George Sanger Archives - The Greatest Game Music

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.

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Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2 – Martian Dreams Soundtrack

Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2 – Martian Dreams Soundtrack, Dana Glover / Tom Hollingshead / George Sanger, 1991

Back in 1991, dedicated soundtrack releases for Western game soundtracks were pretty much unheard of. One of the pioneers was Origin Soundtrack, a compilation of music from some of Origin‘s high-profile games of 1990/91. Exactly how Origin Soundtrack came about still remains a bit of a mystery. What seems to be confirmed is that the album is an unauthorised collection of music. Its producer and engineer was veteran composer Martin Galway, who had just finished work on Wing Commander II. His aim was probably to showcase his work and that of other composers at Origin on a stand-alone basis.

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Wing Commander Soundtrack (FM Towns)

Wing Commandeer Soundtrack

Wing Commander Soundtrack (FM Towns), David Govett / George Sanger / Nenad Vugrinec, 1992

Very few games foreground their music as much as Wing Commander – and that’s only one way in which it proved to be a watershed moment for game music. Before the player gets to see the game’s intro or even title, game producer Chris Roberts inserts something else, something remarkable: the sight of a pixelated orchestra and conductor, set against the backdrop of a blue planetoid and star-speckled outer space. The orchestra tunes for a few seconds, before the conductor gives the signal to launch into a brief fanfare.

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Zhadnost: The People’s Party Soundtrack

Zhadnost: The People’s Party Soundtrack, David Govett / Joe McDermott / Weston Phelan / George Sanger, 1995

Zhadnost: The People’s Party is one of those games that could have only emerged in the mid-1990s – that heady time when CD-ROM technology was still fairly new and game developers were trying to figure out what do with it. Often enough, the extra storage space would simply be filled up with a Red Book audio soundtrack (The Terminator). Other developers discovered their cinematic ambitions and turned their games into wannabe-movies and full motion video bonanzas. Zhadnost: The People’s Party more or less follows that second approach, but it uses FMVs to realise its very particular vision of a whacko communist game show whose contestants compete for their freedom after having been kidnapped by the totalitarian nation of Bizarrnia. Yes, they don’t make them like they used to.

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