Such musical efforts are mostly fan-driven, as it's unusual to find a professional interest in retreading old ground — publishers usually would rather pillage an old license to create soulless sequels. But Capcom has broken that trend with an homage to the gameplay and music of one of the games of my youth. The NES classic Bionic Commando is being reengineered for Xbox Live Arcade, to be released next month as Bionic Commando Rearmed. Capcom has further announced that the soundtrack of this remake is now available as a separate purchase, from either Sumthing Digital or iTunes.
It's been so long since I've played Bionic Commando (the Game Boy Color version notwithstanding) that I can't fully recognize or appreciate these new variations. But I got a real kick out of the self-parody present in the narrator's dramatic introduction:
"They lost their hero to the enemy.
They went looking for the perfect solider to rescue him.
They found some guy who couldn't even jump."
$10 gets you all 15 tracks today; another $10 gets you the game on XBLA next month.
Everyone's mind works hard to make sense of the world around us — but some minds work harder than others. The result for me was that, around the same time I was getting into Nintendo, I was hearing voices.
Or ambient noise, anyway. We lived in an old house that settled every night, with creaking floors and hissing radiators. My imagination took all these noises and tried to interpret them into something I could understand. Never mind that it was nonsense. I'd learned that it made sense to stomp on turtles and throw boomerangs at fireball-spitting mermaids, so it only seemed logical that similarly nonsensical rules could be imposed on the real world.
So I'm rather relieved to know I'm not alone when I see other people also compelled to apply method to madness, such as in this aural interpretation:
Via Slashdot comes Games Radar's article on twelve iPod-worthy video game tunes. Highlighting mostly recent soundtracks such as Portal and Metal Gear Solid 3, the list represents how far we've come from the 8-bit era (which definitely has its own appeal). Games Rader supplies one-minute sample clips of each of the twelve tunes, with the full versions reserved for the context of the original games or their CDs when available (we must obey copyright, after all).
The list prompted me to consider what selections are top-ranked in my iTunes library's "Soundtrack (Game)" genre, which currently contains 40 albums and 361 songs. Here are some notable four- and five-star choices:
Silent Hill 3's "You're Not Here" (with lead-in "Lost Carol")
Tracks 3-5 and 8 on the imported orchestration of Dragon Quest IV (perhaps not eligible, since it isn't the original soundtrack)
Ending Theme from Final Fantasy VIII — a lousy game with good music.
Tracks 7 & 19 from Intelligent Qube. And no, my copy of this rare and awesome puzzler is not for sale.
As suggested by one of the above entries, the best video game music is often orchestrated adaptations of RPG music. I've recently purchased both Dragon Quest in Concert and 20020220 (the latter available from the iTunes Store), representing both my favorite role-playing series, and often have them on continuous loop while at work, transporting my mind to other realms even as I dwell in a mundane cubicle environment…
What about you — what are some of your favorite tunes?
