name to T2: The Arcade Game, to differentiate it from the already existing T2 games. That didn’t stop Midway Manufacturing Company from porting the game to as many platforms as possible – even to those that don’t seem like obvious candidates for a rail shooter (the Game Boy?)

The arcade original, with its polished presentation, remains fondly remembered. The reception of its many ports was quite varied. The Genesis adaptation fared well enough, with reviewers agreeing it offered a fun opportunity to blast away at robots – as long as you didn’t mind the inherently limited rail shooter gameplay. As was often the case at the time, each port received an original soundtrack – and the Genesis game was lucky enough to be scored by Matt Furniss.

The year prior, Furniss had scored the Genesis, Game Gear and Sega Master System versions of The Terminator. Those soundtracks – despite their obvious qualities – were a bit too short on substance to qualify as classics (although Furniss coaxed some imposing, hefty bass sounds out of the Game Gear and Master System). The T2: The Arcade Game soundtrack is Furniss’ strongest entry in the franchise, the best T2: The Arcade Game score and an intriguing addition to the Terminator franchise’s musical universe. While Geoff Follin and Tommy Tallarico used their franchise assignments to write either experimental sound collages or 80s-inspired, hook-laden pop/rock, Furniss takes the most obvious approach: an all-guns-blazing, unrelenting action score.

T2: The Arcade Game Soundtrack

Like the game, the T2: The Arcade Game soundtrack knows not to outstay its welcome. Clocking in at less than 15 minutes, the score hits hard from the get-go. Furniss’ masterful handling of the Genesis’ Yamaha YM2612 sound chip is well-known, and T2: The Arcade Game might be one of his crowning achievements. Each instrument has both a crystal-clear sound and a powerful presence that are an absolute delight. Fitting for a game with such an industrial, futuristic narrative, it’s particularly the percussion that steals the spotlight and not surprisingly, Furniss builds his tracks around densely layered rhythms. The drum sounds that Furniss teases out of the Genesis hardware are stunningly forceful and crisp. If one was to look for a demonstration of where the Genesis surpassed the SNES’ sound capacities, the T2: The Arcade Game soundtrack would be a prime example.

Right from the start, “Mission 1”’s hard-hitting drums ramp up the energy and tension. They contrast nicely with the more measured synth lines that at times turn surprisingly melodic, ringing out like majestic guitar chords. This explosive mix is bolstered by a busy, supple bass that allows Furniss to keep this mix of energetic and cinematically sweeping elements constantly moving. While Furniss obviously knows how to write adrenaline-driven compositions, there’s no shortage of melodies and potent atmospherics on the T2: The Arcade Game soundtrack.

On later tracks, Furniss varies his compositions by changing the nature of their rhythmic attack. “Mission 2” and “Mission 4” make extensive use of syncopations and poly-rhythmic percussion layers, moving the previously hard rock-tinged music closer towards prog rock and dance music. Furniss marries this outburst of frantic energy with more fragmented melodies – they help guide listeners through these whirlwind compositions that keep delivering new ideas at a frightening pace. On the short, trenchant “Mission 4”, Furniss is happy to indulge in the music’s disorienting effect, with an erratic synth lead that contributes to the panic-stricken mood. On “Mission 2”, he anchors his cue through a constantly pumping bassline that feels more threatening than empowering. Of course, “Boss Theme” turns out to be the soundtrack’s fastest, most single-minded track and its hyperactive bass and furious speed are really all it requires to sustain its short run time.

T2: The Arcade Game Soundtrack

The T2: The Arcade Game soundtrack changes its tack a bit on “Mission 3” and “Mission 5”, turning into something a bit more grooving. “Mission 3” opens with a head-nodding hip hop influence, while the synth leads become more active and intricate. Once more, Furniss builds a potently claustrophobic, dystopian atmosphere and underpins it with a complex rhythmic web – pay attention to the snare that travels between the stereo speakers, subtly enhancing the soundscape.

Final level track “Mission 5” turns out to be the T2: The Arcade Game soundtrack’s most intriguing cue. For the first time, Furniss sets the scene rather than jumping into the action right away – it’s the melodic outburst at 0:48 after a relatively quiet start that really brings the track to life. Furniss delivers an anthemic tune, but its chromatic resolution and the impossibly heavy bass chords gnawing at the music drag the melody down just as it is about to soar. This kind of emotional complexity comes unexpected, but it’s another example of Furniss’ exemplary attention to detail on what is one of the Sega Genesis’ most vividly realised scores.

  1. 01 - Mission 1 Furniss, Matt 2:16
  2. 02 - Mission 2 Furniss, Matt 2:05
  3. 03 - Mission 3 Furniss, Matt 2:18
  4. 04 - Mission 4 Furniss, Matt 1:19
  5. 05 - Mission 5 Furniss, Matt 2:38
  6. 06 - Boss Theme Furniss, Matt 1:17

Tagged With: 1993, First-Person Shooter, Matt Furniss, Midway, Rock/Metal, Sega Genesis, Terminator (Franchise)

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty Soundtrack

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty Soundtrack

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty Soundtrack, Michael Giacchino, 2008

No doubt, Michael Giacchino‘s body of work includes some of game music’s best and most influential orchestral scores. Specifically, it’s the Medal of Honor soundtracks that secured his name in the annals of game soundtracks. However, Giacchino’s most fascinating and curious work of game music is another one: the Turning Point: Fall of Liberty soundtrack.

