Rock/Metal Archives - The Greatest Game Music

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.

But we’re not here for the glacial second half of the 99 Levels to Hell soundtrack. What makes this score a must for any heavy metal fan are its first 40 minutes. Remember, this is a game that takes you closer and closer to the Horned One’s realm. What better musical accompaniment for this scenario than a very, very heavy dose of death metal? (with some sprinkles of thrash metal thrown in for good measure).

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Alpha Squad Soundtrack

Alpha Squad Soundtrack, Stemage, 2011

On the Alpha Squad soundtrack, Stemage – founder of metal band Metroid Metal – faced the same challenges as many artists who made their name in the game music arrangement scene and now embarked on their first original soundtrack. No longer able to rely on other composers’ works, can the new material still meet heightened expectations?

Alpha Squad was a deliberate throwback to the top-down arcade-style shooters from the 80s and early 90s. Stemage’s metal chops certainly marked him as a fitting candidate to score the action-filled mayhem. Developer Dragon Divide had acknowledged that much when they contacted Stemage to write music for Alpha Squad. At the same time, his soundtrack would need to strike a significantly more upbeat note than his Metroid Metal output to match the game’s tongue-in-cheek approach and no-frills gameplay.

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Battletoads & Double Dragon Soundtrack (SNES)

Battletoads & Double Dragon Soundtrack (SNES), David Wise, 1993

In 1993, the Battletoads franchise was in a slightly curious spot. The 1991 NES original had been successful enough to spawn several ports. There was also Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, a SNES (and later Sega Master System) game that ultimately felt like a remix of the 1991 NES title. So where to next for the burgeoning, but not quite yet established franchise? Publisher Tradewest had released Battletoads on several platforms and held the home license for the venerable Double Dragon franchise. Why not combine two forces of nature in one amazing game? The match seemed to be an entirely natural one, given that Kevin Bayliss, co-designer of Battletoads, was a big Double Dragon fan.

However, things didn’t quite pan out as expected. For starters, with Rare developing the game, Battletoads & Double Dragon felt like it was shoehorning the world of Billy and Jimmy Lee into the more comic-like antics of a Battletoads game. It didn’t help that Double Dragon characters made appearances under the wrong names. Ultimately, Battletoads & Double Dragon garnered respectable but rarely enthusiastic reviews at the time of its release. That impression seems to continue with more recent assessments of the game: a decent enough brawler that doesn’t live up to the potential of the franchise crossover.

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Battletoads Soundtrack (Arcade)

Battletoads Soundtrack (Arcade), David Wise, 1994

The final entry in the Battletoads franchise also happens to be one of its less well-known ones. Electronic Arts made a rare attempt at releasing an arcade game, publishing Battletoads as a coin-op, three-player beat’em up. It’s hard to say how successful or not the game was, but no console ports ever saw the light of day. And so, three years after the release of the original NES Battletoads game, the franchise was laid to rest – at least until E3 2018.

The fact that the arcade Battletoads didn’t seem to have made any waves is a bit of a shame. According to both reviewers of the arcade title and the 2015 Rare Replay re-release, this Battletoads game might well have been the strongest entry in the franchise. In a departure from previous Battletoads titles, this game skipped any genre-hopping (no more platforming and speed biking) and only focused on the brawling elements. This made for a less adventurous, but more focused game. Battletoads was also enhanced by great graphics that ramped up the cartoonish violence that had always been part of the franchise – but usually in fairly tame fashion. This time however, Rare was clearly happy to work outside of the limits set by Nintendo’s content policy. The result played like a test run for Conker’s Bad Fur Day, with plenty of blood, swearing and crude jokes.

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Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack

Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack, Yoko Kanno, 1998

After a somewhat rocky start (that initially didn’t even see all episodes screened), Cowboy Bebop went on to become one of anime’s cultural milestones – on both sides of the Pacific. Setting itself apart from almost anything else produced for TV animation in either Japan or the USA, Cowboy Bebop merged disparate genres and visual styles in ways that helped the series introduce many new Western viewers to anime. Its cross-cultural appeal was partially based on its use of tropes that were familiar to Western audiences – Western, pulp fiction, film noir and cyberpunk (all within a space opera setting). Shinichirou Watanabe’s creation turned out to be popular enough to spawn a movie sequel and feature on many ‘best of’ lists in the years that followed.

As one would guess by looking at the series’ title, music played a crucial role in its eclectic aesthetic. Not surprisingly, the collaboration between director and composer on Cowboy Bebop was closer than usually – and the result was one of the most distinctive, attention-grabbing anime scores ever written. After her breakthrough with the orchestral fantasy masterpiece that was The Vision of Escaflowne, Yoko Kanno changed gears in spectacular fashion. Using jazz (and its many permutations) as the basis for Cowboy Bebop, Kanno branched out into a dizzying array of genres. She successfully dappled in everything from blues and metal to country music and opera, matching the series’ free-wheeling stylistic approach. Ultimately, Cowboy Bebop cemented Kanno’s status as one of anime’s foremost composers, able to seemingly nail just about any musical genre.

