
Video Game Songs That Move Me
Written Words inspired by Bonus Barrel
A friend of mine is on a video game podcast composed of entirely Canadian Game Developers. This week, they did an episode about Video Game Music that moves you. This isn’t simply tracks that you like. We’re talking about music that brings you into specific emotions. Tracks that have imprinted upon you strong, vibrant memories. Generally, there’s a narrative behind these associations. During the podcast, they asked us to tweet at them our own picks. I was going to do that, and then I was going to post on the cartridge club forms, but ultimately, I decided a Medium Article would look best. So, let’s go down memory road with me! (This won’t be in any specific order, and might be 11 or 12 at the end, top 10 lists be damned!).
Oh. My. God. Super Mario Odyssey’s trailer at E3 captured my heart. Yes. I haven’t played the game, it’s not out, I don’t know if it’ll be part of the game, but I will say that this song still took me out of a pretty dark feeling. The E3 trailer just totally encapsulated me. It has a nostalgic feel for a time I never knew, and when I watched the trailer with it, it just filled me with a sense of wonder.
I was lost, confused, unsure what was coming next for my life. I had really been enjoying the Nintendo conference, but the uncertainty of what my life post school would be like was a constant murmur in the back of my mind. But from the first bar of this song, I was enraptured completely. Already I had been very excited about Super Mario Odyssey, but this was a confirmation of my hype. The style, the depth of it, the candour of the singing. It invited me to remember why I love Mario, why I love Nintendo, why I love video games. For those brief few moments, I forgot any darkness and could just be happy. Ever since then, if I’m feeling sad, I just put this song on. And for a brief moment, I’m the innocent child, and teen, who was always playing Mario 3 with my mother.
So, I knew I wanted to include a track from Super Mario Bros 3 on this list. My mother and I have played through this game countless times. And though there are many tracks that I love from this game, hearing this song immediately brings me back to being younger kid sitting on the edge of my mother’s bed holding a NES controller. We used to constantly play this game. All the time. Mom would turn on the NES and set it up so that I would come home from school and we could just start playing the game.
The music would be looping from her room, and she’d be sitting bobbing her head along. It fills me with this familial intimacy I can’t quite fully explain. I feel safe, and taken care of, looked after. I have this game, and this song so firmly associated with my mom and spending time with her, that I can’t think of anything else when I hear it. If Jump Superstar brings me to that feeling of nostalgia, reminds me perhaps, this song makes me feel like I’m actually in the past. Alright, Let’s switch gears a little bit.
So! My history with Persona (and Shin Megami Tensei more broadly) is a complicated one. I never could get into parts of the Tarterus system of Persona 3, but I liked a lot of the doom and gloom of that PS2 gem. Persona 4 I could never get into on the PS2, but finally played through it in the Golden version on the Vita. I liked the game, and loved the characters. But there was always a little bit of friction with the game for me. Something I could never quite put my hands on. I made a lot of friends with Persona 4 though. So, I was very excited for Persona 5.
Persona 5 came out during a dark time politically. A dark time we’re still living in. I won’t go into too many details here, but living as a Millennial who just got out of graduate school, unsure of what to do next in life, especially with the cultural narrative of being a Millenial. It left a feeling of hopelessness. The theme of taking control of your life, stealing the hearts of bad people in the world, and affecting real change in the people in control of our world was something that filled me with so much excitement.
I remember sitting down with the game the day it came out. I played and played and played, getting drawn into the game the same way Jump Superstar drew me into the trailer. And then, I got into the first fight, and I remember being scared, and worried, and so much stuff, but that song just turned about my heart into intense confidence. I was swelling with the jazzy theme and was ready to go out and do stuff. Raw raw! Fight the powah! (Excuse the Gurren Lagann reference). But, speaking of turnabouts…
A good friend of mine really loved Ace Attorney. Loved it, SO MUCH. In undergrad they lent me the DS version of the first game. I was a little hesitant to play it. Partially because I had recently left the Computer Science and didn’t believe in my puzzle solving skills (not helped by my very poor performance in Professor Layton). Still, I love playing games that are important to my friends. So I put the cart in my DS and started yelling my OBJECTIONS!
I was uncertain of how I felt about the game until I heard this track. I didn’t know what to think, it was the first case and I was still getting a feel for why it was that people loved this game. I suddenly felt super connected to everyone I had ever sung this franchise’s praises. I honestly was moved to tears. I felt confident and smart. It was like this music was painting a picture of my thought process as I made arguments. This was a true turnabout.
Mega Man 2 was my first Mega Man game. I knew very little about the games before playing this. But you couldn’t live on the Internet like I did growing up and not hear about this game and hear this song. I had heard it a few times, but I didn’t know where it would play. So, I finally downloaded a version of the game on my phone and dug in. It took me weeks, but I finally beat all eight robot masters. At first I was confused, I didn’t think the song was in Mega Man 2 as I beat my final robot master, foolishly thinking the game was complete. Between playing on my phone, and not being very good at the run and gun mechanics, I didn’t think I could handle anymore of this game.
Then the song started. I got it. I felt confident. It was an adrenaline rush. I probably wouldn’t have played the game anymore and never would have beat it if it weren’t for this song. We talk a lot about how a game’s music should work in tandem with the game-play to create a cohesive experience. A lot of tracks I like are ones that give me the confidence to beat the level, beat the boss, to keep on moving on. There’s a sense of hope and power in those kind of songs. This song is just that to me.
