The Power of Three: songs in video games
Video game music has come a long way since Mario Bros.
October 24, 2016
Video games started with pixelated productions from the retro consoles hipsters know and love. From the Atari, to the Nintendo and Sega… holy crap was that 8-bit music annoying. As iconic as Mario’s little world 1 intro is, there probably isn’t anyone listening to it every day as a great song or musical piece.
However, music in video games today is epic. There are great songs and variation in music, like the classical songs in Fallout, the hard rock songs from Call of Duty zombies, and the amazing soundtracks from Saints Row that could go from Sublime to death metal in .00005 seconds, not to mention games entirely based on music like Guitar Hero.
It’s All Over But The Crying – The Ink Spots
Coming from Fallout 4, my favorite game series, the Ink Spots are a returning classical artist to the game’s soundtrack. Songs by The Ink Spots have been part of more than one Fallout cinematic. It’s quite funny to hear this song playing as you blast your way through the gory, horrific scenes of post-apocalyptic America in Fallout. Hearing some calming, slow classical music playing as monsters and raiders attack you almost the entirety of the game is quite contrasting and slightly ironic.
115 – Elena Siegman, Kevin Sherwood
In the Zombies game mode on Call of Duty, there are hidden songs you can turn on for most of the games in this series made by Treyarch. A fan favorite is this song, “115,” about an element that came from a meteor responsible for turning most people into zombies. It’s a fast-paced song for a game synonymous with that. The objective of surviving waves of the undead horde on each map makes turning on the song that much more cool. You can feel like a god compared to the weaklings on The Walking Dead. Where’s there music, huh?
What I Got – Sublime
Coming from Saint’s Row the Third, this song is literally sung by your customizable character and one of his brothers from the gang, The Saints. The soundtrack for this game is huge, and while this song is on the Saints own radio station, other stations and songs are played on different radio stations. There’s a gang of computer nerds with a techno radio and a gang of gothic people who have a metal radio station. There are songs from all over different genres and people know most of the songs or artists played by each radio station.
