VG Music, one of the most overlooked segments in games today?

By: Johnny_Rzeznik Mood: Aggro (mad) Date: 03/22/2008 15:07:14 Music: None

So I was going through my old MP3's, MIDI's, and CD's the other day and was instantly reminded of my younger years. See, I came across some old OST's/Themes from the older days of games: Bloody Tears from Simon's Quest, Various themes from Mega Man, Street Fighter II Guile's theme, U.N. Squadron's Mission Select, Zelda's overworld, and the Final Fantasy theme. Then I was instantly struck with something; "Why has music been seemingly taken as an afterthought of today's games"? Why is it seemingly thrown waste side in today's games? It seems that all the importance is placed upon Vaseline smeared, overly shiny bump maps, HDR, Bloom lighting, and Blurring. Have developers forgotten that yes, visuals are the first thing to make an impact on someone obviously, but music sets the mood, and enhances the experience.

So then, I tried to think of some games instantly off the top of my head that weren't from the 80's and early 90's that had some really memorable soundtracks. What did I think of immediately, well Metal Gear Solids, Dead Rising, Final Fantasy's, Silent Hills, Resident Evil's, Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, Star Ocean 3, and Devil May Cry's. Which actually ties into a lot of my older titles mentioned before, who were also under the same developers collective roofs: Capcom, Square Enix, and Konami. I'm glad to see these people haven't strayed from this aspect of music playing an important role in games.

My question is why have many Western Dev's actually overlooked this? Yes, there are a few stand outs buy not many. Bungie has done a great job on the Halo series OST, Insomniac has been pretty good too in their Ratchet series, including this Britney Spears - Courtney Gears Spoof (which was then used in a cartoon)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIpKc27Bh_Y

...And Uncharted: Drake's Fortune OST has been incredible. But what's going on with the rest of NA's and EU's guys? Why haven't these teams really put much effort into their titles?

I guess as long as well have the before mentioned Dev's out there, there's still a glimmer of hope for some great tunes. And finally it seems we're getting a jump in audio tech since the CD based machines now too. Kojima's filling up 50gb's of space with not only game stuffs, but also glorious Uncompressed audio (which is suspected with taking up the majority of space, though it's not containing multi-langs on one disc!).

Also, do yourselves a favor and check out the Videogames Live! stuff. They do covers of a bunch of great tunes old and new, from Pong to Zelda to Tetris to Metal Gear Solid to Halo. Here's a starter link: (Make sure to watch at least the part starting around 2:45 to get a laugh if you're a MGS fan :D