Month of Video Games Day 8: Best Soundtrack

Day 8: Best Soundtrack

So for a lot of these, I'd really had to struggle coming up with an answer. The challenge of this one is going to be picking one answer. Music in video games is territory that I've already covered here some. It's something that I've always loved. When it's well done it can bring the immersion that a game creates to a completely different level, and going back and hearing music from an old game you really love will give you an immediate rush of nostalgia, even if you're not actually playing the game. I love that there's kind of a secret handshake sort of quality to video game music. Anyone else who's played a lot of video games will know what you're talking about if you reference, but it's kind of an afterthought for people who don't really play video games. Nobody really has any idea who Nobuo Uematsu is the way everyone knows who John Williams is, even if they don't really watch a lot of movies. Really, I could spend about 6 hours just linking video game music. I'll try and keep it a little bit less ridiculous than that, but seriously, where to start?

Maybe I could start with the springy hip-hop in Jet Set Radio, or the haunting themes from the Metal Gear Solid games (or the delightfully absurd Bond opening parody that is Snake Eater). I could go with the cool ambiance of Super Metroid's soundtrack, or the gothic styling of Symphony of the Night. But really, eventually, if we're going to talk about some of the most well crafted and most memorable game music, we're gonna have to get into RPGs. I'm tempted to say either Chrono Trigger or Chrono Cross. Yasunori Mitsuda's brilliance is apparent in both games. In Chrono Trigger, he created a diverse and atmospheric soundtrack on primative hardware that's still good enough to listen to on it's own. There's the somber overworld themes of Peaceful Days, and Wind Scene, the fun-as-hell Frog's Theme, the etherial Shala's Theme, and the stone cold badassery of the Lavos battle music. Years later, Mitsuda came back to compose Chrono Cross with better the sound hardware provided by Playstation and created the gorgeous Scars of Time, and a bunch more amazing tracks to go along with it.

Final Fantasy, for me, is paramount, though, when it comes to RPGs, though, and Nobuo Uemastu's music throughout the series has always resonated with me. Again, how the hell do I pick a favorite? X had the somber reflection of To Zanarkand and maybe the best love theme in Suteki Da Ne. VIII, despite being uh... not as good of a game, had the blood-pumping Man with the Machine Gun. Then there's Final Fantasy VII, with the iconic, cataclysmic One-Winged Angel, the Main Theme, which is almost its own little story in how it progresses, the punch-you-in-the-gut sadness of Aerith's Theme, and the intro, which did so much to get you excited and draw you into the world of the game immediately. It was very, very tempting to settle on VII, but no, I'm going to go back one game prior...

Final Fantasy VI

Like what Mitsuda did on Chrono Cross, I think a of credit is deserved for the range and diversity that Uematsu was able to achieve on a little old 16-bit system that's now 20 years old. One of the seasons I'm settling on VI rather than VII is the more-with-less quality of it. But more than that, there's just really not a bad track on the entire soundtrack. All of the character themes are as lovable as the characters and seem to be instantly evocative of them. Even being comprised of simple synthetic instruments, Uematsu is able to create music that's genuinely emotional enough to match the emotional complexity of the game which, by the standards of 1994, was pretty much unmatched. And oh yeah, the game has an entire fucking opera in it.

Omen

The opening is a sufficiently operatic overture for the epic scale of the game, and has a great sinister and mysterious quality to it. You have to love the bellowing chimes going along with the strings. They sound positively apocalyptic. At the end, it introduces the somber Terra's Theme, which may be the single coolest theme in any game.

Locke's Theme

Breaks you out of your initial depression a bit after Terra's Theme. The perfect light-hearted, dashing rogue sort of theme.

The Decisive Battle

Best Final Fantasy boss battle music? Yeah, I think so.

Kefka's Theme

There are a lot of mentally unstable villains out there in video games, movies, and all of fiction, but there's nothing quite like an insane man dressed as a clown who takes over an Empire so he can throw the order of things out of balance and rule over a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It's kind of hard to capture that in a piece of music, but Kefka's Theme does a pretty good job. If you've played the game before, you can hear his fantastic 16-bit maniacal laugh as you listen to this. I guarantee you can.

Shadow's Theme

The ultimate shadowy anti-hero gets a cool Good, the Bad, and the Ugly-sounding theme.

The Veldt

I think this might be one of the most sampled video game tracks out there, leading to awesome stuff like Overclocked Remix's Kefka Goes West. Cool as hell.

Forever Rachel

A lot like what Uemastu did with Arieth's Theme a game later. A great, sad piece, although maybe not even the best one, with the solumn guitar strings of Epitaph coming later.

Overture / Aria di Mezzo Caratte / Wedding Waltz / Grand Finale

Have I mentioned yet that the game has an opera in it? I didn't play Final Fantasy VI when it came out in 1994, but I think I can safely say that there had been nothing whatsoever like that in a video game before at the time and, really, I'm not really sure how many scenes like it have been made since. It was a pretty storytelling device, although if it didn't sound like a legit opera it wouldn't have worked nearly as well. Uemastu nailed it.

Relm's Theme

"Uncle Ulty! I'm going to paint you a portrait!!"

Esper World

Fantastically foreboding.

Battle to the Death

Sufficiently epic for a fight with Atma Weapon

Dark World

With the game at its absolute darkest point, Uemastu pulls out some of the most morose organ music you'll ever hear.

Dancing Mad

The culmination of everything.

There you have it. Final Fantasy VI was a game with one of the best cast of characters ever assembled. Every FF game has memorable characters, but VI's batch was a particularly great ensemble, and went to great lengths to develop all of them and tell the story of what had come before in each of their lives. Nobuo Uemastu's soundtrack perfectly complements this at any step of the way. You can't see a screenshot of Final Fantasy and not hear the accompanying music, nor hear a track from the OST and not see the scene. I'm a huge fan of Roger Ebert, and reading his reviews is a big reason why I started writing a blog that is oft-times about movies. Ebert, though, has developed this weird, wrong-headed idea that video games can't be art and has gone to great lengths to defend his position. As far as I'm concerned, though, Final Fantasy VI and it's score disproves his position, and this was a game made 17 years ago.