WTF is wrong with game soundtracks?

[Professor Idle]

Some of my favourite music comes from game soundtracks:

and many, many more.


one lousy lyric doesn't change the great work that goes into most video game soundtracks.

Huh. I didn't know that Zeke dies.

Brb brooding.

 

[iwinatlife]

One word mate. Bastion.

i was looking to make sure that got posted ^_^

 

[Nfritzappa]

Soundtracks are only getting better, OP.

 

[TheDharmaFox]

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the awesomeness.

god damn goosebumps

 

[Blow_Pop]

ps. Oh yeah as for stuff that does mess people up, I'll leave it with the fact the most people descibed Ted Bundy as a "nice guy" until cops began finding the bodies...

Who is that and what does he have to do with any of this?

you're kidding right? Ted Bundy was a serial killer who preyed on women. He was described as your average guy next door. He was described by some as attractive, smart, and a future in politics. From Wikipedia(since I can't get to my actual books on serial killers at the moment)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy :

Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy (born Theodore Robert Cowell; November 24, 1946 ? January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women during the 1970s, and possibly earlier. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed shortly before his execution to 30 homicides committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978; the true total remains unknown, and could be much higher.
Bundy was regarded as handsome and charismatic by his young female victims, traits he exploited in winning their confidence. He typically approached them in public places and feigned injury or disability, or impersonated an authority figure, before overpowering and assaulting them at a more secluded location. He sometimes revisited his secondary crime scenes for hours at a time, grooming and performing sexual acts with the decomposing corpses until putrefaction and destruction by wild animals made further interaction impossible. He decapitated at least twelve victims and kept some of the severed heads in his apartment for a period of time as mementos. On a few occasions he simply broke into dwellings in the dead of night and bludgeoned victims as they slept.
Initially charged in Utah in 1975 and convicted of aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault, Bundy became linked to a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in multiple states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, he engineered two dramatic escapes and committed multiple additional assaults, resulting in at least three murders, before his ultimate recapture in Florida in 1978. He received three death sentences in two separate trials for the three known Florida homicides.
Ted Bundy died in the electric chair at Raiford Prison in Starke, Florida, in January 1989. Biographer Ann Rule described him as "...a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after."[2] He once called himself "...the most cold-hearted son of a ***** you'll ever meet."[3][4] Attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, agreed. "Ted," she wrote, "was the very definition of heartless evil."[5]

As far as what. I believe the OP is making the parallel of looks are deceiving. Also to the OP, Have you played Need for Speed and listened to the music in there? Racing games typically do more fast "up beat" kind of music. Usually more "offensive" as well. The thing is, for racing games, that's what tends to work best. I've tried putting other music on whilst playing racing games and unless it is the same style of music it usually doesn't work well. You might want to look into the settings and see if you can either skip the song or just turn the back ground music off and find something more appropriate to listen to. As far as sonic goes, since the enemies technically want sonic dead, it seems appropriate *shrug* I haven't played Sonic in years and from what I've seen of gameplay in the new ones, I'm not interested. Most of the games I play don't have lyrics in the music. Or if they do it's rare.

Spoiler

 

[Naeras]

Nothing is wrong with game soundtracks by themselves, and anyone who says otherwise will be flash kicked in the face by the man with the hair himself.
Seriously though, there's a lot of incredibly awesome music hidden in game soundtracks. Now there really is a lot of shit in them as well, but games like Street Fighter 4, Tales of Symphonia, Deus Ex, Frozen Synapse, Bastion, Zelda, Mario, Final Fantasy, Halo and.. well, a whole lot more, prove pretty nicely that nothing is wrong with video game soundtracks in themselves =)

 

[Fishyash]

I think some peeps have misunderstood what I was getting at. Metropolis Street Racer (hints in the title) is a Racing game that focuses on making the player feel great since they are winning a race and performing sweet drifts and sweet jumps and other ?sweet? car related things... not a romance game or a Japanese visual novel but a RACING game and after hearing the tracks on Fuse a number of times, don't seem to mesh well into a racing soundtrack.

I don't really want to comment on SA2's soundtrack, since I am not a big fan of knuckles stages full stop, music included. However as a kid when you are playing a game that has music with lyrics you won't be listening to the lyrics while playing the game, you would stop playing. Honestly when you were talking about kick the rock I thought you would be focusing on

Wild Canyon fun, I gotta chase a bat, ha
Yeah, Rouge, she's sexy and smooth

But oh well, I'll go to my main point anyways.

Driving games have pretty much no bounds IMO in regards to context. The reason for that is that most cars IRL have a radio where you can put in any song you want. Obviously you may want some context, for example the exhiliration of dance music. Exhilaration, adrenaline or stress is probably the only emotions you can really tie to racing or street driving. There are no cues, there is no planned dynamic. You could put in a classical waltz, medival folk music, electronic house music, europop, metal or even a high fantasy film soundtrack and it wouldn't be out of context for driving in.

 

[Auninteligentname]

There is nothing wrong with videogame music. I love how some songs can make you remember some places, or if you've never heard the song before, imagine how the location/situation are.

