The Video Game Music Thread

[Seethe]

I'd like to add that the Soundtrack for the new Diablo-Clone Grim Dawn sucks dick... Very boring IMO.

Lies



Although overall the soundtrack is indeed weak. It tried to be like Matt Uelmen, but fails.

Now THIS is Matt Uelmen.



One of the best composers, no joke.

 

[dunno lah]

 

[Durandal]

Now THIS is Matt Uelmen.



One of the best composers, no joke.

OTOH that sounds so similar to Diablo, with the same instruments et al, that I wouldn't have even known it was the music from a different game if it weren't for the YouTube thumbnail
It certainly is a nice track, but a good musician needs variety too

 

[Gerrard]

What happened to all those C64/Amiga composers? Where did all that talent ago?

?

 

[United Nations]

I'd like to add that the Soundtrack for the new Diablo-Clone Grim Dawn sucks dick... Very boring IMO.

Lies



Although overall the soundtrack is indeed weak. It tried to be like Matt Uelmen, but fails.

Now THIS is Matt Uelmen.



One of the best composers, no joke.

Matt Uelmen's best work is for the 1st Diablo.

I compared it to Diablo 2 and Torchlight and each got progressively worse, but then again, my ambient musical tastes are pretty nostalgic; I rtecognized hints of industrial in Diablo 1 OST and I'm a big fan of Nine Inch Nails.

A lot of Diablo 2's OST is filler IMO and LOD used an entirely different composition style that was carried over to Diablo 3.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

 

[Unkillable Cat]

What happened to all those C64/Amiga composers? Where did all that talent ago?

Normies happened. People want "awesome" music like in modern movie trailers not some weird-ass nerd shit...

To be more precise, the standard for making video game music got lowered by the introduction of new and improved technology. To be able to make a SID chip or AY chip belt out a decent tune you first needed to learn to code it properly. Once that was 'sorted', the next step was to know how to make music with it, which is where the 'classical' music education comes in. But not everyone that knew how to program these chips had the musical background, so they improvised. If you've ever wondered why so many video games of the mid-1980s feature classical music pieces or use well-known pop tunes, now you know why.

As for what happened to all those composers? I dug up some info on two of the biggest names.

# Rob Hubbard originally started as yet another programmer (though with a classical music background) laboring away at a C-64 and tried to get into the industry at pretty much every level...and failing. As a last-ditch effort he tried to make music for games, and found out that his musical creations were considered "exceptional" by other software houses, and after a couple of games featuring his music got published (most noticably Thing on a Spring) the work started pouring in for him. By the time he was working on The Last V8, he realized that not only did he have full artistic freedom, but that he had found his dream job. In the late 80s he decided to move to the US to work exclusively for Electronic Arts (boo! hiss!) until about the launch of the first Playstation. Microsoft offered him a job which he turned down, and IBM showed some interest as well in him. He did move back to the UK and his music output now mostly comprises of live performances, though he did assist Chris Abbott with his "Back in Time" series of chiptune CDs in the late 1990s - I've listened to those CDs and they are wicked good.

# Ben Daglish also had a strong musical background, and his approach to the C-64 was to treat it like a brand-new musical instrument. After doing work all over the place, he settled in as the in-house music man at Gremlin Graphics and moved over to the Atari ST. He quickly left when the Gremlin gig turned into a 9-5 office job (tell a musician to work on that schedule and see what happens) and was almost out of video game music that. He worked on Legends of Valour in 1992, Touché in 1997 and, here's an interesting news bit from him, for his work on the lost arcade game called Septima:

This is hidden history, there's nothing on the 'net about this. A complete chancer called Stuart Firth managed to con a machine from Silicon Graphics, this big projector system off some other company and borrowed money from here, there and everywhere, with this crazy idea to build an arcade game. It had a big semi-circular console with up to seven players shooting guns at a screen the size of a wall. Spaceships were coming out of the screen at you and you had to blast them, like 3D Space Invaders, basically. I remember doing the soundtrack in Wales with a studio engineer that used to be in T'Pau.

Anyway, we had it running in an arcade in Portsmouth in a cubicle the size of a room for a couple of weeks in about 1988-89, and we showed it at a trade show in Blackpool. Sega loved it and they wanted to buy it. They bougt the prototype from us and some of us went over to Japan for evaluation. Sega said "Lovely, we'll have a hundred," and we thought "That's it! Our fortune is made!" Then suddenly they said "No thanks, we don't want it." The money they'd paid for the prototype just about paid off our debts, but we had no money to build another one. We were stuffed. Two or three years later I saw a game by one of Sega's subsidiaries: A four or five-player shooting game almost exactly the same. Stuart was trying to get a court case together for ages, but it didn't amount to anything...

Beyond that he did some work in composing for theater, but he's also been involved with the Back In Time project and plays chip tunes live at various assemblies and shows.

