Saturday 9 May 2009

Memorable Game Music

The first in-game music that I remember totally gripped me, and more or less turned me into a PC Gamer who decided game music had enough credibility to be listened to out of game was the soundtrack to Anarchy Online. It wasn't just ambient space music, it actually had recognisable melody and quite pacey sections too.



Other more traditional fantasy based games and console titles that have haunting or memorable music that I still play nowadays are:

Diablo 2 (PC)
Dragons Blood (Dreamcast)
Divine Divinity (PC)
Neverwinter Nights 2 (PC)
Phantasy Star Online (Dreamcast)
Primal (PS2)
Sled Storm (PSX)
Zone of the Enders (PS2)
XGRA (XBox)
Flow (PS3)
Snakeball (PS3)
Two Worlds (PC)
The Witcher (PC)
Mass Effect (360,PC)

Basically a lot of game music tends to be background ambient or orchestral, but very few actually affect you in an emotional way, in a way that you become familiar and attached to the music and the excitement tied up with playing the game.

Oh, and I remember being enchanted and disturbed at the same time by the music out of the PC title "The 7th Guest" many moons ago, and I often think I hear snippets of other music that sound like it. Spooky.

1 comment:

  1. From the first time I heard the music of Jet Set Radio on the trusty Dreamcast, I fell in love with the work of Hideki Naganuma. So much so that once I discovered I could provide my own MP3s for a radio station in the PC ports of the Grand Theft Auto 3 series, that JSR soundtrack became an integral part of my adventures within Liberty City (as did the Jet Set Radio Future soundtrack in Vice City).

    Most recently, the music of Shoji Meguro (the composer for many of Atlus' titles) has been the accompaniment to some of my favourite gaming moments. A good soundtrack really does enrich the experience.

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