Bad Music in Video Games

Bad Music in Video Games

Music in video games is often an afterthought to the player, often the player can play through an entire game without taking any notice of the game's soundtrack, with many players even preferring to mute the in-game music when the first start a game. This mentality was developed when the complexity of in-game music was limited by the technology and money available to the developers, however, in more recent years game developers have an abundance of constantly improving technology and high budgeting publishers to aid them in the creation of their game's soundtrack. With modern game soundtracks being so good and pivotal to a game it is a shame that many players will miss out on such a key part of the intended experience. But for this project my task was not to find the good music but instead to delve deep into the depths of video game history to find the pieces of music that managed to dodge the strict quality control of modern audio departments and make their way into the ears of any 'unfortunate' players.  

When i first started this project i decided to do my research by posting a question on Reddit, my question was "Have you ever played a game that's soundtrack negatively effected your experience.
Sadly my post was for the most part completely ignored by the user-base of Reddit and after 3 days of waiting for a response (i still haven't received one to this day) i decided to use someone else's post, the post i used wasn't 100% what i wanted but it was good enough for me to find some good examples of 'bad game music'. once i had gone through and listened to as many pieces of music i could find i decided to pick out my three 'favourite' pieces and use them for this project.

While doing my research i realised that almost all of the examples of bad sound design in games originated from the early 90's and late 80's, i thought as to why this may be and i came to the conclusion that this was the time period in which gaming technology had advanced just far enough for music to be relatively complex but the gaming market had not yet become big enough to justify large budgets, so audio development teams often consisted of just one or two individuals who would create every sound and piece of music needed for a game, the small size of the teams led to a lack of quality control and would inevitably lead to at-least a few sub-par pieces of music.

Back to the future:

Back to the future was a loose video game adaptation of the 1985 film of the same name, it was released in 1989 for the NES, it was published by LJN and Developed by Beam Studios.

The problem with this game's audio is the fact that the soundtrack consists of only two songs one of which only plays at one point in the game, the other is a short segment of the song power of love by Huey Lewis and the News with an increased tempo, resulting in the following piece: Back to the Future Stage Theme. In itself the music isn't all that bad, but when the game uses it for every single level and stage in the game (bar one) it becomes very repetitive, very quickly.

The main issue with the soundtrack of back to the future was not the quality of the music within but simply the amount of music, the game played the same song over and over, no matter what stage of the game the player was on the same, repetitive, 2 minute cycle was there to accompany them. The simple solution to this problem is to create more music for the game, this way the player doesn't have to sit through the same song throughout every moment of the game.

Sonic Eraser:

Sonic Eraser is a puzzle and is considered a lost sonic game, it was released in 1991 for the Sega Genesis (or mega drive)  in 2004 the game was rediscovered when Sega made a system where people could pay a small fee to download and play old Sega games, including Sonic Eraser.

There is a piece of music within the game that would play whenever a player engaged in a versus game against another player or an AI, while i could describe what is wrong with the track it is far easier to let the music speak for itself: Sonic Eraser Versus Theme.

The song from Sonic Eraser's Versus game mode is very 'interesting'. The music gives off a factory feel, the sounds chosen to make up the piece are loud and harsh, and seem to represent machinery. Music that mirrors the setting of a level is common in games (especially in sonic games) but with this piece the composer seems to have sacrificed any sense of actual music to achieve this 'factory feel', the addition of the loud banging sound which is seemingly scattered randomly throughout the piece is distracting and along with the sudden breaks in the music (to allow for an out of place triangle solo) make the music a pain to listen to. i feel that if the composer chose instead to leave out these two components the music may have fitted nicely into the background of the level and made for a distinct atmosphere while playing this game.

King's Quest V:

King's Quest V was a graphic adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. Released in 1990 the game was developed on a one million dollar budget which was a huge budget at the time it was created.

The audio in King's Quest is for the most part completely fine, but when the player entered the town a certain song would play: King's Quest Town Theme. The music is very loud and intrusive and the strange addition of what sounds to be a hamster wheel in the background begins to grate very quickly.

Very often in RPG's or adventure games when the player enters a town or village they are bombarded with opportunities to learn more about the game's setting or to take on new and exciting quests. These opportunities often require at least a small amount of exposition, a lot of the time this is given in the form of text for the player to read. It is common for game developers to implement a town theme which accompanies the player within these densely populated areas, the music chosen is often very smooth and 'un-intrusive' to allow for the player to read and interact with the map around them (such as The Pelican Town Theme  from Stardew Valley), in King's Quest V however the chosen town theme was quite the opposite, it was loud, repetitive and became very grating very quickly due to the addition of a constant squeaking that occurs all throughout the piece. The reason for the music's tendency to drown out whatever was happening on screen and distract the player is the loud volume and wildly varying pitch of the music, if the volume was lowered and pitch made to be less jumpy along with the removal of the aggravating squeak the music may not have felt so annoying and could have complemented the context in which it was used.