Racing Archives - The Greatest Game Music

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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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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Fast RMX Soundtrack

Fast RMX Soundtrack, Bjulin / Manfred Linzner / Martin Schioeler, 2017

One of gamers’ great frustrations (at least at the timing of writing in 2020) remains Nintendo’s steadfast refusal to revive its classic F-Zero franchise. The last time fans got to enjoy a new F-Zero title dates back to 2004, when F-Zero Climax was released for the Game Boy Advance – only in Japan, adding insult to injury for Western gamers. Thankfully, German developer and Nintendo loyalist Shin’en Multimedia seemed determined to fill the gap with its Fast franchise. Kicking off in 2011 with WiiWare title Fast – Racing League, the franchise went from strength to strength with 2015’s Fast Racing Neo for the WiiU and 2017’s Fast RMX, a launch title for the Nintendo Switch. All three games received applause from reviewers for their stellar presentations and gameplay that created an overwhelming sense of speed, as well as its Ikaruga-style system of polarity switching to receive extra speed boosts.

Fast RMX essentially served as an expanded version of Fast Racing Neo, including all of that earlier game’s racing tracks and DLC, while adding a few new courses of its own. This was reason for game music fans to celebrate. Fast RMX gathered all of the outstanding music written for Fast Racing Neo and added more content still, arriving at 2+ hours of music spread across almost 50 compositions. The masterminds behind the score(s) were Shin’en Multimedia veterans Manfred Linzner and Martin Schioeler, joined by relative newcomer Bjulin.

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Formula 1 Soundtrack

Formula 1 Soundtrack, Mike Clarke / Stuart Ellis, 1996

If you developed a racing video game in the mid-90s, there was apparently little choice other than to score it with electronic beats. And few companies knew this rule as well as Psygnosis. After all, they actually helped write this musical law with their enormously successful Wipeout franchise. Those games helped to take video game soundtracks into the mainstream like few other titles before.

Keeping this in mind, it’s surprising that 1996’s Formula 1 received a straight out, pure-bred hard rock/metal score. The masterminds behind Formula 1‘s revved-up beauty of a soundtrack are Mike Clarke and Stuart Ellis. While Ellis joined the project as a session guitarist, Clarke’s name will be more familiar to game music aficionados. As Psygnosis’ Sound Director, Clarke had mainly worked on Amiga titles before leaping into the CD console era. He would later return to work on the less remarkable Formula One 99. However, more helpful musical references for Formula 1 from Clarke’s career are Lifeforce Tenka and Destruction Derby Raw.

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Mickey’s Speedway USA Soundtrack (N64)

Mickey’s Speedway USA Soundtrack (N64), Ben Cullum, 2000

For a few years, it felt like Rare just couldn’t help producing outstanding games for the Nintendo 64, titles that were bound to be classics – Blast Corps, GoldenEye 007, Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo-Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini, Perfect Dark… it seemed that Rare couldn’t go wrong. That winning streak came to an end in late 2000 with Mickey’s Speedway USA. The verdict from reviewers was almost universally that yes, this was a decent enough game, with the usual depth and amount of content one had come to expect from a Rare title. But compared to its spiritual predecessor Diddy Kong Racing, Mickey’s Speedway USA fell decidedly short – unlike GoldenEye 007, this was not a game that transcended its origins as a licensed title.

In other words, this wasn’t the kind of game one would expect to produce outstanding music to rival Rare’s best scores. To make the Mickey’s Speedway USA soundtrack an even less likely success, it was the first – and so far only – game score written entirely by Ben Cullum. Outside of Mickey’s Speedway USA, Cullum mainly provided character voices for several Rare titles (including Falco in Star Fox Adventures, for which he also wrote additional music). His career continued outside of the game industry, writing his own songs and some for his brother Jamie Cullum, as well as creating TV show themes and producing records. As such, Mickey’s Speedway USA remains a one-off in Cullum’s body of work – but he no doubt makes the most of this opportunity.

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Psybadek Soundtrack

Psybadek Soundtrack, Mike Clarke, 1998

Including Psybadek in a list of “The WORST Playstation Game[s] Ever Made” (as a YouTube reviewer does) is probably taking things a bit far – remember that there were loads of horrendous shovelware for Sony’s console, particularly in its latter years. Still, Psybadek remains a bit of a mystery. Here’s a game by one of the 32-bit era’s most successful and trendiest developers (Psygnosis), released in between heavy-hitters by that company like the WipeOut, Colony Wars, Destruction Derby and Formula 1 titles – and according to both contemporary and more recent reviewers, Psybadek falls flat on its face, with nary any redeeming features. At least Psybadek’s mix of racing and platforming elements showed that the developers were thinking outside of the box, even if that genre combination was ultimately poorly implemented.

