The Greatest Game Music

Reviews of truly outstanding game music

A-Train 5 Soundtrack

A-Train 5 Soundtrack

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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Afrika Soundtrack

Afrika Soundtrack

Afrika Soundtrack, Wataru Hokoyama, 2008

You wouldn’t necessarily expect that one of the best orchestral game scores of the new millennium was written for what’s essentially a photography simulator. But that’s precisely what Afrika, an early PS3 title, achieved. The game itself garnered a fair amount of pre-release hype. The prospect of traversing the majestic landscapes of the African steppes and carefully ligning up shots of its exotic animal inhabitants had a fair amount of gamers and bloggers excited at the prospect of this relatively fresh gameplay idea. Ultimately though, Afrika’s reviews were fairly polarised. Some critics enjoyed the languorous gameplay, while others felt the game lacked substance.

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Bounty Sword First Soundtrack

Bounty Sword First Soundtrack

Bounty Sword First Soundtrack, Kohei Tanaka, 1997

Before Final Fantasy Tactics’ success, releases of turn-based strategy games in the West were far and few between – most of these titles were only ever released in Japan. One such game was 1995’s Bounty Sword for the SNES. Set in the year 4093, the game nonetheless featured a medieval-themed fantasy look beautifully realised through detailed 16-bit visuals. Bounty Sword’s gameplay was a bit of an oddity though. Gamers’ input into battles was minimal – they would set their units’ strategy before the fight began. After that, all they could do was command soldiers to use special moves. Even amidst the general interest for hidden late-era SNES treasures, Bounty Sword has remained obscure – and even less well-known was its PS1 remake Bounty Sword First. Ambitiously envisaged as the beginning of a trilogy, only one sequel (Bounty Sword: Double Edge) was released.

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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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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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Heroes of Might and Magic II Soundtrack (PC)

Heroes of Might and Magic II Soundtrack

Heroes of Might and Magic II Soundtrack (PC), Steve Baca / Rob King / Paul Romero, 1996

Even decades after its release, the Heroes of Might and Magic II soundtrack stands apart as a unique experiment. The score for Heroes of Might and Magic had clearly articulated Paul Romero and Rob King‘s immense ambition to create game music with the gravitas and impact (and cultural cache) of classical music. The result was a resounding artistic success. It’s no surprise then that Heroes of Might and Magic II‘s music amplifies its predecessor’s already lofty aspirations. But how do you make convincingly symphonically-styled music like that of Heroes of Might and Magic even more grandiose?

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Heroes of Might and Magic III Soundtrack

Heroes of Might and Magic III Soundtrack

Heroes of Might and Magic III Soundtrack, Steve Baca / Rob King / Paul Romero, 1999

After Heroes of Might and Magic II‘s unprecedented operatic splendour, the composing team of Paul Romero, Rob King and Steve Baca faced a problem when they tackled the franchise‘s next soundtrack: where to go from here? Heroes of Might and Magic II found its approach by amplifying its predecessor’s ambitions and scale. As a result, it rocketed past other Western game soundtracks at the time into uncharted territory. Repeating the same strategy – going grander – for the Heroes of Might and Magic III soundtrack wasn’t an option. After all, how much bigger can you go than full-blown operatic grandeur?

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Heroes of Might and Magic Soundtrack (PC)

Heroes of Might and Magic Soundtrack

Heroes of Might and Magic Soundtrack (PC), Paul Romero, 1995

Few game scores start with a gesture as confident as the Heroes of Might and Magic soundtrack. Opening “Barbarian (Theme for Louis XIV)”, a harpsichord presents an almost rushing motif that already creates a dense soundscape. But clearly, the composer wants to take things further. Soon, a growing number of instruments join the harpsichord figure, playing the motif as a fugue. This continues until a whopping five different voices simultaneously perform in counterpoint. The resulting passage is of a structural complexity not previously encountered in Western game music.

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Kessen Soundtrack

Kessen Soundtrack

Kessen Soundtrack, Reijiro Koroku, 2000

Since their inception in the mid-80s, Koei’s many historical strategy games had always been more of an insider proposition. It felt a bit like series such as Nobunaga’s Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms were reserved for those gamers who were willing to spend hours parsing menus and stats, while carefully planning their next move. Several of these titles had made it to the US market but never turned into eye-catching best-sellers. That changed with Kessen, one of the PlayStation 2’s launch titles. Set once more in feudal Japan, Kessen emphasised spectacular visuals and battlefield action, attracting far more attention internationally than any previous Koei game. Ultimately, Kessen was successful enough to spawn two sequels. However, several contemporary reviewers pointed out that the game lacked the usual complexity and depth of a Koei strategy game, making for an entertaining but shallow experience.

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Nobunaga’s Ambition: Bushou Fuuunroku Soundtrack (PC-88 – Soundware Version)

Nobunaga's Ambition: Bushou Fuuunroku Soundtrack

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Bushou Fuuunroku Soundtrack (PC-88), Yoko Kanno, 1990

Developer Koei didn’t rock the boat much with this fourth instalment of its Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise. The game continued its predecessors’ brand of menu-heavy strategising, set amongst feuding warlords in Japan during the 16th century. As before, it targeted those gamers who preferred intensely in-depth gameplay over elaborate visuals. Despite the geographically specific subject matter, Koei felt there was an overseas audience for Bushou Fuuunroko, bringing the SNES and Sega Genesis ports to the American market under the title of Lord of Darkness.

