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Loading ...What happened to cool computer game tunes?
Ben Hardwidge
I’m really tired this morning, and I’d like to blame something for it. I could blame insomnia, or my dog’s unfortunate habit of sneaking into the bedroom and putting her wet nose in my armpit, but in truth it’s mainly because it usually gets to Midnight and I think ‘hmm, I should really go to bed now,’ but instead, I decide to look up something stupid on the Internet, such as Michael J Fox’s real name, and then spend the next hour and a half looking at similar things. Last night’s sleep-depriving search was ‘e1m1,’ which is otherwise known as the music from the first level of Doom.
I worked out how to play it on the guitar the other day (it isn’t hard), you see, and thought I’d see what else had been done with it. A search on YouTube brings up a lot of results, including various cover versions, a great instructional video by Sonic Clang (who recorded his version for the Classic Doom 3 mod) and a huge debate over which metal song e1m1 ripped off. This ranges from Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ to Slayers ‘Behind the Crooked Cross.’ For the record, I own both these tracks and they sound about as much like e1m1 as the speaking clock. Sonic Clang feels the same way, to the point where he even went to the effort of filming his own short film to prove that the track was a rip off of Metallica’s ‘No Remorse’.
On the one hand this proves that there are a lot of obsessive weirdos on the Internet, and I count myself among them, seeing as I conducted the search in the first place. On the other hand, though, it also proves that a good computer game soundtrack can still be an Internet hit 15 years after it was first released. Why don’t they write good, catchy computer game tunes like that any more?
After this, I started to look for other good computer game tunes, and found various covers of the theme from Monkey Island, including this great piano piece. I was also reminded of the fun of playing through Quake II to Sonic Mayhem’s crunching techno metal soundtrack. There are numerous other catchy computer game tunes, of course, including the Bomb the Bass track for Xenon 2: Megablast (also known as a faster version of the theme from ‘Assault on Precinct 13′), not to mention the theme tunes to console classics such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros and the Legend of Zelda, all of which I’m sure you can whistle off the top of your head, whether you’re a seasoned console hater or not.
I tried to think of other good computer game soundtracks that have come out recently, and while there have been plenty of good, big-production scores for the likes of Oblivion, and occasional bouts of action music cropping up in Half-Life 2 and Crysis, there just isn’t anything with a simple, catchy soundtrack any more. Basically, there’s nothing that’s going to make it to an Internet video in 15 years time. Why is this? Are game developers too sophisticated for catchy game tunes now? Do we only get film-like scores at appropriate moments from now on?
The answer’s probably yes, but I’m not entirely happy about this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for good, realistic games with appropriate music and cinematic cut scenes, but I also kind of miss the all-out ‘just shoot everything in sight’ approach of the Doom and Quake games, all to a stomping metal soundtrack that would be going on in your head all day. Is there any reason why we can’t have both?
Maybe Duke Nukem Forever will change this, but I doubt it. Doom 3 was rammed full of boring cutscenes, stupid stuff like PDAs and tedious levels, when it should have just been a fun, guts and glory shooter. Quake 4 was similarly full of marines talking gibberish, and pointless vehicle levels. I actually quite liked Quake 4, but I’d have liked it a lot more if it just involved shooting loads of stuff to techno metal.
And don’t even think about telling me that I should play Serious Sam. I like the idea of Serious Sam. After all, you’re a big guy with massive guns whose mission is to gallivant around ancient Egypt, turning harpies into bullet-torn heaps of feathers. But, let’s face it, Serious Sam was crap, and boring. You go into an area, it gets full of creatures and then you shoot them all, then move onto the next one. There’s little in the way of interesting map design, with cool, winding corridors. This is what Doom and Quake II had in abundance, but they didn’t ruin it by pretending to have a story, and they had great tunes too.
In fact, I’d often play the first few levels of Doom and Quake II for fun, even after I’d completed them on various difficulty levels – it didn’t matter about completing the game; I just wanted to shoot stuff. So basically, after all my rambling, I’ve come to the conclusion that I want a stomping thrash metal soundtrack to accompany a simple game where I just shoot loads of stuff. And, no, this doesn’t mean I want to play online multiplayer games – I suck at them. Make some new games with simple, cool and catchy tunes. Do it. Do it now!
I think the loss of “cool” game tunes boils down to the simple factor of music is now used to add an extra level to a game or scene.
Look at Bioshock, it’s got a really impressive score of tune that are rather nice to listen to. Put them back in the world of Rapture and they gain that extra something that makes them awesome.
Half Life 2 : Ep 2. I’ll take as an example. A few weeks after it came out my mate RubberDucky came to me and asked for the track that plays during the ant lion fight. A track called VLVX 22. When I told him how to get it he said “doesn’t seem as good now” to which I pointed out he wasn’t currently blasting round after round into anything that pops out the damn ground.
If you also look at the pure mass of music put into games now as well. In the good old days you got maybe a 10 tracks or so. Game space was tight back in the land of CD (that’s CD’s kids. 700mb of space) so the few tune where all you heard and one was bound to get stuck in the head of late night gamer as the sleep depravation set in.
That, and final problem; Realism. As 85% of the damn games coming out are either from EA or going for the “realism” angel then a fully licensed track is stuffed in. GTA, Burnout, anything else EA has snotted at akk feature full real track by “that bad who do that one good song”. Why waste time on making music (Like in GTA:III or even GTA:Vice City LOVE FIST!) when you could just spend a bit and pay another load of people some cash and use the track you know will work.
Well, that’s my view on it. Could be the cake talking.
Still think the old “Still Alive” is going to be kicking about in a few years.
WHAT!! wait…no..i agree…but for ONE! you CANNOT ignore metal gear solid! C’mon!
fits the game…and i dont think ill ever forget it…there are still some gems out there! but i agree….cant believe how much it made me smile to listen to the first level of doom!
I’m a sad act too and this same topic has been bugging me for years now, games just don’t do music like they used to, I think im getting old (23) lol. I first got a “modern” pc in 1998 and games like Unreal and to a lesser extent Half-Life had great music. But the golden age of game music must be the 80’s because of the likes of C64 games like Target Renegade and Platoon which has the best score of any game ever made IMO. Try www.lemon64.com to check them out.
“WHAT!! wait…no..i agree…but for ONE! you CANNOT ignore metal gear solid! C’mon!”
Oh Lordy, not Metal Gear. It has robot killing machines that moo.
MOO!