This post brought to you by Sennheiser.
It can be quite a shock when one takes a moment to think how little time in film media is spent without background music. From the most poignant, heart-felt monologues to the flashy depths of the latest JJ Abrams or Michael Bay lightshow, something is playing in the background, often obscured by talking or effects, but always present.
This is less of a sudden realisation in video games – music has been a big part of out entertainment since the very beginning. Everyone remembers the music from games they played growing up because it was really all the sound we had – depending on your age there was little to no voice acting, very basic special effects and an awful lot of text that you needed something to hum while reading.
This continues as our gaming platforms become ever smaller – the Gameboy Advance, DS and Playstation Portable easily matching and often surpassing the weighty consoles of old. Their inheritance of the games of the past has naturally resulted in a transfer of values, but their technical limitations have resulted in the same for original titles.
And so, so much of it is absolutely brilliant. It’s no wonder that sites like ocremix exist, remixing and retuning the anthems of our favourite entertainment into fully fledged, standalone tracks; removing a simple inherent of VGM: it cannot have an identifiable ending, as usually it must repeat endlessly.
Example time! The boss battle theme from Final Fantasy VII (http://bit.ly/3CthKR). Now, I don’t care who you are or what your background is, if you never air-guitared madly to Those Who Fight Further, you never lived. More than anything else, it is a wonderful example of a catch-all statement for most of that kind of VGM: an identifiable, catchy and singable first ten seconds. Look anywhere and you will find it – whether it be covering a battle scene’s opening mini-cinematic; the turn counter on a strategy or the loading screen for a new level; the very first section of a piece of VGM is utterly vital – not only to create a listenable piece of music, but as a piece of game design.
More examples! The Advance Wars series. I challenge anyone to find a game with so many incredible and memorable full tracks. Obeying strictly to the ten second brilliance, two minute wonder formula, these are songs I’ll never forget – and they just kept getting better as the series progressed. Sturm’s theme (http://bit.ly/ckOI31) from the original was the perfect piece of boss music for one of the hardest fights I’ve ever had; through Sensei’s crazy up-beat slap-tastic anthem (http://bit.ly/9nlnx6) in the sequel; into the sublime rock piece for the nerd stereotype extraordinaire Jake (http://bit.ly/bwxzwc) in Dual Strike and finally the grim and dark stylings of every track in Days of Ruin… but most notably Tasha’s “Goddess of Revenge”: absolutely the best introduction you will hear (http://bit.ly/9BbdwP). If you don’t headbang, you aren’t human.
It is not just the console games – our own lovely PC’s shooters have some of the (mostly guitar/metal) best VGM there is. Unreal Tournament 2004′s DM_Rankin (http://bit.ly/cUphf0) is a hypnotic combination of electronica and metal to create an incredible wall-jumping, man-fragging beat-setter that seems custom designed to fuel the senses. As backup, who can forget Doom’s Hangarmaggedon? E1M1 just wouldn’t be the same without it (http://bit.ly/vYfoW), the death-rattle of zombies cataclysmically different when lacking this intricate piece.
But it goes further. Video Games Live is an experience everyone should have once. I myself have only been lucky enough to hear them at Blizzard events, and thus have not experienced their full range – but it is truly a glorious thing. Gamers are often accused of taking our hobby too far, of branding ourselves too heavily with this one thing, that we are addicted to our passtime. This is all well and good and probably at least a little correct – but 10,000+ people dancing, humming or singing their favourite pieces of music in a packed hall is as relevant and healthy for us as it is for the crowd at the latest Pendulum concert.
What I want to see next is for the remixes that are made (or even the originals themselves) – be they The Black Mages, OCRemix, VGL or whoever else – to be released properly and taken seriously as musical pieces. It won’t matter, or even need to be mentioned, that it’s remixed video game music; it’s just music. Those of us that know the origins, if we are even a rare specimen by this point, can laugh and enjoy it a little more perhaps, but that does not take away or add from the piece itself. Anyone can stand on a packed floor and air-guitar their heart out to Quake 2′s Kill Ratio (http://bit.ly/cwTDcr). Anyone could stamp their feet and throw their hands madly into the air to the Terran Medley (http://bit.ly/2DiQuP and http://bit.ly/1ayJDj).
What would you like to see, down the pub or in the club on a Saturday night?