It’s surprising to see how little attention this score has attracted. Of course, the easiest explanation is the score album’s rarity. Never available commercially, the album came as a bonus item of the game’s Xbox 360 collector’s edition. Another reason why the Turning Point: Fall of Liberty soundtrack disappeared from view is the game’s commercial failure. But the most intriguing explanation for the obscurity of Giacchino’s work for Turning Point is the unusual nature of its sound world – both when compared with Giacchino’s other game scores, and Western game soundtracks in general. This is Giacchino at his most experimental and acerbic – both across his game and film scores.

True, “Main Title”’s French horn melody has the same sense of proud patriotism as the composer’s Medal of Honor scores. However, soon surprisingly dissonant violin tremoli attack the noble theme, which is one of Giacchino’s best melodic inventions. These harsh interjections are a harbinger of what is to follow throughout the Turning Point: Fall of Liberty soundtrack. Giacchino’s writing had already turned decidedly less melodic and overtly emotional on Call of Duty and Medal of Honor: Airborne. However, Turning Point takes these inclinations further and introduces a new sense of disorientation and chaos to Giacchino’s music.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty Soundtrack

Those who expect Giacchino to continue the emotionally gushing approach of Medal of Honor: Frontline are in for a rude awakening once “Skyscraping” brushes aside even the last bits of “Main Title”’s sentimentality. This fierce composition savagely hammers out heavy rhythmic accents and forcefully strident melody progressions. Fittingly, the pounding percussion rhythms – often doubled by brass and xylophone – keep abruptly changing direction and volume. And what little consonant, melodic material we hear almost desperately struggles to hold its own against the music’s jagged aggression.

Turning Point’s percussion onslaught is by no means a way to simply give the music an adrenaline kick. Instead, the percussion section’s biting, irregular patterns give the soundtrack a nervy edge and jittery energy that feels driven, never uplifting or empowering. Both harsh and invigorating, the music moves in enigmatic stops and starts, creating claustrophobic feelings of tension and fright. Giacchino’s material is purposefully fragmented, but in another display of his compositional skills, the music never loses the listener’s interest. The most impressive display of this quality is “The Tower of London”. After its edgy opening ostinato, the composition disappears into a twilight netherworld. Only hushed fragments of sounds float through the nocturnal ether for minutes on end – and it’s captivating all the way.

“The Tower of London” is the soundtrack’s most deconstructive moment, pushing the boundaries of Giacchino’s musical vocabulary. The way the composition willfully undercuts first-person shooter scoring traditions highlights one of Turning Point’s most exciting traits. At times it feels like Giacchino heightens the music’s already plentiful sardonic bite and turns it into open satire. Just listen to the way “The White House”’s ferocious brass attacks are almost frivolously imitated by flute and xylophone. The latter play the same supposedly commanding rhythms, mocking them through the xylophone’s inevitably light-weight timbres.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty Soundtrack

It’s no surprise then that for most of the album, there is no romantic sense of glory, of valiantly fighting against the odds. All that remains in these sometimes maniacally driven compositions is the breathless hope for survival. Remarkably, even when the music calms down during a few interludes, relief or maybe even encouragement remain elusive. The harmonic material on “Escape from New York”, “On the Trail to DC” and “DC in Ruins” is bleakly sparse. Their sustained string chords hover in limbo, mournful but not melodic enough to inspire grief or any particularly emotional reaction.

In the end though, the Turning Point: Fall of Liberty soundtrack – believe it or not – has a happy conclusion. Throughout the score, the main theme returns as a harbinger of safety, an ordering force amidst the continuous tumult. Giacchino’s careful thematic preparation finally bears fruit on penultimate track “The Zeppelin”. The composition opens with Giacchino’s most harmonically advanced string writing on any game project of his. Feelings of insecurity then slowly fade away as the main theme asserts itself, more and more forcefully, until it leads the piece to a triumphant, reassuring finale that minutes ago would have seemed out of reach.

Arguably, the Turning Point: Fall of Liberty soundtrack is the enigmatic culmination of Giacchino’s writing for war games. It’s fascinating to behold how Giacchino has found the most effective way to remove the glamour from first-person shooters’ depiction of war – not through sincerity as on the Medal of Honor games and Call of Duty, but instead through caustic near-mockery. There’s little else like Turning Point in the realm of game music, where composers use satire and parody far too rarely.

  1. 01 - Main Title Michael Giacchino 5:27
  2. 02 - Scyscraping Michael Giacchino 5:05
  3. 03 - The Barricades Michael Giacchino 4:03
  4. 04 - Escape from New York Michael Giacchino 4:21
  5. 05 - On the Trail to DC Michael Giacchino 2:00
  6. 06 - Rescuing Donovan Michael Giacchino 2:03
  7. 07 - DC in Ruins Michael Giacchino 2:14
  8. 08 - The White House Michael Giacchino 4:11
  9. 09 - Vigilante Justice Michael Giacchino 2:01
  10. 10 - The Tower of London Michael Giacchino 6:19
  11. 11 - London Bridge Is Falling Down Michael Giacchino 3:10
  12. 12 - Bullets & Strife Michael Giacchino 1:38
  13. 13 - The Zeppelin Michael Giacchino 3:49
  14. 14 - Axis on the March Michael Giacchino 1:16

Tagged With: 2008, First-Person Shooter, Michael Giacchino, Orchestral, PC, PlayStation 3, Spark Unlimited, XBox 360

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