Video game soundtracks and audio simply doesn’t get enough credit (are we the only outlet that has “Sound” as a grade?) in this day and age. It’s something that is often overlooked when it comes to immersion, but when things go wrong people really take notice. Sure, many low-budget games often use generic tracks due to budgets, but there are times when even AAA games get an audio track really, really wrong. Let’s take a listen to some of these shall we.
The National Anthem – Double Dribble Arcade
We can cut this butchering of the Star-Spangled Banner a little slack for being a vintage arcade machine. Let’s face it, back in the 80s it was pretty incredible to hear any sort out sound coming out of an arcade machine when the best you would get was Pac-Man screaming Paku-Paku-Paku. That being said, it’s still hard to listen to the digital voice butcher the song, although to be fair, the song is pretty darn difficult to get right by a normal human.
Sagat Theme – Street Fighter 1
Street Fighter is a staple in the fighting game scene, as well as the grandaddy of the entire fighting game genre. Not only that, but the series is know for some of the best and catchiest music in all of video games. While classic stage themes from Ryu and Guile will go down in history as some of the best, we tend to forget the terrible tracks from the original Street Fighter, much as we seem to forget the game itself. Sagat is a series mainstay, but his stage theme music sounds like he composed it himself after a severe concussion.
Nocturne – Sonic Chronicles The Dark Brotherhood
Sonic Chronicles is a good game. Hell, I’d wager to say it’s one of the best Sonic games to come around since the original trilogy on the Genesis. It’s both fun to play and boldly original (a Sonic RPG? Insanity!) and yet it sold like crap because Sonic fans are the worst and will only spend their money on shitty games. Still, if there was an issue with the game it would be the Nocturne track that the game tries to pass off as, well, music. Oh, sure, it tries to be music, but at the end of the day ends up feeling like it belongs in Sonic Boom. See, because Sonic Boom sucks and this song suck too; whatever you get the joke.
Title Theme – Adventures of Rad Gravity
The days of the Nintendo Entertainment System were like the Wild West of video games. Before the internet you’d have nothing to go on when picking a game other than a couple of screenshots and the blurb on the back of the box. Often times we would play games just because that’s all we had, (I’m looking at you Karate Kid) but other times a game would start off so bad that you’d keep from popping it in to avoid the ear bleeding caused by the title screen, regardless of gameplay. The Adventures of Rad Gravity is one such case where the music seemed to be composed by the studio heads teenage kid after receiving a Casio keyboard for Christmas. It’s music in the same vain as someone vomiting on a canvas is art.
The Whole Thing – Taz-Mania Game Gear
Taz-Mania is a throwaway title on the Sega Game Gear that was put out to cash in on the better (still not good) Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis counterparts. This one isn’t getting picked for just a single track, but for the entire games score, err, musical thing? The music will give you a massive headache and makes the game unplayable. Seriously, don’t play this one as the music will drive you insane. It sounds like whoever wrote the score did so after spinning around on one of those spinning things you find at parks. You know, so that they could really feel what it’s like to be The Tasmanian Devil. Barf.
Item C – ALEX KIDD In The Enchanted Castle
Alex Kidd will always be best remembered as the mascot for the Sega Genesis before Sonic came around and gave the Genesis a legitimate franchise. And while the Alex Kidd games were… okay, they were fun and offered a mild distraction while you waited for the weekend so you could rent Sonic. The music in Alex Kidd got the job done and fit well for a mediocre game, but the track “Item C” is so bad that it seems like the composer created a real song, but then feel asleep on the pitch shift knob while the final track mastered. It hurts my brain.
Song 6 – Extreme Paintbrawl
Sure, Extreme Paintbrawl may be a throwaway game, but at the very least they didn’t call it Xtreme Paintbrawl like so many other games of the time. The problem with this one is that whoever was in charge accidentally got two separate tracks, a traditional bluegrass redneck affair, the other a shitty pop-punk track, and mixed them together as a single song because they were drunk one night and it wasn’t as if anyone would really play the game anyways. My real concern here is that the song starts with the drummer having an honest to god seizure and instead of getting him medical attention, the band just rolls with it. He’s dead now.
Bad Ending – Streets of Rage 3
Streets of Rage 1 and 2 are masterpieces on the Sega Genesis. Part three was, well, it was rushed. Still, the game was alright and still offered up some fun, but for whatever reason composer Yuzo Koshiro, a man who has several amazing tracks to his name, created this track to go along with the bad ending of the game. I guess in a way that makes sense; a bad song for a bad end, but I still think there must be more to the story. It sounds like the kind of thing one would compose after getting drunk before noon and walking into a the piano section of a Guitar Center.
Intro/ Level 1- The Little Mermaid
I swear to you that the Genesis could output some great audio, but why so many companies just couldn’t figure out how blows my mind. Having a bad track or two is one thing when you are producing a ton of original compositions, but when your job mainly consists of rewriting famous Disney songs into video game form it can’t be all that hard. The Little Mermaid on the Genesis is a case where the music comes so close to be okay if not for one little issue. The tracks all technically work just fine, and are even quite fun, but for whatever reason the composer decided it would be great if their five-year old could sit in on recording day and mash their head on a single key all the way at the far end of the piano. At first I thought it was the metronome gone haywire or something, but no, the damn into and first level feature an overbearing ping every other note that it’s maddening. What’s crazy is that when level two comes around the music drops the madness and actually gets pretty good, but that may be due to my ears being thankful for the incessant beeping that ended.
Mansion Basement – Resident Evil: Director’s Cut: DualShock
Resident Evil was a spectacular game when it hit the PlayStation, and while it doesn’t hold up today (it’s kinda crappy looking back) it still is an important game in a historic sense. The game was dark, scary, and tense, and the music that was composed for it helped it immensely. But for whatever reason when the Director’s Cut of the game dropped (a version that should fix everything) the music that came along with the Mansion Basement was so bad that I don’t think you can even consider it music. Hell, even the most avant-garde musician would say that the piece was a little too out there. It’s not far off to say that the track sounds like what happens when a composer is on a deadline, leaves their keyboard on the organ setting, and a racoon makes its way through a window and goes into anaphylactic shock on top of said keyboard.
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