The Greatest Game Music

Reviews of truly outstanding game music

99 Levels to Hell Soundtrack

99 Levels to Hell Soundtrack

99 Levels to Hell Soundtrack, Dalle Oldman, 2013

Dalle Oldman‘s 99 Levels to Hell soundtrack release could have only happened in the age of self-distributed digital albums. Few music labels would have been willing to release a 78-minute album for a game of 99 Levels’s low profile. Unfortunately, the album’s second half is a collection of cliché-ridden, bland sound collages filled with little more than eerie noises. These dark ambient level tracks inspire boredom much more than they suggest tension or anxiety.

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A-Train 5 Soundtrack

A-Train 5 Soundtrack

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

A-Train 5 Soundtrack, Koshiro Nishida, 1996

Few game series have shown as much longevity as the A-Train franchise. From the very first A-Train game released in 1985, the series gathered a reputation for delivering the most in-depth treatment of its subject matter gamers could ask for. Due to the corporate structure of Japanese railroad companies – which own all the stations, land and trains associated with the services they deliver – the A-Train games were always about more than just laying down train tracks and figuring out timetables. Instead, they were full-blown city-building simulators with a strong focus on rail infrastructure. The series was successful enough in Japan to pique the interest of overseas publishers (including SimCity’s Maxis) in the mid-1990s – although Western gamers seemed less interested than their Japanese counterparts. Thankfully, some decades later, digital distribution made it possible for franchise entries like A-Train All Aboard! Tourism to still reach Western shores.

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Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales Soundtrack

Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales Soundtrack

Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales Soundtrack, Yury Poteyenko, 2005

It would be easy to assume that with their quartet of pirate games, Russian developer Akella simply surfed on the coat tails of a certain Hollywood franchise and its (initially) humongous success. But Sea Dogs saw the light of day in 2000, three years before Johnny Depp made pirates cool again. And again one might assume that the title of its sequel – Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales – was an attempt to find a name that was as close as possible to Pirates of the Caribbean, without breaching copyright rules.

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Aquaria Soundtrack

Aquaria Soundtrack

Aquaria Soundtrack, Alec Holowka / Ian Holowka, 2007

By 2009, the indie game resurgence had already begun to make its mark on the gaming market at large. However, indie games’ impact on game music took longer to materialise. Existing digital distribution channels like iTunes and other online music stores didn’t cater to these often tiny projects. In this environment, the release of the Aquaria soundtrack was a watershed moment for Western indie game music. At the time, a 2CD album release for a Western indie game soundtrack was unheard of. Publisher Infinite Ammo’s courage was duly rewarded. Like the game, the Aquaria soundtrack met with an enthusiastic response from critics and gamers alike.

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Atlantis: The Lost Tales Soundtrack

Atlantis: The Lost Tales Soundtrack

Atlantis: The Lost Tales Soundtrack, Pierre Estève / Stéphane Picq, 1997

By the second half of the 1990s, French developer Cryo Interactive had found its niche: lavishly produced, Myst-style adventure games. The reception of these titles amongst critics remained somewhat ambivalent, but there’s no denying that Cryo’s approach was effective. Their most significant success might well have been Atlantis: The Lost Tales. Reviewers praised Atlantis’ visuals and intense atmosphere, bolstered by panoramic 360-degree first-person views of the pre-rendered environments and significant amounts of pre-recorded speech. At the same time, perceived gameplay flaws once again often resulted in average scores. That didn’t stop the game from selling more than 300,000 copies by late 1998, starting a franchise that would generate four more titles in future years and outlast Cryo itself.

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Soundtrack

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Soundtrack

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Soundtrack, Mikael Karlsson, 2010

Battlefield: Bad Company’s soundtrack had turned heads through the involvement of classical composer Mikael Karlsson. As a successful writer of modern (sometimes avant-garde) classical music and with an impressive body of well-received orchestral works, ballets and operas under his belt, Karlsson seemed like an unusual choice to score a first-person shooter. The link between Karlsson and the Battlefield franchise was Stefan Strandberg, sound director at game developer DICE. Friends during their study years in Stockholm, they reconnected when Karlsson moved to New York and a demo tape of his made it into the hands of Strandberg.

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Catacomb Snatch Soundtrack

Catacomb Snatch Soundtrack

Catacomb Snatch Soundtrack, C418 / anosou, 2012

Delivering under intense pressure can be a great conduit for creativity. For proof, look no further than the Catacomb Snatch soundtrack. The game itself came about as part of the “Humble Bundle Mojam”. This was a 60-hour event that saw indie developers creating a new game from scratch. To determine Catacomb Snatch’s theme, developer Mojang AB combined the most and least voted categories in an online poll they ran. That way, Catacomb Snatch turned out as an RTS/Shoot’em up game with an unlikely Steampunk-Ancient Egypt theme.

