The Greatest Game Music

Reviews of truly outstanding game music

  • Soundtracks
  • Composers
  • Companies
  • Platforms
  • Franchises
  • Music Genres
  • Game Genres
  • Years

Dick Tracy Soundtrack (Game Boy)

Dick Tracy Soundtrack (Game Boy), George Sanger, 1991

The success of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman kicked off the first wave of comic-book movies to hit cinemas. Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy – released the following year – might have looked like it was riding on the caped crusader’s coattails, but in fact the project had been in development since the early 1980s. It turned out to be one of the decade’s more artistically and financially successful comic book movies, with its extravagant visual design drenched in primary colours still impressive decades later. Unfortunately, none of the film’s many video game adaptations – mostly for 8-bit platforms – could hope to match that kind of visual splendour.

[Read more…]

Tagged With: 1991, Chiptune, Game Boy, George Sanger, Platformer, Realtime Associates

Donkey Kong Land 2 Soundtrack

Donkey Kong Land 2 Soundtrack

Donkey Kong Land 2 Soundtrack, Grant Kirkhope / David Wise, 1996

When developer Rare released Donkey Kong Country on the SNES in 1994, reviewers hailed it a technical marvel that very few people would have expected to see on the ageing hardware. When Rare released a Game Boy port called Donkey Kong Land a year later, jaws hit the floor again. How could those Silicon Graphics workstations-rendered 3D sprites possibly translate to the monochrome Game Boy display? Turns out it was possible to bring those pre-rendered graphics to the 4-bit platform – although the result was visually overly busy and impacted gameplay.

[Read more…]

Tagged With: 1996, Chiptune, David Wise, Game Boy, Grant Kirkhope, Platformer, Rare

Monster Max Soundtrack

Monster Max Soundtrack

Monster Max Soundtrack, David Wise, 1994

Sometimes the universe (or at least video game publishers) work in mysterious ways. On paper, Monster Max should have been a success – not a million-seller (few isometric action adventures on the Game Boy were), but still a game that would deliver respectable sales figures. Its pedigree was impeccable – a collaboration between Rare and the duo of Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond. Both parties had created genre classics in the 1980s – Rare with Knight Lore, Alien 8 and Nightshade, while Ritman and Drummond (inspired by Knight Lore) were the men behind Batman and Head Over Heels. Ritman had just finished work on a development system Rare used for many of their games, and he decided to start work on a Game Boy title.

[Read more…]

Tagged With: 1994, Adventure, Chiptune, David Wise, Game Boy, Rare

Twitter

Follow us @BestGameMusic

Search

Popular tags

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1999 2000 2012 2021 Action Action Adventure Adventure Akihiko Mori Chiptune David Wise Electronic Fighting Final Fantasy (Franchise) First-Person Shooter Koei Matt Furniss Mixed Music Genres Mobile NES Nobuo Uematsu Orchestral PC Platformer PlayStation PlayStation 2 PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 Racing Rare Rock/Metal RPG Sega Genesis Shoot'em Up Simulation/Strategy SNES Square Switch Xbox 360