As an avid gamer since my childhood, I have likely logged thousands and thousands of hours listening to the music contained in video games. Now that games are complete multimedia experience and memory issues are a thing of the past, it has become increasingly common to find video games with fully orchestrated scores, huge licensed libraries or guest “celebrity” composers. Sometimes the music is mixed in surround sound or can dynamically react to the way the game is played.
Themes/Scores
We have certainly come along way from the annoyingly catchy low resolution motifs of the early generations. Some of these themes are continually re-invented and re-used for current generation games (Mario, Zelda and Final Fantasy themes are good examples). Now video game scores must compete with movies and other forms of audio visual entertainment. Here are a few that do so rather well…
The award winning soundtracks for the Medal of Honor series by Michael Giacchino and Christopher Lennertz truly rival TV and movie scores covering the same subject material (Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan etc). This is actually not surprising at all since the story and concept for the first game was originally created by Steven Spielberg. Considering these games are first person shooters, this is heavy, emotional stuff. Check out the Medal of Honor theme, Casualties of War on European Assault or After the Drop on Frontline.
The score for the unusual Playstation 2 game Katamari Damacy (a game in which the only basic goal is to roll up as much stuff as possible into a ball) is about as unconventional as you can get. From the seriously over-the-top theme to the perplexing mix of Jazz/IDM/Samba/J-Pop inspired game level music, it just doesn’t get much more bizarre, imaginative or fantastic as this. The music in the game was actually considered one of the biggest selling points of the game. If you can’t find the soundtrack, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of the game (it retails for only 20 bucks).
One huge difference with video game scores compared to other types of thematic music is the sheer volume of material that is required to support the gameplay. With games that can last anywhere from 10 to 50 hours or more, creating enough original material to keep things interesting is no small feat. Multi-instrumentalist/composer Shawn Lee composed over 100 extremely varied tracks for Rockstar’s Bully soundtrack. The tracks featured here are well constructed and generally fun to listen to even if they are often a bit on the short side. Even better, the whole album is currently free!
There are a few interesting points to note regarding the Harry Potter video game scores by Jeremy Soule. As far as I can tell, the music for these games were written from scratch without using the themes from the related movies, although the composer has very closely retained the tone of the original scores. Also, most of the music was created using mostly synthesized or sampled orchestral sources. The score for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets won a 2003 BAFTA Award for Best Score, Game Music Category. While the themes and longer tracks are worth a listen, most of the songs on these scores are probably too short to be of much interest.
next: song libraries
this is great stuff, bryan! have you heard the advantage, btw? they play classic video game scores: http://www.emusic.com/artist/11570/11570537.html
also, i just want to say that pop song placement in video games — especially sports games — totally works. thanks to the new baseball game from 2k sports, i realized that i like one tapes ‘n tapes song — that thing plays all of the time, so much so that it’s worn me down into a fan!
Yep, both those are things I plan to cover in the future.