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8-Bit Rally Soundtrack

8-Bit Rally Soundtrack, poisoncut, 2011

Despite the album title, this is not one of the many retro exercises in NES-style chiptunes. Instead, composer poisoncut’s work here makes full use of contemporary sounds and production techniques. At the same time, he subtly alludes to the music of the games that inspired 8-Bit Rally – the Lotus and Top Gear franchises. In a way, poisoncut is in a fortunate situation. The Lotus and Top Gear soundtracks never really developed an unmistakable signature sound, despite some recurring stylistic features. This means that poisoncut doesn’t need to mimic particular musical gestures. Instead he is free to work within his own style of melodic, high-octane electronic music. And in the end, that is enough to maintain consistency with 8-Bit Rally’s musical inspirations.

The 8-Bit Rally soundtrack differs most obviously from the Lotus and Top Gear scores in its melody-driven nature. One listen to opening track “Renegade Racer” confirms that poisoncut is more willing than Barry Leitch and Patrick Phelan to hit listeners hard and fast with catchy melodies. Combine this tendency with heavier beats and 8-Bit Rally’s music is deliciously in-your-face and fuss-free. poisoncut’s melodic chops are evident throughout the album, as he serves up both memorable hooks and more long-winded melodies. The latter are also introduced on “Renegade Racer”, as a measured synth melody powerfully unfolds on top of pumping beats. It’s a perfectly judged combination of contrasts. Insistent, beefy beats deliver the necessary speed rush, while the determined melodies tell players that they are still in control of the frantic racing action around them, ready to capture first place.

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Azkend 2: The World Beneath Soundtrack

Azkend 2: The World Beneath Soundtrack, Jonathan Geer, 2012

One of the most exciting experiences for music collectors is to come across a work that defies expectations and delivers something much more involving and satisfying than expected. Jonathan Geer’s Azkend 2: The World Beneath soundtrack is exactly that sort of album. It’s music for yet another match-3 game – a genre whose popularity soared with the advent of mobile gaming. This is not necessarily the kind of game one expects to deliver a full-bodied, lush (synth)orchestral score. However, that’s precisely what Azkend 2 achieves.

In an interview, Geer stated that “this kind of big, lush, adventurous soundtrack is really right up my alley and probably my strongest genre as a composer. My goal was to just write something very romantic and big.” You only need to listen to opening track “Azkend 2 Theme” to realise that Geer achieved his aims. If you walked into this soundtrack not knowing what kind of game it was written for, chances are that you’d never guess this was music created for a puzzler. Instead, this is the kind of mature orchestral score that you’d expect to hear in a big-budget RPG.

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Dragon Quest IV Soundtrack (Mobile)

Since an internet search for screenshots of the mobile version’s cover came up empty, a screenshot of the PlayStation port’s cover has been used above.

Dragon Quest IV Soundtrack (Mobile), Koichi Sugiyama, 2014

It is to the credit of developer Chunsoft and publisher Enix that coming off the jaw-dropping success of Dragon Quest III, they decided not to play things safe with the next game in the franchise. Instead, they went to shake things up, going so far as to turn the game’s story into a series of initially unrelated chapters that introduce the various party members – before they all come together in the final chapter. Other innovations included day and night cycles, an early artificial intelligence system to give non-playable party members combat instructions, and the choice of which characters to use in battle. Dragon Quest IV turned into another million-seller for Enix – not quite as successful as its predecessor, but 3.1 million copies sold just in Japan for the NES original is not exactly a bad result either.

As per tradition, Koichi Sugiyama was back on board to score the Dragon Quest IV soundtrack. It turned out to be one of the most expansive NES scores ever written, clocking in at nearly a whole hour (looped). Sugiyama once more increased the breadth of the score, writing a theme for each world map, as well as several other location-specific compositions – on top of the pieces written for the usual suspects (town, dungeon, castle etc.)

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Dragon Quest VI Soundtrack (Mobile)

Dragon Quest VI Soundtrack (Mobile), Koichi Sugiyama, 2015

Dragon Quest V was the first game in the franchise to hit a 16-bit platform. But while it sported one of the era’s more original and moving narratives, its presentation felt like a relatively minor upgrade over its NES predecessor. Thankfully, Dragon Quest VI fixed this particular issue. Released in 1995, Dragon Quest VI wholeheartedly embraced the SNES’ technical capacities, featuring far more detailed and colourful graphics. Players also got to enjoy a much larger game world, thanks to Dragon Quest VI’s ‘real world / dream world’ set up. Development duties passed from Chunsoft on to Heart Beat, founded in 1992 by Manabu Yamana, director of Dragon Quest III-V. Needless to say, Dragon Quest VI became the best-selling game of 1995 in Japan. On top of those 3.2 million SNES cartridges, it later also sold an additional one million copies on the Nintendo DS.