But Daglish also gives the perfect answer to the question posed by Durandal:

As soon as you could stream real music from a CD, that was the end of the programming side of game music. As soon as sampling came in with the Amiga, that’s when the rot set in.

 

[free999enigma]

 

[Valestein]

 

[Valestein]

 

[Durandal]

Just a question, why is it that cRPG music is always something that stays in the background, but rarely becomes intense or gives that feeling of OH SHIT SON?

Maybe I just didn't play enough cRPGs or am too indoctrinated by muh JRPGs and their obligatory prog rock soundtracks, but I can never imagine something like this playing in a cRPG regardless of its setting. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but my theory is that most cRPGs tend to be 'too mature' for music like Ys or Final Fantasy. And I think that's a right shame, because video game music is capable of a whole lot, so sticking to a select few music genres feels like wasted potential. Troika tried their hand at doing something new with music in Arcanum and VtMB (even though VtMB is not really a cRPG). Perhaps the DOS era or the golden era of cRPGs never really had any noteworthy music to begin with due to the sound hardware at the time, as the C64/Amiga legends were banished from this plane of existence.

Imagining this, that, this thing, that thing, this stuff and that stuff in a cRPG would make for something great, I think. Obviously something fast-paced wouldn't suit a turn-based encounter, but it's some food for thought for soundtracks which can stand out or make a certain event/place more memorable given the situation. Not that there's anything wrong with the fantasy soundtracks most RPGs have, but after the umpteenth epic fantasy soundtrack and the lack of cyberpunk RPG/games can leave one wanting for something else.

 

[Excidium II]

Because CRPGs tend to go out of their way to make combat as slow and boring as possible so the music follows suit.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

 

[Ivan]

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I've listened to all three Trine soundtracks several times, and while that one has a nice little tune running in it, only one track stands out from all of them.

This one:



(INB4 Brofist from Infinitron)

 

[Suicidal]

Just a question, why is it that cRPG music is always something that stays in the background, but rarely becomes intense or gives that feeling of OH SHIT SON?

Maybe I just didn't play enough cRPGs or am too indoctrinated by muh JRPGs and their obligatory prog rock soundtracks, but I can never imagine something like this playing in a cRPG regardless of its setting. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but my theory is that most cRPGs tend to be 'too mature' for music like Ys or Final Fantasy. And I think that's a right shame, because video game music is capable of a whole lot, so sticking to a select few music genres feels like wasted potential. Troika tried their hand at doing something new with music in Arcanum and VtMB (even though VtMB is not really a cRPG). Perhaps the DOS era or the golden era of cRPGs never really had any noteworthy music to begin with due to the sound hardware at the time, as the C64/Amiga legends were banished from this plane of existence.

Imagining this, that, this thing, that thing, this stuff and that stuff in a cRPG would make for something great, I think. Obviously something fast-paced wouldn't suit a turn-based encounter, but it's some food for thought for soundtracks which can stand out or make a certain event/place more memorable given the situation. Not that there's anything wrong with the fantasy soundtracks most RPGs have, but after the umpteenth epic fantasy soundtrack and the lack of cyberpunk RPG/games can leave one wanting for something else.

I agree and I remember similar questions being asked in another thread. Most music in modern western games tends to sound like typical movie trailer themes and it seems like they don't even bother giving different events in the game specific BGMs anymore. When playing recent Kickstarter games, like PoE, Divinity, Wasteland 2, Xulima I noticed that they have 1 thing in common - neither of them had a final boss theme. A minor complaint I'm sure, after all, many people don't care about game soundtracks. But I do, damnit, and you're telling me that the epic final confrontation with a crazy immortal priest, a murderous AI bent on the extermination of humanity, a world-destroying dragon god and an avatar of a dark god will be accompanied by the same 30-60 second loop that I have been killing skeletons to for the past 50 hours (well to be fair, Xulima had a separate theme for the final boss, but it was shared with other similar bosses so it doesn't count)? Like that just kills a large part of the mood for me. Not to say that these battles were anything epic or challenging in-game - actually they sucked dick (WL2 was the best 1 I guess cause it was actually possible to fuck up and die on the highest difficulty) but a unique and fitting theme would have added something to them at least.

I used to think claims that Japanese game music is better than filthy gaijin music was but ignorant bleating of the filthy weeb who has never experienced the joys of Planescape Torment or Arcanum but having played some recently made RPGs and JRPGs I think he may have a point.

 

[Ivan]

not enjoying the game very much but this is fantastic

 

[Jasede]

^^^^

Same guy in this little-known game in which every song basically invents a new genre of music...

 

[Jasede]

Some of those I may have posted earlier, but that was years ago.

Chrono Cross

 

[Jasede]

Final Fantasy

 

[Jasede]

Persona

 

[Jasede]

Misc JRPG

 

[Jasede]

RPG/strategy

 

[Jasede]

misc

 

[Jasede]

more misc