REAL SONGS IN RETRO VIDEOGAMES PART 2

A few months ago, I wrote about various retro games that eschewed specifically-composed music and incorporated "real" music into their soundtracks, be they the King of Pop's hits appearing Moonwalker, Konami's presumably unlicensed Beatles covers in Mikie or the patriotic strains of the Colonel Bogey March from Gremlin Graphics' Wanted: Monty Mole. That was just the tip of this harmonious iceberg, though - long before the current age of fully licensed soundtracks from major artists, games were taking their musical cues from real-world sources. So, here are a few more examples of real songs in retro videogames!

Gyruss (Arcade / NES)

Let's start with something classy, shall we? Konami's tube shooter Gyruss may have a standard spaceship-shooting-other-spaceships-in-space setting, but what's less common is the use of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" as the game's main musical theme. Even if you don't recognise the name of the piece, the first few seconds quickly reveal it to be "that spooky music" so often used to give things a sense of foreboding.

Of course, it then goes into a high-tempo techno remix of JSB's famous piece, but this is a Konami shooter, after all. I said in the last article I'd like to travel back in time and show the guy who composed the Tetris theme the digital version of his work, but I think if I could do that with anyone it's have to be Bach and this. I just want to watch Bach play Gyruss, if I'm being completely honest.

WWF WrestleMania (NES)

From high culture to a place about as far removed from the refined world of classical music as you can get, here's "Real American", Hulk Hogan's insanely, almost self-parodyingly, patriotic signature theme.

Somewhere, an eagle sits atop a mountain, wiping a proud tear from his unblinking eyes. Of course, there have a been quite a few WWF games, but (as far as I know), the first to carry the name was Rare's WWF Wrestlemania for the NES. Hulk Hogan is present, of course, and so is his bombastic theme in a chiptune format.

That eagle is now a robot eagle from the eighties, wiping away his tears with his giant shoulderpads. A personal story: I sent a friend a video of "Real American", and she replied that she'd heard it before and thought it was a satrical comedy track about the Vietnam War. I think that says it all, really.

Rainbow Islands (Amiga)

A game with a rainbow theme, huh? There must be a rainbow-related song that we can... adjust to fit the game, right?

Okay, so it does it's own thing too, but the influence of "Somewhere over the Rainbow" is definitely strong enough to justify its place here. Plus, it's sweeter than a sugar-coated puppy with biscuits for eyes so I have hard time disliking it.

Neuromancer (Commodore 64)

William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel received a well-regarded adventure game makeover for the home computers of the time, complete with a score based on the song "Some Things Never Change" by synth-punk electrowizards Devo. Each version of the game has a different score due to the differing sound capabilities, but my favourite of the lot is the C64 version. This is because it features vocals. Terrifying, robotic, trash-compacted vocals.

It's a mightily impressive sound to hear coming from a C64, with the garbled sounds fitting perfectly with the dystopian cyberpunk setting. As a big Devo fan, (and I'm sure that comes as no surprise to you,) I'm a little embarrassed I didn't know about this sooner, but hey: I know about it now and Mark Mothersbaugh's electronic gravel-tone words will accompany my nightmares for a long time to come.

Crüe Ball (Megadrive / Genesis)

While some bands like Guns 'n' Roses and Kiss got actual pinball tables based on them, poor old Mötley Crüe had to do with having their name slapped on a Megadrive pinball game, a license which was apparently added quite late into the development period. Oh well, at least there are a few nice Megadrive recreations of some of Crüe's hits in the game, like this cover of "Dr. Feelgood".

As nice as that is, despite being a licensed Mötley Crüe product Crüe Ball only contains three tracks by the band. The remainder were composed by Brian L. Schmidt, who also wrote the music for the SNES Madden NFL games.

Ninja Gaiden (Arcade)

Ninjas are cool. Undisputable fact, that. Unless you've seen any of Godfrey Ho's ninja movies, but you'd never admit to that in public, would you? So, ninjas = cool, but that's not to say they can't be made cooler. Common ways of jazzing up your shadow warrior include cybernetics and demonic powers, but a much better way is to make a game about ninjas and add an extremely thinly-veiled copy of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" to the soundtrack.

