| 17 March 2009
I could start in on how Americans are becoming an ice cream social full of unambitious video-game nerds. I could pontificate about how lazy we are as a collective society of Norman Bushnell disciples, growing from 2600 to 360. A shame. We need to get outside, smell the flowers! Mmm…
But I don’t feel that way. If I wrote shit like I did above I’d be a bigger hypocrite then Chris Brown doing an ad for a battered women's shelter. I’ve loved video games since I was a wee lad. I spent way too many hours on my Atari and Coleco (Yeah, I'm the second oldest guy on the AC staff). My dad was determined to skip the Nintendo Entertainment System (AKA Famicon to you easterners out there). I don’t know why he was so against it, but i remember having to do some kinds of vile favors to to the neighbor kid to be able to buy his. Yep, on that warm summer’s day of 1986, I lost my innocence. Sigh. My mouth is still sore. But play that sucker I did, buying, borrowing, and even stealing the latest games out there to add to my collection.
Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, my broke ass couldn’t picture this(sorry Biggie) but I did finagle a 486 to play Doom on so I was OK. And I had lotsa pals who had those other afore-mentioned systems so I was quite familiar with the intricacies of Mortal Kombat II and Super Mario Land.
My girlfriend gave me a PSone, and then tried to take it back when we broke up. i gave that bitch my buddy’s broken one, though, ha ha and to this day she never called me on it. Until she reads this, I suppose. When she wanted me to come back she dangled offers of PS2s in my face but instead got me a Dreamcast. I loved that fucker, because you could burn games for it right on the PC. Which I of course would never do. God Bless America. And Sega.
My new girlfriend backed up her shit and gots me a real PS2 for my birfday. Which is one of the reasons I’m still with her. I got my son a Gamecube. And we both eventually got PSPs. Along with DS, Gameboy Advance, and other shit I can’t remember. Again my girl got me a PS3 for my birthday this year, and though all my friends are calling me “sell-out” for not getting a 360 I am enjoying it. i still plan on getting a 360 and a Wii, but I’ve played both enough to be a fair judge on our featured topic:
Video Game Soundtracks!
#10 - Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2003) PC & X-BOX
A fantastic game, Morrowind was the closest a computer game has come to a true pen and paper style Role-Playing Game (RPG for short) . You could do almost anything. Kill your friends and neighbors, strip them of their clothes, and go on a bender all over the little island of Vvardenfall. Different races of magical characters interacted with you in many different ways. You could become a vampire or a werewolf (the latter with the addition of a handy add-on pack). A great game. but my favorite part was the music. Ahh, the themes were grand and sweeping, and the “danger” music that played during battle was ominous and urgent. Unfortunately, for a game you could spend 300+ hours to complete, the hour’s worth of music did eventually wear thin.
#9 - Castlevania (1986) NES
Man, I loved this theme. It was great. I don’t know off the top of my head if anyone has coined the term “8-bit Gothic Funk” but that’s how I describe the theme. Listening to the theme I feel both the desire to whip vampires and boogey my ass off. There are really just two or three main themes that run through Castlevania, but even the little level-finishing flourishes and death themes were well-done. I realize how far from alone I am when I look around the net and see all kinds of remixes and crap made of the main theme “Vampire Killer”. Here’s one that shows you how to play it your damn self!
#8 - Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) Nintendo 64
The Legend of Zelda series has always had decent music, starting way back when the original 8-bit masterwork pumped out of our NES systems. Ask lots of video game nerds and they will name at least one of the Zeldas as a top twenty game music choice. I have talked to folks who love Adventures of Link, 16-bit Zelda, Wind Waker, and so on. But the one version which stands out the best is Ocarina of Time. Many are familiar with what a great game it was, but they need to take time, sit back and admire the music. Every Zelda game since then has incorporated a small snippet from the Ocarina score into at least one motif in the new scores. I admit the main theme can get repetitive, but it is still crazy-catchy to hum to yourself while masturbating.
