I spend a lot of time here each week prattling on about how much I love videogame music. How it’s a vessel for the narrative, for beat-to-beat moments that wouldn’t have anywhere near as much impact if it weren’t for the accompanying score. How it not only elevates the experience of playing a game, but often serves as absolute bangers to be listened to even outside of the world they were created to exist in.
But sometimes. Sometimes. As much as I hate to admit it, some videogame music is simply not very good. Sometimes it’s the inoffensive kind of bad—that limbo of mediocre where it’s not at all memorable, and you’ll inevitably forget the soundtrack the second you close the game. Other times it’s the kind of music that is so terrible that it sticks with you forever.
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I think one of the greatest examples has to be the goddamn Mansion Basement theme from Resident Evil: Director’s Cut – DualShock Edition. It’s funny because the original Mansion Basement sounds absolutely fine! It’s ominous—perhaps not the best piece of music in videogames, but it certainly serves its purpose as unsettling violins crash against loud, sharp MIDI explosions.
The Director’s Cut (DualShock Edition, let’s not forget), on the other hand? Hoo boy. I’m not quite sure what happened between these two releases. It gives me war flashbacks to the first music class in school where we were unleashed upon the keyboards lining the perimeter of the classroom. Pairs of students huddled over each digital piano, spamming the absolute bejesus out of all the goofy sound effects.
It’s as if all of the zombies had come straight from the circus. A truly terrible cacophony of sad trumpets overlapping in a way that does not at all read like it belongs in a horror game.
I think that bad videogame music is mostly a relic of the past these days, when composers had little to work with and not a whole lot of experience in how to marry some newfangled playable technology together with relatively restrictive tracks.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have more modern-day affairs that make me crinkle my nose and pull the bad stank face, though. I take particular umbrage with a handful of Tekken 8’s tracks—I absolutely cannot stand the Colosseum theme, I’m sorry! Something about the Vocaloid wailing halfway through just goes right through me. And I love a Vocaloid track, but this time I simply cannot do it.
But what about you? Is there a song you not-so-fondly recall from a videogame? Maybe a terrible licensed track that pulled you right out of the world instead of immersing you in it? Do you somehow have something even worse than Resident Evil’s abomination? Be sure to drop a comment and share something that’ll truly have my ears begging for mercy.
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