Music in games...Whats the deal???

It's always fun to find out how people started listening to the music that they like.  Stories like people growing up listening to the Beatles or Led Zeppelin or friends playing music for you and so on.

My favourite racing game of all time is WipEout and all of it's awesome incarnations. The first time I ever played a Wipeout game was when I was a kid growing up. There was a Microplay that was in an old bank. They had kept the vault that was located at the back of the store and welded its door open. Inside was a 50inch screen TV and a whole plethora of video game console(at the time this would have been stuff like the PS1, Sega Saturn and so on...) They would rent this out for 5 dollars and hour and give you free range to play any game in the store. So, lo and behold, this is where I first played WipEout XL (or WipEout 2097 if you hail from Europe). 

Being about 12 and playing this game for the first time was absolutely mind blowing!!! The graphics were so cool, the game was hard, it was eye watering fast and the sound track was life changing. Songs like Atom Bomb by Fluke,  Loops of Fury by the Chemical Brothers, Firestarter by The Prodigy and all these too. It was possibly the best soundtrack of any game at the time and dare I say EVER!!! What was really cool, was how if you put the game disc in a regular CD player you could listen to all the music!

So this soundtrack sparked my interest in bands like The Prodigy(who put on an AWESOME live show), Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers and electronic music in general.

The music was not only amazing, it suited this game perfectly. The future of racing with a soundtrack of nothing but pulse pounding electronic beats. 

So what other games have had good soundtracks??? I can only think of a few of the top of my head. Games like Brutal Legend, where the soundtrack was all hand picked by Tim Shaffer and Music Director Emily Ridgway. But this game was very much all about it's music not only to drive the game, provide background noise and influence the look of the game but also it was also a major part of the plot. Plus with a bunch of famous metal icons doing voices(Ozzy, Jack Black, Rob Halford and Lemmy to name a few) they had to keep it METAL.

Jet Grind Radio and Jet Set Radio Future also had very cool soundtracks filled with a mix of music like Electronic, J-Pop, Hip-Hop even Funk. It also featured some very interesting artist likeBS 2000 and Cibo Matto. 

Now whats happening with the whole revival of retro games or retro remakes is a whole new Chip Tune music scene based of the old NES and Gameboy music. Which in my humble opinion is FREAKIN'AWESOME!!!  Bionic Commando Rearmed with it soundtrack based off of the NES Games original soundtrack. Which you can compare here for original 8-Bit and the new revamped music here. Capcom did a great job on keeping the game true to the original and the music is just as good.  

Scott Pilgrim VS. The World being a major box office smash help push more retro video style and sound further into the mainstream. So naturally a video game was made. A very good old school styled side scrolling beat'em up! Which is an excellent video game, also being a Torontonian makes it very cool to play a game that takes place in neighbourhoods  I know and love. But the music for this game is really really really good. Anamanaguchi did the soundtrack and they do not disappoint! Check it out here. They also put on a really good live show as well.

For a while I was very disillusioned with video game music.  It seemed that the only thing people wanted was the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, with it intense operatic chanting and giant symphony bands.  I mean given the choice of that or some Heavy Metal while blasting noobs.... I know my choice.

That was certainly a very different post then what I intended. But hey, sometimes these things take on a life of their own......