As Gamespot noted in their review though, there’s one aspect where Psybadek – unexpectedly – shines: its score. Their claim that “the soundtrack is easily one of the best in video games anywhere” might sound like hyperbole. However, this is indeed one of the era’s strongest electronic game scores and far better than what you would expect to find in a game with such an otherwise poor presentation. Thanks be to veteran composer Mike Clarke, who had delivered numerous soundtracks for Psygnosis since the early 1990s, including one of the best metal scores ever to grace a video game: Formula 1.

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Racing Hero Soundtrack

Racing Hero Soundtrack, Hikoshi Hashimoto, 1989

Starting with Hang-On in 1985, Sega commenced a run of classic arcade titles that made full use of the company’s revolutionary Super Scaler technology, providing a spectacular illusion of 3D gaming unrivalled by anything on home consoles. However, not all Super Scaler games are equally well-remembered. Take Racing Hero, an obvious update of the Hang-On formula of lighting-fast motorcycle-racing. With its colourful, impressively fluid graphics, varied courses and solid gameplay, Racing Hero was hardly a disappointment upon release – but it also didn’t do a lot to differentiate itself from previous Sega arcade racers (which by now had turned into a genre of their own). And since Racing Hero wasn’t included in any arcade compilations on consoles, the game has mostly slipped from view when fans consider Sega’s arcade glory days.

Still, there’s much to like about Racing Hero – including its soundtrack. It was the debut work of Hikoshi Hashimoto, who would kick off a decades-long game music career with this title. Of course, previous Sega arcade racers like OutRun had set the bar high with their pioneering scores. Thankfully, Hashimoto proudly and successfully walks in the footsteps of his predecessors, crafting a score that feels like a summary of everything that made these 80s arcade soundtracks such a blast. It’s certainly an auspicious debut by a composer out to prove himself – and as it turns out, Racing Hero ranks as the best score of Hashimoto’s career.

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Top Gear 2 Soundtrack (Amiga)

Top Gear 2 Soundtrack (Amiga), Patrick Phelan, 1994

At least in its SNES incarnation, the Top Gear franchise remains quite fondly remembered to this day. However, looking at contemporary reviews, it’s evident that the series has always proved somewhat divisive. More than a few critics pointed out that the Top Gear games presented a no-frills, arcade-style approach to racing that produced solid but not necessarily spectacular results. The fact that developer Gremlin Graphics (later Gremlin Interactive) used the Top Gear games to effectively regurgitate its Lotus titles only amplified the feeling of ‘been there, done that’. Still, Top Gear 2 remains the franchise’s best-regarded entry – while it played like a mere expansion pack of its predecessor, it made enough tweaks to improve upon Top Gear.

That was on the SNES though. Once Top Gear 2 reached the Amiga in 1994, reviewers were decidedly less pleased with the game. Several highlighted its lack of innovation and the fact that the title didn’t meet the standards set by the Lotus games a few years earlier. The one area in which the Amiga port ultimately did excel was its soundtrack, matched within the Top Gear franchise only by Barry Leitch’s Top Gear Rally. After Leitch had set the musical foundations for the Top Gear and Lotus franchises, Patrick Phelan had taken over composing duties on both series, further developing their electronica-heavy scores and mixing in contemporary mid-90s influences.

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Top Gear Rally Soundtrack (N64)

Top Gear Rally Soundtrack (N64), Barry Leitch, 1997

After two generally well-received entries in the Top Gear franchise, developer Gremlin Interactive must have felt that the series needed a bit of a shakeup. That was probably correct, given Top Gear 2 had felt like an expansion pack of Top Gear – and considering that these two games didn’t look very different from Gremlin’s earlier Lotus trilogy of racing games. The result was Top Gear 3000 – the original trilogy’s black sheep, with its sci-fi trappings and weapons system. While swiftly forgotten, Top Gear 3000 kicked off the Top Gear franchise’s experimental phase. The results of this attempt to reinvent the series and keep it relevant hit the Nintendo 64 in quick succession: Top Gear Rally, Top Gear: Overdrive, Top Gear Rally 2 and Top Gear Hyper-Bike. Reviews for all these titles were reasonably strong, with critics commending Top Gear Rally for its realistic gameplay and accurate physics.

The Top Gear Rally soundtrack saw the return of a familiar name: Barry Leitch, who had scored the first two Lotus games and Top Gear in the early 1990s. The second half of the decade saw him returning to racing games with a vengeance. After Top Gear Rally, Leitch wrote two (!) unreleased soundtracks for Twisted Edge Snowboarding before penning music for Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA, California Speed and San Francisco Rush 2049. For Top Gear Rally, Leitch took an unusual approach. Rather than emulating CD-quality sound, he used 8-bit samples (“[…] probably the only N64 game ever to use [them]”, Leitch mused in an interview). Like on a 16-bit machine, the samples were produced live off the hardware. This made Top Gear Rally one of the most advanced examples of this production technique due to the N64’s comparatively advanced audio capacities and the number of samples available.

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