Reviews of truly outstanding game music
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?
It’s curious to see how little joy music fans could derive from the soundtracks for so many Star Wars games. Often, they were ultimately compilations and adaptations of John Williams’ immortal scores – in which case, it felt like you might as well just get the real deal and buy the movie score album. Of course, there’s also a fair number of Star Wars games that came with an original score. But from Clint Bajakian’s Dark Forces to Jeremy Soule‘s Knights of the Old Republic, Frank Klepacki’s Empire at War and Mark Griskey’s The Force Unleashed titles – while they all did a competent job at replicating Williams’ signature franchise sound, the music often suffered from a significant lack of substance and felt underdeveloped.
Games released at the end of a console’s life cycle often end up somewhat lost to the ravages of time – not entirely forgotten by posterity maybe, but still mostly passed over for the incoming generation of new platforms. Core Design‘s Skeleton Krew (we’re deep in the midst of 1990s edginess) is one such title. An isometric shooter for the Sega Genesis, Amiga and Amiga CD32, Skeleton Krew failed to elicit much interest from gamers and reviewers back in 1995. Its gameplay featured few innovations, while Skeleton Krew’s six levels meant the fun was over fairly quickly. The game’s one standout feature was its presentation (once you looked past Skeleton Krew’s slightly desperate attempt to be all dark, violent and gritty). Creative use of the Amiga and Genesis’ colour palettes, highlighting the surreal H.R. Giger-inspired bio-mechanical artwork, set the game apart from the competition.