#7 - Starcraft (1996) PC
This game is one of the all-time greats in the RTS(Real-Time Strategy) genre. It has still not spawned a proper sequel, which shows how much care Blizzard Software takes in making a quality game. Muthafuckers still be playin’ that shit in competitions all over the world, B! So it might be fair to say this game has a lasting legacy. I know it does for me. Once in a while when nobody’s lookin’ I’ll dust off me old copy and slap that sucker in the drive. Not always to just play the ‘Craft, nosiree. Sure, it’s a great game that still blows so-called new RTS games away. But besides the action and Zerg rushing and frustrating levels of getting my ass kicked in the human campaigns I really dig the music. There are some great themes in there which really grasp what was at the time an emerging digital music medium. The themes are designed to play over and over and over and…well, you know how RTS games can drag. But part of what made the ‘Craft so cool was it’s fast action and great score.
Here’s a clip of some decent Geeetar-playing kid doing justice to the Terran Theme(I need to ask this kid if he wants a spot on the next Smokey CD!):
#6 - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002) Multi-Platform:
Kids! Do you like Vicodin? Smokey sure does, and he is all whacked out on pain pills due to his recent surgery to fix his deviated septum. What’s that, you ask? Oh. You say you didn’t ask? Well fuck off, I’m going to explain it anyway. Septum is the fancy word for the shit in the middle of your nose, starting with the bone and ending with the cartilage. The septum is supposed to travel straight and narrow, but if you are either a boxer or cokehead you may just have fucked yours up a bit. Though He can’t remember why, Smokey has had a fucked one of these for years. My nose leans to the left worse then Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention. Ergo, I could not fucking breathe out of it. Which always made me look sort of ape-like and retarded. Which isn’t to say I’m not, but now after surgery I can play it off better. Or so I hope. Right now my nose is stuffed with bloody packing and I can barely talk. I feel like some sort of bastard combination of dipping my head 20 feet underwater in a swimming pool and flying high over the alps while my ears are popping. As I type this, I have to grab a tissue to stop the trickle of clotting blood from pouring out onto my keyboard. Yep, life sucks. Thankfully, my doctor is fooled by my alter-ego of normal, mild-mannered gentleman and prescribed me lots of controlled substances to ease the pain. So by the time I am fully healed from this fiasco you’ll catch me hangin’ out with Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen as we rehab ourselves from our tortured demons and battle our all-around increasing levels of drug tolerance.
Tolerance is a great word when applied to race, civility and kindness. It’s a shitty word when applied to “OH FUCK NOWIGOTTAAKEFIVEVIKESOWMYLIVERHURTS” pain management.
You know what else helps me manage pain? Great music. And the next entry in my ongoing list of the most illustrious game scores possesses said great tunes in spades. I’m talking about arguably the best-scored Grand Theft Auto game, Vice City. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the GTA series, the music is cleverly tied into the radio stations found in the cars you liberate from the ordinary citizens in the game. The Vice City game is based on the 1980s cocaine craze and the cheesy excess surrounding it. Such intellectual properties as the TV show Miami Vice and the film Scarface are sent up with a wink and a nod.
To stay faithful to this concept, the majority of the music found on the radio stations is based around the Reagan-era. Everything from early rap to cheese metal is covered. And it’s great. So many classics rear their ugly, new-wave heads at you, while soem newer gems you may have missed the first time around grab your attention. No matter what you think of the game itself, you cannot deny there is some greatness to be had within any score that mixes A Flock of Seagulls with Slayer. Bonus points go on to the semi-sequel Vice City Stories, which contains many more great 80’s hits. Do yourself a favor and check them out.
#5 - Civilization II, 1995
Who says midi music has to suck? Every bit of music in this game was great. From visiting dignitaries sounding like a tribal massacre to the mystical foreign percussion of finding the Great Wall, Civilization II possesses a beautiful score with several leitmotifs that carried on to part III.