Of course, Koichi Sugiyama returned once more to deliver the Dragon Quest VI soundtrack. On this occasion, he was joined by two unusually famous collaborators: seasoned fellow game composers Hitoshi Sakimoto and Tsukasa Tawada, who handled sound design duties. Maybe as a result, Dragon Quest VI’s instrument samples are a marked improvement over those used on previous SNES Dragon Quest games. However, their quality is strangely inconsistent – listen to the watery strings on “Monsters” and “Eternal Lullaby”. Then again – as always – all eyes were on the orchestral arrangement of the score anyway, released less than two weeks after the game and once more performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. A re-recording with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra followed in 2006. Compared to other games in the franchise, Dragon Quest VI received relatively few ports – to the Nintendo DS in 2010 and smartphones in 2015.

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Extreme Bike Trip Soundtrack

Extreme Bike Trip Soundtrack, Big Giant Circles, 2013

Extreme Bike Trip – both game and soundtrack – are a product of the era of digital technologies. Both are short, sharp blasts of fun that precisely know their purpose. Before the dawn of digital distribution channels, it’s unlikely they would have seen the light of day as standalone releases. They also never pretend to be more than what they are – but within their limited scope of ambition, they achieve everything they’re aiming for.

As a game, Extreme Bike Trip is based on an exceedingly simple mechanic. Race with your bike from left to right, tilt your bike forwards and backwards to not lose balance, and pick up gas canisters to make it as far into the race course as possible. Review site 148Apps nicely summed the game up as “simply a fun way to spend a few minutes”.

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Kale in Dinoland Soundtrack

Kale in Dinoland Soundtrack, Luming Hao, 2012

How to stand out from the deluge of retro-inspired indie games that have flooded mobile devices and other platforms? Game developer The Rotting Cartridge went with an intriguing, if cheeky idea. Just pretend that your new game is a port of a forgotten Game Boy title released in 1992. Of course, Kale in Dinoland was no lost classic from the olden days of gaming. Instead, it was simply a new 2D platformer, clad in those monochrome graphics that millions of gamers will fondly remember.

Part of that nostalgia-inducing design was of course an appropriately vintage-sounding score, created by Luming Hao. A friend of the game’s developers, Hao wrote the score on popular tracker software LSDj. At the time of writing the Kale in Dinoland soundtrack, Hao studied Computer Science and Music Composition at Lehigh University. That combination of technical and artistic skills would seem to make him a great candidate to pen a chiptunes score.

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Little Orpheus Soundtrack

Little Orpheus Soundtrack, Jessica Curry / Jim Fowler, 2020

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture had been another commercial and critical success for The Chinese Room, but the following years saw the company going through a rough patch. Thankfully, after having to lay off all staff in 2017, directors Dan Pinchbeck and Jessica Curry bounced back soon enough when Sumo Digital acquired The Chinese Room, leading to 2020’s Little Orpheus. An Apple Arcade exclusive, Little Orpheus received acclaim for its substantial gameplay, outstanding presentation and original concept. The game follows the adventures of Ivan Ivanovich, tasked in 1962 with travelling inside the earth’s supposedly hollow interior to confirm whether it is fit for colonisation. After Ivan returns from his mission three years later, a tough-as-nails general interrogates him about what happened during his absence – and tries to figure out whether the fantastical tales of Ivan’s adventures could possibly be true.

As with other titles by The Chinese Room, Little Orpheus was a high-concept piece, channelling a number of influences and ideas. As such, it required a soundtrack that thoughtfully supported the game’s aesthetics and narrative. Jessica Curry had delivered these kinds of scores for several previous Chinese Room games. In the process, she had emerged as one of video game music’s leading composers through her impressively subtle and emotionally rewarding Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture soundtracks – the latter deservedly netting her a BAFTA Award. After those games’ meditations on life and death, the Little Orpheus soundtrack was an opportunity for Curry to dabble in more colourful and brighter moods, with the game taking inspiration from Saturday morning B-Movie serials and classic adventure movies like Flash Gordon, Sinbad and The Land that Time Forgot.

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Pocket Mine Soundtrack

Pocket Mine Soundtrack, Big Giant Circles, 2013

As much fun as it can be to analyse a piece of music, drill down into what things make it work or not, explore its sources of inspiration and so forth, there’s also the simple joy of getting caught up in a song that is just so irresistibly fun that all critical thinking takes a backseat for a moment. Big Giant Circle’s Pocket Mine soundtrack delivers precisely that sort of feeling with the aptly titled “That Diamond Smile”. The track also perfectly demonstrates how this soundtrack manages to draw upon the strengths derived from its 8-bit influences and enhances them by mixing in contemporary elements.

All that “That Diamond Smile” requires for success is the catchy little chiptunes ditty that opens the track. In what feels like the blink of an eye, things escalate, harmonies start building up, the tempo increases and what we then hear is a much broader, full-bodied rendition of the initial tune on soaring chiptunes synths. Suddenly, it’s one of the most memorable, joyful melodies ever written for a retro video game. Throughout the cue, the melody pushes higher and higher, until it returns for one final, fantastically joyful appearance. The insidiously catchy tune is a testament to Big Giant Circles’ (aka Jimmy Hinson) stature as a master tune smith.

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