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Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! Soundtrack

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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Dead Space 2 Soundtrack

Dead Space 2 Soundtrack

Dead Space 2 Soundtrack, Jason Graves, 2011

“The Same. But Different. Yet Better.” According to Jason Graves, those were the words that he stuck above his monitor when composing Dead Space 2. Considering the success of Dead Space’s aural aspects – two BAFTAs and a degree of media attention few game scores ever achieve – Grave’s goal was no doubt an ambitious one. Then again, no matter how ferocious Dead Space’s soundtrack was, there was room for improvement. Graves’ breakthrough work was the equivalent of a horror movie that tries to scare its audience with jump scare after jump scare. And at some stage, watching monsters leap at the protagonist for yet another “boo!” effect gets old.

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Dear Esther Soundtrack

Dear Esther Soundtrack

Dear Esther Soundtrack, Jessica Curry, 2012

It seems fair to say that it’s usually indie video games that push the boundaries of the medium and have gamers and audiences asking “But is it a game?” (“Is it art?” being a close second). One of these games, Dear Esther, was initially a research project at the University of Plymouth. Players find themselves on a barren island in the Hebrides and are left to explore the surroundings. Meanwhile, a male voice-over reads out random letter fragments to a woman named Esther. With no threat of death and no tasks to be fulfilled, Dear Esther instead aims to capture gamers’ intrigue simply by letting them figure out – or just interpret – the fragmented narrative, hinting at a tragedy that precedes the events in the game. Encouragingly, this experiment in digital storytelling received significant critical acclaim and was a commercial success as well.

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Diablo Soundtrack

Diablo Soundtrack

Diablo Soundtrack, Matt Uelmen, 1996

When Blizzard announced Diablo III at the 2008 Blizzcon Worldwide International, they chose a simple way to do so. All guitarist Laurence Juber had to do was to play the first few chords of the original Diablo’s signature tune. Of course, the piece in question was Matt Uelmen’s immortal “Tristram”. And according to Diablo III’s lead composer Russell Brower “over 10,000 people in the room knew EXACTLY what was coming”. Such is the power of a truly classic soundtrack composition that it can become the most memorable and thus quickest reference to the game or film it accompanied. That makes it all the more remarkable that it took 15 years for this composition – and the rest of Diablo’s music – to get a soundtrack release.

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Dune Soundtrack (PC)

Dune Soundtrack

Dune Soundtrack (PC), Stéphane Picq, 1992

It feels like early media adaptations of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic Dune were doomed to run into equally epic troubles during their production. There’s, of course, the convoluted story of how Dune finally reached cinema screens in 1984 after more than a decade of failed attempts, only to disappoint at the box office and alienate its director. The first video game adaptation of Dune equally struggled to actually see the light of day – to the point where publisher Virgin Games cancelled the game (and launched the development of what would become Dune II), only to find out later that Cryo Interactive had secretly continued work on Dune. Thankfully, there was a happy ending to the story. Due to its innovative mix of adventure and strategy elements, Dune became a commercial hit, with 300,000 units sold by 1997, paving the way for Cryo’s expansion and prolific output throughout the 1990s.

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Emperor: Battle for Dune Soundtrack

Emperor: Battle for Dune Soundtrack

Emperor: Battle for Dune Soundtrack, David Arkenstone / Frank Klepacki / Jarrid Mendelson, 2001

While Westwood Studios’ Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty wasn’t the first real-time strategy game, it codified many of the genre’s conventions and kicked off its 1990s boom era – epitomised by Westwood’s own Command & Conquer juggernaut. So in some ways, it seemed fitting that 2001’s Emperor: Battle for Dune, Westwood’s third Dune game, was poised to break new ground again as the developer’s first 3D RTS title – or was it? Ultimately, Battle for Dune met with favourable feedback from reviewers and gamers, but few would have hailed it as anything more than a solid entry in a genre that was getting very crowded. Ultimately, Battle for Dune became Westwood’s final RTS game – not a revolution, but rather a bookend then to the developer’s pioneering work.

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Final Fantasy I Soundtrack (Pixel Remaster)

Final Fantasy I Pixel Remaster Soundtrack

Final Fantasy I Soundtrack (Pixel Remaster), 2021, Nobuo Uematsu / Various

So much has been written about the original 1987 Final Fantasy, its influence analysed in such detail that there’s little to add. Like many other early Square titles, it was modelled on an earlier game – in this case, the enormously successful Dragon Quest. However, against the odds, Square managed to actually improve on the source of its inspiration, with a grander story, lusher presentation and more accessible – or just less tedious – gameplay. What’s more, Final Fantasy brought JRPGs to the attention of Western console gamers, many of whom would have never played anything like it before (unless they were familiar with computer RPGs). The rest, as they say, is history. Even though the Final Fantasy franchise’s popularity arguably peaked in the late 90s and early 00s, it remains a commercial juggernaut and one of gaming’s biggest IPs, with each new mainline release a tremendously expensive blockbuster title.

