The Greatest Game Music

Reviews of truly outstanding game music

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Azkend 2: The World Beneath Soundtrack

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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Tagged With: 10tons, 2012, Jonathan Geer, Mobile, Orchestral, Puzzle

Sentinel Returns Soundtrack

Sentinel Returns Soundtrack

Sentinel Returns Soundtrack, John Carpenter, 1998

Sentinel Returns was the entirely unexpected sequel to 1980s computer cult puzzle game The Sentinel. That 1986 title was one of the first games to feature solid-filled 3D graphics. Its successor wasn’t as revolutionary, but it still had a striking visual appeal all of its own. The world of Sentinel Returns was an entirely surreal one, unsettling and gloomy. It was full of bizarre flesh-meets-metal inhabitants that only had a vague resemblance to real life objects.

Sentinel Returns might have been a puzzle game, but its world was that of a nightmarish horror title. It’s no surprise then that horror maestro John Carpenter’s Sentinel Returns soundtrack is a perfect fit for the game. However, Carpenter’s involvement in Sentinel Returns is still a bit of surprise. Remember, Western movie composers crossing over into video games was still an absolute rarity in 1998.

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Tagged With: 1998, Electronic, Hookstone, John Carpenter, PC, PlayStation, Puzzle

Zhadnost: The People’s Party Soundtrack

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.

It’s not the sort of game that you would expect to generate a great soundtrack. Praise be to George Sanger and his collaborators David Govett, Joe McDermott and Weston Phelan that the Zhadnost: The People’s Party soundtrack turned out to be such an unexpected delight (and actually received an album release as Surf.com). Their solution to the problem of how you’d score a communist game show certainly defies expectations: surf rock.

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Tagged With: 1995, 3DO, David Govett, George Sanger, Joe McDermott, Puzzle, Rock/Metal, Studio 3DO, Weston Phelan

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