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Nobunaga’s Ambition: Tenshouki Soundtrack (PC-98 – Soundware Version)

Nobunaga's Ambition: Tenshouki Soundtrack

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Tenshouki Soundtrack (PC-98), Yoko Kanno, 1994

Tenshouki, the sixth instalment of Koei’s long-running Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise, heralded the end of an era in several ways (despite its strategy gameplay that focused on medieval Japanese warlords not changing much). The last Nobunaga’s Ambition game to be released on the PC-98 series of Japanese personal computers, it was also the final franchise title to see the light of day on 16-bit platforms. Most importantly for our purpose, it was the last Nobunaga’s Ambition game to be scored by franchise mainstay Yoko Kanno.

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Nobunaga’s Ambition: Haouden Soundtrack (PC-98 – Soundware Version)

Nobunaga's Ambition: Haouden Soundtrack

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Haouden Soundtrack (PC-98), Yoko Kanno, 1992

As with previous instalments of the Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise, Koei only tweaked details for its fifth instalment, Haouden. Clearly, Koei had hit upon a winning formula, happy to churn these games out to an audience hungry for their fix of historical strategy games that prioritised gameplay depth over fancy graphics. Not surprisingly, what stood out most about Haouden’s presentation was its soundtrack, provided by series regular Yoko Kanno.

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Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV Soundtrack (PC-98 – Soundware Version)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV Soundtrack

Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV Soundtrack (PC-98), Jun Nagao, 1994

As with Nobunaga’s Ambition, developer Koei tended to make only incremental changes to the gameplay formula of its other flagship series, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Heavy on strategising, resource management and processing stats while set in feudal China, Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire differed little from its franchise predecessors of historical turn-based strategy titles. Still, reviewers agreed that as long as you were tuned into this particular kind of games that favoured depth over action and fancy visuals, Wall of Fire provided addictive entertainment. As was common during the early 1990s, the game was ported to several computer and console platforms (even the 32X!) – not that there was much perceivable difference between the ports, with the 32-bit versions of the game looking virtually identical to their 16-bit brethren.

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Sabre Team Soundtrack (Atari ST)

 

Sabre Team Soundtrack

Sabre Team Soundtrack (Atari ST), Matt Furniss, 1992

During the second half of the 1980s and into the 1990s, video games starring burly soldiers defending the Western way of life were a dime a dozen (we can at least partially thank Rambo: First Blood Part II and the following wave of copycat movies for that). By 1992, the formula required a bit of tweaking to still elicit interest, and so Krisalis Software made the smart move to turn Sabre Team into a turn-based strategy simulation. Gamers put together a team of four elite soldiers, making the most of limited action points per unit to move them around the isometric maps and attack enemies. Details like the amount of noise produced by different weapons and the weight of their respective ammunition added a surprising amount of realism to the gameplay, turning Sabre Team into one of the Atari ST’s best strategy games.

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Sakura Taisen GB Soundtrack

Sakura Taisen GB Soundtrack

Sakura Taisen GB Soundtrack, Kohei Tanaka, 2000

While seeing Sega franchises appear on Nintendo consoles has become common, back in 2000 – when Sega still had a stake in the console wars – the situation was very different. It was all the more surprising then that Sega decided to port one of its franchises – Sakura Taisen – to the Game Boy Colour (it’s worthwhile mentioning that less than one year earlier, the Neo Geo Pocket Colour had received a Sonic the Hedgehog port). Maybe not surprisingly, Sakura Taisen GB’s developers didn’t attempt to replicate the scale of previous franchise titles on the small handheld console. Instead, the game proceeds more along the lines of a dating-sim, with players controlling a character who spends a month training and living with the Hanagumi group of theatre actors/defenders of the planet.

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Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Soundtrack

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Soundtrack

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Soundtrack, Ron Jones / Brian Luzietti, 1997

The Star Trek: Starfleet Academy soundtrack is a prime example for how – and why – the conventions of Hollywood film music have been so deeply ingrained in orchestral game music right from the start. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy was part of the short-lived craze surrounding games based on full-motion videos in the mid-1990s. And if your game looks like a film, it makes sense to also make it sound like a film.

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Taikou Risshiden V Soundtrack

Taikou Risshiden V Soundtrack

Taikou Risshiden V Soundtrack, unknown composer, 2004

There’s no doubt that Koei’s most prominent franchises of historical war simulations are Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga’s Ambition – both of them spanning several dozen games and ports. However, Koei worked through this particular subject matter in other games as well – enter the Taikou Risshiden titles. The first game in this particular franchise – almost unknown outside of Japan – was released in 1992 for PC-98, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. The series continued up until Taikou Risshiden V, which saw the light of day in 2004 and concluded the franchise. The Taikou Risshiden games set themselves apart from other Koei history simulations through their sandbox-style gameplay that gave players greater freedom in choosing their path to victory. For example, available job classes included not just samurai but also pirates, merchants and blacksmiths, while gamers were free to roam the game’s world at their leisure.

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Total Annihilation Soundtrack

Total Annihilation Soundtrack

Total Annihilation Soundtrack, Jeremy Soule, 1997

There’s no doubt that real-time strategy games peaked in popularity during the second half of the 1990s. Their commercial success was kickstarted by the hugely popular Command & Conquer and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. For a few years, RTS games were all the rage (not that the genre is dead now). As a result, a glut of similarly-themed products soon hit the shelves. Differentiation – either by quality, innovation or style – became paramount for more ambitious developers.

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Victoria II Soundtrack

Victoria II Soundtrack

Victoria II Soundtrack, Andreas Waldetoft, 2010

Throughout the years, Andreas Waldetoft has been consistently churning out pleasingly melodic scores for Paradox Interactive’s history-themed strategy games. Titles like Europa Universalis III and Europa Universalis Rome showed promise during their moments of unrestrained melodicism. Unfortunately, various issues held these scores back from entirely fulfilling their promise.

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