I have the attention span of a 7 year old girl surrounded by Hannah Montana merchandise. If I need to concentrate I can’t have anything visually glittery or colourful that might distract me. If people talk at me when I’m doing my eye liner, I will no doubt end up drawing a black line on my nose. Same with making a costume, just seeing my Pink DS and a neglected Tamagotchi called ‘Mametch’ wanting me to run shops in TamaTown in Tamagotchi Cornershop 3 starts to make me twitch. So for concentration: no TamaTown, no Hannah Montana and definitely no cute bunny called Cloud that I have to constantly watch to make sure he isn’t eating the Xbox 360 charge cable. So to concentrate, I tend to whack on my iPod. Sometimes I might play ‘Girls Aloud’, sometimes I might scare the neighbours by playing Aqua’s ‘Doctor Jones’ really bloody loud but apart from those obvious, err, (cough) gems, I do enjoy the delights of over 20 years worth of various video game soundtracks.
I always leave my Ulala outfit making to the last minute in true cosplayer style – so I need concentration and motivation, which I get from Space Channel 5’s ‘Mexican Flyer’ on continuous repeat, and when its magic starts to fade, I tend to listen to the sounds of ‘Initial D’, ‘Vib Ribbon’ or ‘Sonic the Fighters’ as they are fast paced and this should tell my brain to work faster, sew faster, stab myself with needles faster and end up with a finished (bodged) product faster. And it really does work… well most of the time, it only fails the second Niko’s ‘Night of Fire’ turns up in my Euro Cheese play-list, and then I’m up and away doing the ‘ParaPara’ dance to it, so admittedly it does have its flaws.
If I need something to relax to I often listen to the epic atmospheric sounds of the ‘Mass Effect’ soundtrack, the mellow Jazz version of the ‘Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney’ soundtrack or the ‘Final Fantasy’ Potions collection which has a mixture of calming music from Celtic vocals to Piano solos. I have often fallen asleep due to the nature of these albums, though I recommend only listening to them at home, in your bed or on a large comfy sofa with a soft blanket to hug and not at all when you are at work.
I love listening to certain songs and thinking: “blumming hell, that reminds me of the time when I spent one of the UK’s hottest summers inside playing FF7 trying to work out if spiky head Cloud Strife was in pain or actually enjoying his ‘manly hot tub’ experience in the Honeybee Inn.” And “ahh, I learned to cook Burgers properly because of Parappa the Rapper’s catchy ‘cook the patties, cook, cook the patties’ song.”
I own quite a few gaming music disks of joy now. Like Nintendo’s, ‘Mario and Zelda Big Band Live’ and 3 rock albums of ‘Final Fantasy’ songs performed by ‘The Black Mages’. But most are from Sega games (as I do very much love Sega just in case you somehow didn’t know that) but most of Sega’s music is just really blumming good like ‘Burning Rangers’ Burning Hearts, ‘NiGHTS’ Dreams Dreams and ‘Sonic CD’ ending of either Sonic Boom or Believe in Yourself (it might cause controversy not just choosing one, but yes, I enjoy them both).
Most of my soundtracks were never released in this country, the majority are located in the land of the ‘Rising Fun’ and you can buy them in most music stores, even book stores and even stores that appear to sell frilly pink Lolita dresses. A few of my favourites include ‘Jet Set Radio’, ‘Sonic R’, ‘SEGAROCK’, and my 4 ‘Space Channel 5′ CD’s I fought proudly for on eBay. Luckily for me, iTunes are releasing video game sound tracks in the iTunes store and I have happily bought the magic sounds to ‘Boom Boom Rocket’, ‘Portal’, ‘wipEout purE’ and ‘Mirror’s Edge’ there, and they look set to continue this tradition in the future. So hopefully no more waking up at the crack of eBay-bidding-dawn to make a bid on eBay for a rare ‘Space Channel 5′ CD that I don’t already have.
In my opinion the soundtrack to a game is as important as the other parts that make up a game. Everyone knows the theme tune to Mario, and if it’s not “Duh Duh Duh, Du Der De Durh” it will be “come on it’s time to go, do the Mario” (god bless Lou Albano, rest in peace). Also Portal is a brilliant game, but who wasn’t that extra bit super happy when hearing;
This was a triumph…
I’m making a note here
HUGE SUCCESS!
Where would Street Fighter’s Ken be without his quite frankly legendary “Naow Naow Na-now Na-now, Naaow Now” Ken theme, and d’you know what… where would ‘I’ be without… err, “Ber Beh Beeerrrh… Bur Beh Buurrrr”. Okay so that sounded bad, Space Channel 5’s Mexican Flyer is harder to type, but to make up for that, here are just few of my favourite songs in games that have lyrics – I’ll be cruel and let you guess where they are from:
“What am I doing here,
I think of all the reasons,
But it’s still not clear,
I look at places to go,
There’s nothing near,
So take me away from this,
Cause this place I’ll hardly miss.”
“Shut up and eat!
Too bad, no bon appetit!
Shut up and eat!
You know my love is sweet!”
I think it’s really great to see more orchestrated concerts dedicated to the soundtracks of games such as ‘Video Games Live’ and ‘Distant Worlds’ ‘Final Fantasy’ Concert. They bring back memories of decades of iconic music, it allows the composers to show their hard work in front of a live audience with an updated big band remake. Chip tunes and epic orchestrated scores in games will sometimes get forgotten over graphics, gameplay and boob size but it will always be there bringing the game together as a finished product and depending on the composer, can even make the game better or more pleasant to play (possibly the reason I still attempt to play such b*sterdley Capcom gems such as any ‘Mega Man’ game and ‘God Hand’ on PS2 as their soundtracks are worth the constant beating).
As award winning Sega music guru and good friend ‘Richard Jacques’ once told me:
“Music is the emotional backdrop to any game, regardless of genre. It emphasises certain key aspects such as tension, mood, action, and ambiance as well as often telling a story through character and location themes. On certain genres it also fuels the adrenaline that the player may feel. In my opinion, music and sound make up 50% of the overall gameplay experience.”
Gaming News 24/7
November 23rd, 2009 at 12:33 am
My iPod is half-filled with game soundtracks and orchestral remixes of game soundtracks, and even rock operas based on games (The Protomen are awesome). The other half is filled with classic prog-rock. I suppose that might be considered eclectic.
That jazz CD of the Phoenix Wright themes is ridiculously easy to listen to. Doesn’t hurt that listening to it helps calms me down too. If I listen to it any more often than I have been in the last couple of weeks I think the disk would warp.
November 30th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Couldn’t agree more with the importance of music in games, something that’s become increasingly apparent to me as I’ve grown up listening to it! Oh, Green Hill Zone… my first sound as a gamer and maybe still most loved one :D
December 6th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Interesting post, you can count me in as another game music fan. From the classic era to the more modern opera/orchestra ones, truly the music can add so much to the game’s story/ambiance/immersion/etc.
@Michael
Hehe, my first contact was also with the classic tune of Green Hill Zone from Sonic, still rings quite fond memories. BTW, speaking of the classic tunes, does anyone else dig the Golden Axe soundtrack? It feels so powerful, and it totally rocks! (Sometimes literally, there’s quite a few metal covers on youtube and stuff)
*Uff*, I must breathe and control my fandom now :P