SNES Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Secret of Mana Soundtack – Review

Secret of Mana Soundtrack, Hiroki Kikuta, 1993

It’s no understatement to say that for many gamers, Secret of Mana remains one of the most fondly remembered experiences of the 16-bit era. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the innate quality of the product. Square’s experiment merging action adventure and RPG elements was a resounding success, charming millions of players with its vibrant fantasy world and accessible, yet deep gameplay. But timing played an important role as well. Remember that back in 1993, US releases of SNES RPGs were the exception, not the rule (and for the German market, Secret of Mana might well have been the first localised SNES RPG). As a result, many gamers encountered the engrossing storytelling and vivid worlds that the best RPGs deliver for the first time with Secret of Mana.

An even rarer sight were actual album releases of game music outside of Japan. Secret of Mana was one of the very, very few SNES game scores to see a US release (preceding Donkey Kong Country by a year). Again, for many this would have been the first time they encountered game music outside of a game.

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Battletoads & Double Dragon Soundtrack (SNES) – Review

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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Donkey Kong Country Soundtrack – Review

Donkey Kong Country Soundtrack, Robin Beanland / Eveline Fischer / David Wise, 1994

It’s probably safe to say that Donkey Kong Country was always destined to be a blockbuster. What set the game on course for domination of the 1994 Christmas season were its ground-breaking graphics. More than nine million sold copies later, Donkey Kong Country had become a milestone in gaming history.

While it was the game’s quasi-3D graphics that made waves back in 1994, what has arguably aged better is the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack. For the first time in Rare’s history, David Wise was joined by co-composers: Eveline Fischer (now Novakovic) and Robin Beanland. The latter’s contribution only extended to one track (“Funky’s Fugue”) that Wise converted to run on the SNES. Fischer – recently graduated from college – on the other hand contributed seven compositions. The soundtrack was one of the very first Western game scores to receive a commercial release – on both sides of the Pacific.

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Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest Soundtrack – Review

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest Soundtrack, David Wise, 1995

While Donkey Kong Country remains the most historically important (and best-selling) entry in the franchise, it is Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest that is usually most fondly remembered among gamers. Polished and bursting at the seams with ideas, Diddy’s Kong Quest remains one of the best 2d platformers ever created.

The one component of Donkey Kong Country that has arguably aged best is its soundtrack. Collaborating with Eveline Fischer, David Wise created a haunting, minimalist opus that underscored the lavish graphics with understated grace. For the Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest soundtrack, Wise returned and wrote the entire score on his own. In short, this might well be his career-defining masterpiece. It’s a stunning example of musical world building that pushes the ageing SNES sound hardware to its very limits.

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Secret of Evermore Soundtrack – Review

Secret of Evermore Soundtrack, Jeremy Soule, 1995

It’s fair to say that a game like Secret of Evermore would meet with less hostility these days. The thought of a Western console RPG is no longer an affront to gamers raised on Japanese genre products. Back in 1995 though, what many Square Soft fans in the Western hemisphere wanted was a localised Secret of Mana 2 / Seiken Densetsu 3. What they didn’t look for was a down-to-earth alternative to JRPGs’ heroic melodramatics. Especially if it was littered with fictional pop culture references and had a metaphysical, light-hearted tongue-in-cheek approach.

And so, Secret of Evermore began its uphill battle. Sadly, its music got caught up in the struggle – entirely undeservedly so. Even decades after its release, perceptions of future star composer Jeremy Soule‘s debut seem highly ambivalent. Grievances raised against the Secret of Evermore soundtrack usually include that there is hardly any music in the first place (the game uses ambient sounds more extensively than any previous console RPG, but there is still close to an hour of melodic material to enjoy); that the score album leaves out too much music from the game and focuses too strongly on one of Evermore‘s time periods (on the contrary, the album does a great job at gathering the majority of worthwhile compositions from the game, which simply happen to mostly feature in the world of Gothica); and that the music itself is unremarkable.

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