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Final Fantasy III Soundtrack (Pixel Remaster)

Final Fantasy III Soundtrack

Final Fantasy III Soundtrack (Pixel Remaster), 2021, Nobuo Uematsu / Various

To its credit, Final Fantasy II was a daring departure from its predecessor’s best-selling formula. Unfortunately, FF II‘s gameplay innovations were poorly executed, while the game’s narrative turned into an endless series of fetch quests. For Final Fantasy III then, Square handed the reins back to series founder Hironobu Sakaguchi. And just like Final Fantasy had been a refinement of concepts introduced by Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy III took after the monstrously successful third instalment of its fiercest competitor franchise. To be more precise, FF III introduced a richer job system that gave the gameplay an immense amount of depth. Combine that with a vast world to explore, and the game easily stands as the series’ greatest 8-bit instalment. It’s all the more astonishing then that the Pixel Remaster port is the first time Western audiences got to enjoy FF III in its original 2d version.

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Final Fantasy IV Soundtrack (Pixel Remaster)

Final Fantasy IV Soundtrack

Final Fantasy IV Soundtrack (Pixel Remaster), 2021, Nobuo Uematsu / Various

True, Square‘s Final Fantasy had been a milestone in RPG history, refining concepts introduced not long before by Dragon Quest. Sequels Final Fantasy II and III were among the best-selling RPGs of their generation, offering gameplay innovation (FFII) and what’s maybe the 8-bit era’s most polished, expansive role-playing game (FFIII). However, it was really with Final Fantasy IV that the franchise joined the ranks of gaming’s most hallowed and revered titles. Final Fantasy IV was a massive influence on the development of the entire RPG genre, particularly through its focus on dramatic storytelling and fleshed-out characters. The game’s legacy as a trailblazer seems secure – there’s a good reason why it keeps appearing on various “best games of all time” lists on both sides of the Pacific, clearly beloved by generations of gamers.

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Genesis Noir Soundtrack

Genesis Noir Soundtrack

Genesis Noir Soundtrack, Skillbard, 2021

Few 2021 games were as deliciously high-concept as Genesis Noir. Its gameplay – inspired by point-and-click adventures – was relatively sparse and straightforward. What really set Genesis Noir apart were its unique art style and narrative. True to its title, the game mixed a film noir story with musings on the nature of man, time and the universe. More to the point – Genesis Noir used the events of the Big Bang as a metaphor for the archetypal crime story of a jealous rival trying to kill the protagonist’s former lover. It is now up to our hero No Man – a watchmaker representing time – to alter the course of history, just as the universe is about to come into existence. In the making since 2014, Genesis Noir was well-received by critics upon release, even though several reviewers pointed out that the game resembled an animated movie, allowing only for limited player interaction.

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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Soundtrack

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Soundtrack

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Soundtrack, Jeremy Soule, 2002

The Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets soundtrack is easily the best of Jeremy Soule‘s five scores for the franchise. It also benefits from a better album presentation than Soule’s other Harry Potter soundtracks. Only eight minutes of notable material are missing from the album release, which thankfully excises a lot of ruminative underscore. In fact, Chamber of Secrets is Soule’s most satisfying fantasy soundtrack. Yes, that’s a big claim to make, considering his work on franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars. But Chamber of Secrets achieves a consistency of quality that Soule’s more bloated scores don’t accomplish. He doubtlessly deserved his 2004 win of the BAFTA Games Award for Best Original Music for Chamber of Secrets.

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Soundtrack

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Soundtrack

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Soundtrack, James Hannigan, 2009

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix turned to be industry veteran James Hannigan’s breakthrough work – a delectably luscious orchestral game score that topped Jeremy Soule’s previous contributions to the franchise and could proudly sit aside John Williams and Patrick Doyle’s Harry Potter soundtracks. It’s no surprise then that Hannigan’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince soundtrack doesn’t change the winning formula. Hannigan’s follow up work is as riveting as Order of the Phoenix, but it does introduce a few noteworthy changes.

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Soundtrack

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Soundtrack

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Soundtrack, James Hannigan, 2007

There is some irony to the fact that in several interviews, James Hannigan voiced his concern about film scores by default overshadowing the music written for the game adaptation. If anything, Hannigan’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix soundtrack is the opposite case. Nicholas Hooper’s movie soundtrack was largely deemed underwhelming. Meanwhile, Hannigan garnered praise for his game score that in the eyes of many was the superior work. Indeed, it hits almost all the right notes for a sweeping, yet relatable fantasy epic like the Harry Potter series. Hannigan achieves a perfect balance between humour, magic and gravitas, mixing moods and orchestral colours masterfully. The only thing missing might be a more pervading sense of adventure and romanticism. Fortunately, this is something that Hannigan would address on The Half-Blood Prince.

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