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Final Soldier Soundtrack

Final Soldier Soundtrack, Masakatsu Maekawa, 1991

There’s no doubt that one of the TurboGrafx-16’s strengths was its stellar line-up of shoot’em ups. However, that also meant any developer who decided to throw their hat in the ring would find it harder to stand out from the crowd. Hudson Soft should have been well-placed to hit the target with Final Soldier, their third entry in the Star Soldier franchise and successor to commercial and critical success Super Star Soldier. Alas, Final Soldier offered little that other shoot’em ups hadn’t already brought to the table. Contemporary reviews agreed that this Japan-only release delivered the polish expected from a Hudson Soft shoot’em up. At the same time, a lower difficulty level meant that the game was over relatively soon for experienced players. A solid, well-designed game rather than a great one, seemed to be the general conclusion.

Scoring duties for the Final Soldier soundtrack went to Masakatsu Maekawa, who had already amassed several years of industry experience by this stage, debuting with 1986’s Metro-Cross (at least he probably did – available sources aren’t entirely clear). A member of developer Now Production since graduating from university, Maekawa was immensely prolific in the 1990s, for example working on Hudson Soft franchises such as Rolling Thunder, Adventure Island and Splatterhouse. Leaving Now Production in 1994 to form his own company Music Worx (a subcontractor for game sound) did little to slow his output during that decade.

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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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MUSHA Soundtrack

MUSHA Soundtrack, Toshiaki Sakoda, 1990

It’s safe to say that Compile’s well-regarded Aleste series reached its pinnacle with 1990’s MUSHA for the Sega Genesis. It ranks as one of the 16-bit era’s best shooters, with lightning-fast gameplay, an immensely challenging difficulty level and some of the most breathtaking visuals ever seen on the Genesis – all the more impressive considering that MUSHA was a first-generation title. What really helped to set the game apart was its visual style. Feeling that MUSHA had to differ significantly from its franchise predecessors, the developers came up with an unusual mix of sci-fi tropes and traditional Japanese lore. As a result, your flying mecha shoots super-charged electric shurikens while facing off against enemies like robotic ninjas and Japanese castles on tank treads.

Another one of MUSHA’s virtues fondly recalled by many gamers is its superlative soundtrack, delivered by Toshiaki Sakoda. Sakoda had worked on previous Compile titles such as Aleste 2 and the first two instalments of the Crush Pinball series. On this occasion, the music formed a more critical part of the game’s stylistic foundations than usually. In fact, art director Kazuyuki Nakashima used the phrase “Edo Metal” to pitch the game’s concept to Compile’s leadership. According to Nakashima, the developers soon settled on a “speedy heavy metal sound that would match the fast scrolling and would play from the start of the opening demo non-stop without interruption”.

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T2: The Arcade Game Soundtrack (Sega Genesis)

T2: The Arcade Game Soundtrack (Sega Genesis), Matt Furniss, 1993

Game developers certainly didn’t pass up the opportunity to make the most of the blockbuster juggernaut that was Terminator 2: Judgment Day. At the time the third-highest grossing movie worldwide (behind Star Wars and E.T. the Extra Terrestrial), James Cameron’s work prompted numerous video game adaptations. In fact, when Midway ported their arcade rail shooter Terminator 2: Judgment Day to home consoles, they had to change its name to T2: The Arcade Game, to differentiate it from the already existing T2 games. That didn’t stop Midway Manufacturing Company from porting the game to as many platforms as possible – even to those that don’t seem like obvious candidates for a rail shooter (the Game Boy?)

The arcade original, with its polished presentation, remains fondly-remembered. The reception of its many ports was fairly varied. The Genesis adaptation fared well enough, with reviewers agreeing it offered a fun opportunity to blast away at robots – as long as you didn’t mind the inherently limited rail shooter gameplay. As was often the case at the time, each port received an original soundtrack – and the Genesis game was lucky enough to be scored by Matt Furniss.

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The Path Soundtrack

The Path Soundtrack, Jarboe / Kris Force, 2009

One effect of the resurgence of the indie game scene from the second half of the 2000s onwards was the proliferation of titles that questioned the received knowledge of what actually constitutes a game. An early example of this emerging type of work was The Path, a reframing of the Little Red Riding Hood tale. The Path turns the classic fairy tale into an exploration of female sexuality and the painful process of growing up.

Particularly the former story aspect makes The Path a fascinating addition to the world of games, given how depressingly rare nuanced depictions of sexuality are in video games. In the game, the player takes charge of six girls of various ages and leads them to their grandmother’s cottage. If you stay on the path though, the game will tell you at the end that you’ve failed. Players can only unlock The Path’s mysteries by walking off into the woods, where the wolves lurk.

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