#4 - Super Mario Brothers 3, (1990) NES
This one was hard for me because all of the Mario games have great music in them, going all the weay back to Donkey Kong (dum dum de dum dum anyone)? And the first Super Mario Brothers game was a great work. An all-time classic with easily identifiable music. The second Super Mario was not originally a Mario game, but still had a fantastic soundtrack. THe reason I chose the third is not only is a great soundtrack with several different motifs, it also takes the original themes and jazzes them up. Which I’m a sucker for.
#3 - Frenzy! (1982) Colecovision
I bet the majority of you younger readers are scratching your heads right now. “What the hell is Frenzy?”, you ask. Let me start from the beginning. Back in 1980 there was a popular arcade game called Berzerk. It was very popular and even killed two kids from stress-induced heart attacks! Also, it was the first game to actually talk to you. Nowadays we take full-motion video and real-time-animation for granted, but us old fuckers like a then 4-year-old Smokey shit their pants when an arcade machine told us “GET THE HUMAN!” In Berzerk you are a stick figure with a slow firing laser gun surround by robots. The robots are trying to kill you. The stick figure runs from room to room killing and avoiding robots until he loses all his lives or gets to like the 2345th board or whatever so the game glitches. The game had some sick touches. When I say sick I mean both meanings of the word. Sick as in awesome, and sick as in, well, sick and twisted.
The first weird touch was the walls in the game were electrified. So if your stick figure walked into them he’d die a horrible death. SO would the robots, as many a skilled player used this to their advantage.
The second touch was the most (in)famous touch. Evil Otto. Yep, gamers still quake at that name. Often topping greatest video game villain lists, Otto was a smiley-faced bouncing ball that came out of nowhere to FUCKING KILL YOU when you took to long fucking about the maze.
Frenzy! is the sequel to Berzerk. It too featured a stick figure running around endless mazes shooting robots. This time the walls were not electrified. Instead the walls were made out of round circles the player could shoot through. And a few reflective surfaces here and there. So Berzerk masters that racked up their high scores by leading ther mindless robots into the walls were shit out of luck. Also there would be “boss rooms” that had different things going on. Plus you could kill Evil Otto! Sure, he came right back faster then ever, but heck, it felt good to gun his smiling little ass down. The Colecovision port of this game is a fantastic game with a minimalist soundtrack. I rank this game so high on the list because it is one of the first games where the soundtrack truly impressed me. From the opening theme to the faux-happy “game over” music Frenzy! is truly a great game with great music.
#2 - Wizards and Warriors (NES) 1989
Anybody remember this semi-obscure classic? It was an annoying platform game disguised as an action rpg, but we sure had fun with it didn’t we? And remember what an awesome soundtrack the game had? It was one of the first games to play an “OHMYGAWDYOURGONNAFUCKINGDIEIFUDONTGETHEALTH” theme. There was so many awesome pieces of music for this game. As frustrating as the game itself was, I kept plugging along, if only to keep hearing new nuggets from the awesome soundtrack. I liked it THAT much. And yes, Thrillho, this is one on the list that is univserally accepted as a classic. So now you can get off my back!
#1 - Final Fantasy X. 2001 Square
This one marks the first time legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu used outside help from other composers, so Final Fantasy purists will want to rape me. I’ll pucker my butt, cause in my humble opinion, X is the best in the series. And I think most everybody with any common sense does too. I don’t own the 4 different available American soundtracks (because the fucking game has the same music on it already) but I can still kinda get a sense that as the immense availability of youtube clips, soundtrack tracks, and fan-made covers attest, X is very popular on both sides of the world. This music is one of those things that impact every facet of your life for a while. This is also probably done through more than a little osmosis as you end up playing the fucking thing for 200 hours trying to unlock everything. This is one of those movies or video games where the music is so good you hum it while you work, dream about game scenes, and just pop on an mp3 once in a while to remember the awesomeness of that particular level’s score.
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Comments (5)
Subscribe to this comment's feedFinal Fantasy VI
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link?
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youtube links
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FF VI links
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuvSDedrtKM
And here's the song performed by an opera singer over the FMV sequence created for FFVI Advance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUhL5c2q2CY
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