Perhaps the most underappreciated aspect of video games, music plays an overlooked role in what can make or break a title – and the memories that go along with it.
For a medium over 50 years old that began in earnest with a moving ball and two sticks on a screen, it’s fascinating to look back on how other aspects of video games became defining features of the artform – with music chief among them.
Entering the public stream of consciousness with the ubiquitous theme of Super Mario Bros. for the NES in 1985, video game music has greatly evolved since then, with its complexity increasing over the years as video game consoles themselves have grown to be much more technologically impressive.
Today and for the past two decades, video games that make it a point of focus often end up with majestic scores that go on to build legacies of their own, with titles such as Super Mario Galaxy, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Eternal Sonata earning heaps of praise for the scores players were treated to.
A modern gamer won’t have much trouble at all stumbling across a title with a captivating score, a noted departure from the mixed bag gamers would often have on their hands at the turn of the century. Yet with the transition from 16-bit systems like the SNES and Sega Genesis to the fifth generation of the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64, music took a big step forward as well.
I’ve grown to love and appreciate the unique role and place that video game music has over the years, yet a few tunes that were omnipresent during my childhood stick out as music that is emblematic of the nostalgic memories I made while still being a great fit for the game being played.
Nearly three decades after I picked up a controller for the first time, here’s a look at the inescapable video game music of my childhood:
1. Pipe Maze – Super Mario Bros. 3 (Super Mario All-Stars)
Super Mario Bros. 3 stands out as both the first game I ever played and my favorite game of all-time to this date, with many of my favorite memories being forged in my earliest years while playing through the Super Mario All-Stars version of the game with my family.
While I certainly have my pick of the litter when it comes to singling out one iconic composition from SMB3, I always find myself gravitating towards Pipe Maze, the theme for the seventh world of the game.
On top of being my favorite world in the game as well as one of the more challenging homeworlds of the Super Mario series, it also comes off to me as the most nostalgic – even more so than the opening worlds of the game that I undoubtedly played more of as a young kid.
Yet beyond me playing whatever I could of the game as a toddler were my memories of watching the rest of my family, in particular my dad and grandma, play through much of the game – with both of them usually spending more time in World 7 than in any other world.
The theme for the world is basic and repetitive, yet it still somehow fits so perfectly with what you’re seeing on the screen. An up-tempo, boisterous riff with accented notes throughout helps paint the picture of a challenging world with an incredibly unique layout, abandoning the more subdued, laid back music used as homeworld themes earlier in the game.
2. Main Theme/The Lost Ruins – Crash Team Racing
I’ve written at length about CTR on this site before, but I always find myself either starting the game up on the PS1 or watching old videos of gameplay from the original version of the game in what is always an experience filled with some of my earliest memories.
While my family caught Crash fever in 1999 shortly after the release of Warped!, it was the release of CTR later in the year that brought a new look and style to the series – with the title rivaling Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Kart 64 for its Nintendo nemesis.
CTR’s single-player mode is what makes the game so great, and a large part of it is traversing through the five homeworlds of the game – all of which include altered versions of the game’s primary theme.
Though this theme is catchy and infectious no matter what style you hear it in, there’s something uniquely serene about the version heard in The Lost Ruins, which acts as the second of the five homeworlds of the game.
Maybe it was the childlike excitement of finally getting past the first boss, or just admiration of the orange sherbet-colored skies the level has on the original version of the title. Either way, the synth-flute riff and more percussive nature of the theme feels like a match made in heaven with the world’s ancient ruins setting, one that had previously been executed impeccably in previous Crash games.
3. Sunny Villa – Spyro: Year of the Dragon
Isolating a single song from Stewart Copeland’s repertoire of masterpieces scattered throughout the original Spyro trilogy is a tall task, especially since there’s really no way one can go wrong. When thinking of my personal memories and nostalgia though, it’s undoubtedly the theme to Sunny Villa, the first main level in Spyro: Year of the Dragon.
While the Spyro trilogy was originally released for the PlayStation from 1998-2000, I wasn’t exposed to the games until a few years later, with my interest in Spyro being a product of the games looking somewhat similar to the Crash Bandicoot games I already knew and loved.
By the time I did finally get a Spyro game, it was this one – leading me to play the trilogy in reverse order, which is the same thing that happened with the original Crash trilogy as well.
Therefore, it’s a core memory I have of entering Sunny Villa mere minutes after controlling Spyro for the very first time, with the level leaving me instantly hooked to the game and series at-large.
Depicting the level’s lively, colorful and open-ended world, the Sunny Villa theme bursts through the TV speakers with a pick-up drum fill before slowly moving into the infectious main melody of the piece, which invokes feelings of optimism and beginnings as Spyro embarks on his third journey.
It really didn’t feel like Copeland missed at all throughout these three games, but when picking one piece alone from the entire trilogy, it’s hard to not think back to the one that started it all for me.
4. The Land of Sylvarant – Tales of Symphonia
Once again, it’s hard to single out a specific piece for these games, especially when it comes to Tales of Symphonia, what is almost certainly the most-played video game of my life for me personally.
While I’ve played this game for nearly 22 years at this point, much of my nostalgia surrounding it comes from my first playthrough, which took well over a year for me to complete as JRPGs aren’t typically made with 8-year-olds in mind.
One of the more unforgettable moments of playing ToS for the first time was getting out into the open field map after the opening sections of the game, leaving me completely mind-blown at the freedom of movement and sheer size of the world the player is meant to explore.
This feeling of embarking on a new adventure was coupled with The Land of Sylvarant, which serves as the field map theme for one of the two worlds players travel through during the game. In addition to being a bright, lively song accented by a steady snare drum rhythm, the piece has more complexity than that of a run-of-the-mill theme that you often forget is even on after playing the game for a bit.
I find this theme, even over two decades later, still leaves me engaged when I’m playing ToS. Maybe it is just the nostalgia of going through the early parts of the game again, or maybe it’s the majestic low brass riff that plays during the bridge, changing the emotion from unbridled optimism to that of uncertainty and strength, as well as camaraderie with one’s companions.
There’s no way to know how much my interpretation of an instrumental piece lines up with somebody else’s – but it truly feels like a story is told within the few minutes of this composition – a story that perhaps lines up with the arc of your party traveling through Sylvarant in the first third of the game.
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