The track is even called "I Am Man". Black Sabbath retaliated by writing a song called "Ninja Guy Dan", ostensibly a song about a normal guy satanic wizard called Dan who becomes a ninja - however, when played backwards you coud hear Ozzy threatening to bite the heads off of various Tecmo employees. Sadly it was never released, mostly because it's not real.

Journey Escape (Atari 2600)

Journey, America's premier supplier of tunes to Glee and other media franchises based on copying other people's songs, were the stars of their own videogame. And yet Aqua didn't get so much as a handheld LCD game by Tiger Electronics. Shameful. Anyway, I know you're only interested in one thing here: is there a version of "Don't Stop Believin'" featured in this game?

Yes, of course there is. It's the intro music, and, um, that's about it for the Journey music in Journey Escape, apparently. I guess the developers realised that was the only track anyone was interested in.

Spy Hunter (Arcade)

Do you remember Peter Gunn? No, me neither. That's because I'm British and not in my sixties. You'll recognise his theme tune, though - a jazz standard that just oozes international espionage, shadowy figures and cars driving into the back of lorries.

Yes, it's that one, the spy music. It was written by Henry Mancini, who seemingly wrote every piece of memorable music ever. "Baby Elephant Walk"? Mancini. The Pink Panther theme? Mancini. "Straight Outta Compton"? There no real proof, but I'm pretty sure Mancini had a hand in it somehow. The Peter Gunn theme, then: Bally Midway obviously knew a good thing when they heard it, as they made it the main theme for Spy Hunter, an arcade game about - get this - hunting spies. It really is a very good fit.

NARC (Arcade)

For the final game in today's round-up, I'm turning the tables with a retro game track that escaped from the confines of the arcade and onto an honest-to-god record. Here's the second stage music from Williams' 1988 gory crime-doesn't-pay-em-up NARC.

It was composed by Brian L. Schmidt, the same guy who I mentioned in the Crüe Ball section. It's a rather nice bit of high-octane eighties game music, particularly the driving bass and drums. Just the sort of thing you want to be hearing while blowing drug lords away and aggressively high-fiving your partner. Someone else who enjoyed NARC's musical stylings was Charles Thompson IV. He's better know as Frank Black or Black Francis, singer / songwriter and founder of alt-rock greats the Pixies. In fact, he enjoyed it so much that the Pixies recorded a cover of this track and released it as a B-side to their 1991 single "Planet of Sound".

I love Frank Black, I love the Pixies and I love this. That's really all I have to say on the subject.

There you go then, a few more tracks from retro games who roots lie in "real-world" music. Did I write this as a self-indulgent excuse to listen to Devo and the Pixies? Possibly, but I also had to suffer through that terrible version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" last time I did this, so I think it's only fair.

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AKIRA YAMAOKA'S NON-SILENT HILL WORKS

Akira Yamaoka, premier videogame composer and all-round talented fella, is best know for his work on the Silent Hill series. And rightly so; rarely has there been such a perfect fit between a videogame and its music, and said music is as an important aspect of the terror as the graphics or the story. Some examples? Sure, why not.

"White Noiz", from the sublime Silent Hill 2 soundtrack. Haunting, ethereal, just what you want for the story of a deluded madman and his trip to the world's worst tourist destination outside Pyongyang.

Or how about the original Silent Hill's "Until Death", which is raw unescapable horror in musical form. I mean, if you are going to put this on your MP3 player, make sure it doesn't randomly come on when you're walking home from a friend's house after midnight. People don't take kindly to nearby stangers shrieking like little girls in the middle of the night.
So the music of the Silent Hill series is some of the best around, but that's only part of Yamaoka's musical output since he joined Konami in 1993. Today, I'll be looking at some other contributions he's made to the videogame music canon outside the sinister world of Silent Hill.

Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2

To my mind, not enough games feature anthropomorphic opossums that fly jetpacks and pilot giant robots, but then again I am old and out of touch. The games that do fall into this category are the Rocket Knight Adventure games, in which the heroic Sparkster engages in some excellent 16-bit platform japery, all set to excellent music.
A problem arises when trying to attribute music from this era of gaming to a specific composer, because they were often part of a team and individuals were rarely credited. What is know is that Akira Yamaoka worked on the soundtrack to the Sparkster:RKA2 (along with the equally talented Castlevania composer Michiru Yamane), so here's a track from that very game.

International Superstar Soccer Pro '98

Akira Yamaoka and football might seem like a strange fit, but someone had to create the score for Konami's flagship sports title and Yamaoka got the job. He worked on the soundtracks for both ISS Pro and ISS Pro '98 (Winning Eleven 3 and 4 in Japan), and while the music is catchy in its way, it's not going to blow your mind - here's the "Play Demo" track to help you hear what I mean. That said, it's a lot better than the music composed for most sports games, and nowadays you don't even get that; just (shudder) EA TRAX and its ilk. One thing about this: is it just me, or does it have a particularly "PS1" quality to it? For me, there's some kind of indescribable quality that just screams "Playstation 1 music!" Weird.

Gradius III & IV Collection

Created between Silent Hill 1 and 2, Gradius III & IV is a compilation of... well, you figure it out. A new system means new music needs to be created for the menus and so on, and here Yamaoka proves he's no slouch at recreating that glorious arcade-style Gradius music. This is "Select", the title screen theme, and aside from being insanely catchy it really does feel like a lost track from some early-'90s shooter.

Contra: Shattered Soldier

Shattered Soldier may well be the most overlooked Contra game, which is a shame because it's pretty good. Even more of a shame is that fact that it's soundtrack isn't more widely celebrated, because it's bloody fantastic. This track is "Venus", and it's more metal than a chrome-plated steel mill. Just listen to that guitar! You could play this to Dave Mustaine and not feel like he was going to judge you harshly. Some of the soundtrack has a more electro feel to it, which brings me nicely to...

Beatmania (Various)

Yamaoka has contributed a number of tracks to Konami's arcade DJ-em-up Beatmania series, as well as other games in the "Bemani" series such as Guitar Freaks. His Beatmania work is probably the most "electro" of his work, so if you like his stuff but would prefer something without the guitars, this is your best bet.

Rumble Roses

Ah, Rumble Roses: Konami's all-female wrestling title has the core of a good game in there, but it's quickly overshadowed by the fact you can't help but feel like a massive perv when you play it. The soundtrack was composed by quite a few different artists, but here's Yamaoka's contribution: the hard-rocking "I'm Too Virtuous", theme of the "sexy teacher" character. That is, as opposed to the "sexy nurse" or the "sexy cowgirl" or the "sexy Mongolian wrestler". Do you see where they were going with this?

IFuturelist

Not content to stick to videogames, in 2006 Yamaoka released a solo album called IFuturelist. It bears some similarity to his videogame work, and indeed some of the songs are longer, remixed versions of Beatmania tracks. It's definitely more on the electro side of things, although there some Silent Hill-esque tracks on there, such as "Adjust Rain". This is my personal favourite, though; "Love Me Do", a pounding beast made of almost sub-sonic bass and synthesiser flourishes.

Shadows of the Damned

After working on seven (or eight if you count Silent Hill: The Arcade) and various other titles, Yamaoka left Konami in 2009. Fortunately, he soon joined Grasshopper, and the dream team of Suda 51 and Shinji Mikami. Their first game was Shadows of the Damned, and Yamaoka's talents are once again at the forefront.

It features more of his heavy rock stylings, such as in "G Drive", the theme of the hero and his skeleton motorbike...

... as well as more sedate, unsettling fare such as "Smile For a Broken Dawn".
Next on the Grasshopper crazy train is Lollipop Chainsaw, a sweet little title about a cheerleader who kills zombies with a chainsaw. With Suda 51 behind it and Yamaoka providing the music, I'm excited about it already.

And there you have it. Renowned for his Silent Hill music, but with more strings to his bow than you might think, hopefully Akira Yamaoka will be making (and pushing the boundaries of) videogame music for a long time to come.