Spoiler: I present to you:

I will stop with those songs, or I would be sitting here all day..
But before I go, I wish to tell you that I've never played Blue Dragon, yet I love that song.
Also, good job to Carsus Tyrell for posting Zia's song (Build that wall), as that is one song which has to be posted, as it's so beautiful.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the awesomeness.

god damn goosebumps

If you think it's awesome now, it's at least doubled in epicness when you're actually destroying people with Phoenix Wright in UMVC3. Difficult but awesome is the perfect way to describe his play style

Facing down an entire team with just Phoenix Wright. It's already over, he just doesn't know it yet...

[sub]When I don't drop my damn combos anyway[/sub]


This guy is awesome, I could never pull off half of the stuff he does with Phoenix Wright

 

[anthony87]

I'm sorry, what was that you said? I see(hear?) nothing wrong.

 

[Mordekaien]

I shall prove your argument invalid!


'nuff said.

 

[DoPo]

Spoiler: Just like this

Just like this

However children only see the dolphins there. Or usually at least.

I had to look SOOO hard to actually see those dolphins. What does that say about me?

I don't know. I'm not a psychologist.

Does it make you feel better that I didn't see the dolphins for at least 2-3 minutes the first time I saw it? I was 14, by the way.

 

[NinjaCatStudios]

Here is my solid counter argument:

YES! Iji is amazing!
Can also be used as a counter argument for saying that gamemaker games are bad.

OT
[youtube =om0M6Ol8FjQ]

EDIT: Forgot how to work youtube videos.

 

[Lilani]

ps. Oh yeah as for stuff that does mess people up, I'll leave it with the fact the most people descibed Ted Bundy as a "nice guy" until cops began finding the bodies...

Who is that and what does he have to do with any of this?

you're kidding right? Ted Bundy was a serial killer who preyed on women. He was described as your average guy next door. He was described by some as attractive, smart, and a future in politics. From Wikipedia(since I can't get to my actual books on serial killers at the moment)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy :

Well I'm sorry, I prefer to keep an extensive back-catalog on information regarding animated movies and fun facts about Disney, not serial killers. The only kinds of killers I like to keep tabs on are the ones that haven't been caught.

Also, I think if you're going to be outraged here, you should be outraged at the fact that the OP is trying to draw a correlation between some badly written lyrics in a Sonic game and a serial killer. It doesn't even make sense--if you're going to run with the whole "average guy next door turns out to be a serial killer" motif, then it isn't obvious "give me the emerald or die" lines you should be looking for. It should be the subtle ones, the ones that hint at dangerous things but don't make the direct distinction between reality and fantasy.

 

[Yoshemo]

"Give up the emerald or die, I don't love you" ...um yeah I totally want my young child playing SA2 when its got lyrics like that. I'm not saying that the song is F'd up or that it makes your kids serial arsonists etc but come on!

The game has a genetically modified lizard monster that attempts to destroy the planet, a military base exploding with everyone inside, and a series of flashbacks where a young girl is shot by the military, and a single mildly violent line in a song bothers you? You need to check your priorities.
By the way, if the emerald leaves the floating island they're on, the island will crash, killing everything on it and everything it might land on. I think being willing to protect the island with violence if necessary is appropriate.

Oh yeah as for stuff that does mess people up, I'll leave it with the fact the most people descibed Ted Bundy as a "nice guy" until cops began finding the bodies...

That has no relevance to the topic and you know it. He did his killings nearly a decade before video games became mainstream and could be more than a couple pixels on a screen.
Plus, people with psychopathy usually act polite and pleasant whether they're violent or not. There have been NO links between violent video games (much less violent lyrics in a single song in a video game) that links to psychopathy. Your fake moral outrage is a load of crap.

I've been listening to heavy metal and rap thats a lot more graphic than any of those songs you listed since I was in diapers and Sonic Adventure 2 was my favorite game for years after it came out when I was still in elementary school. I've never even gotten in to a single fight at school, much less gone on a killing spree.
I wish you idiot people would stop freaking out that movies, music and games are causing crime and violence and focus on what really does, like poverty, lack of education, having no parents (whether they're dead, in jail or just not around) and fix those problems instead.

 

[DarkRyter]

Well, to be honest, Rouge was getting all up in Knuckle's grill and dat ***** be tryin to snatch his bling.

 

[Yoshemo]

Spoiler: Just like this

Just like this

However children only see the dolphins there. Or usually at least.

I had to look SOOO hard to actually see those dolphins. What does that say about me?

I don't know. I'm not a psychologist.

Does it make you feel better that I didn't see the dolphins for at least 2-3 minutes the first time I saw it? I was 14, by the way.

I actually am a psychologist and I still can't see the dolphins

 

[Dfskelleton]

I'm sorry to interrupt...

... but Crazy Bus had one of the greatest soundtracks of all time!


... of All TIME!

Okay. Fine. I throw in the metaphorical towel. You win. Take your trophy and leave.

OT:
They can be really bad:

Or they can be fantastic beyond belief.
0:45 and 2:00 are musical definitions of the word "epic", and I mean truly epic, not epic as in the way the internet has deemed the word.

 

[hooksashands]

"Give up the emerald or die, I don't love you"

Knuckles doesn't fuck around.