Oh god. Final Fantasy 7. This game is a behemoth. I want to write a lot about it someday. This is not that day. That said, it does have perhaps my favourite boss theme in the franchise. I was really bad at RPGs as a kid. I didn’t read all the text, instead skimming it. As a result, I could never beat the Scorpion boss at the end of the first Mako Reactor. That didn’t stop small little Shawn from trying and trying. Because again, this song inspired me to be confident, to believe that I could win, I could “fight further”. (A well named video game track is just so satisfying, isn’t it?).
What was really great about Those who fight further was how it was clearly this ramped up evolution of the main battle theme, those who fight. The sounds are harsher, bassier, and really fill out a more full sound profile. The song is literally yelling, “you thought that was tough? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet”. The sheer scale of the first boss, dwarfing Cloud and Barret said that alone, but the music really drove home the urgency. It told you, there’s doing to be done, it has to be done hard, and fast, (else you might run out of items!), and it always just gets me ready to take on a challenge.
I LOVE the Devil May Cry franchise. Bayonetta is better yes, but it’s an evolution based on the lessons learned in these games. Devil May Cry 3 was a game I played countless times with my best friend in high school. We were obsessed with Dante’s Devil May Care (heh) attitude and the sheer power he had in his quest to fell demons. Even better, the games gave you that power to use in gameplay, resulting in the most rudimentary of power fantasies. But gosh damn, they felt good. So, when Devil May Cry 4 came out, we were VERY excited to dive into the game.
The game starts slow, with a different character you’re not used to. Dante comes in and starts messing things up. You’re unsure of what to expect of this character, but then this song started up in the first fight of the game that wasn’t the tutorialesque bout with Dante. That song was a bit more tepid, nervous perhaps. In contrast, this was powerful song, and as is a theme on this list so far, it demanded to be heard.
Growing up I was very much so a Nintendo Kid. A Nintendo Kid living in a Nintendo Family. My parents drew a line in the sand in the first great console wars before I was even born. Mario leaped over Sonic in our hearts every time. It didn’t matter how fast, how strong a spindash, that Jumpman was always leaps and bounds ahead in our hearts. I was curious about Sonic, and had experimented with his genesis outings at friends houses growing up. I never was much of a fan though. I sort of got why people liked them, the music was rocking and the thrill of speed coursed through it in one way or another, but I wasn’t a huge fan of my seemingly lack of control.
And then I played Sonic Adventure 2. I still remember renting this game, rushing home and popping it into my Nintendo Gamecube. I was oddly excited. I always wanted to like Sonic, going fast was attractive to me, and I think I associated the lack of fun I had with Sonic with the genesis, not with Sonic himself. The song started right away and I felt the urgency, I had to go fast (faster, faster, faster Sooonic X). As I raced through the city, I mean, I had to escape, I began to feel the adrenaline build up in my body.It was break neck, it was exciting, and I felt almost nostalgic. I felt like I had finally reconciled the issues I had with Sonic growing up and in that moment, I was finally on an Adventure with the blue blur that I could keep up to speed with.
Final Fantasy 8 is my favourite Final Fantasy title (though updates and DLC for XV is letting it give this love story a run for its money). All that said, I remember the first time I took on Ultimecia and managed to get past her second form. While there was, little to my knowledge, still another form to conquer, Maybe I’m a Lion prepared me for The Extreme. It felt like the steadfast analysis I’d come to associate with Squall. A discerning eye leading the charge in the face of all adversaries. I remember waiting for that song with bated breath as I refought Ultimecia’s first two forms.
I would go on to listen to it many times after. When people think epic final boss fight songs, they usually think of One Winged Angel, but for me it will always be Maybe I’m a Lion. I remember curled up in front of my old tube television in the middle of the night, bowl of chips on one side, cup of juice on the other, my Baby sitter sitting chewing her nails. Again, a wave of nostalgia, a promise of triumph takes over me. For, Final Fantasy 8 was the first Final Fantasy Game I had ever beaten. The story demanded that I finish it in a way that 6, 7, and 9 the only other Final Fantasies I had played in the early 2000’s didn’t. The way Maybe I’m a Lion fed into The Extreme, turning the final track of the fight into a triumphant climax truly got my blood pumping. I would go on to listen to this song until the CD the track was burned onto was made unplayable from how often I jammed out to Squall’s pensive theme.
Lunar 2 was a very special game to me. I can’t fully explain why, but something about it just hit all the right spots when I was a kid. Weirder still, Ronfar, the womanizing, alcohol guzzling, compulsive lying, gamballer quickly became my favourite character. I think a big part of that, was his theme. It’s catchy, and fills you with a level of jubilation. I can’t help but dance in my chair as I listen to it while writing this. It just makes me want to kick back and relax. It makes me feel like I’m going to go on an adventure that’s going to go okay.
You meet Ronfar early in your quest, and honestly, I think this song moved me to love him. Early on you can tell something is up with him. Beyond that, it’s clear there’s more to the man than his penchants for rigging dice games. I can’t really justify including it as it’s not so much “moving me’ but I do think about Ronfar when I hear it, and I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t for this track if I wouldn’t have so thoroughly loved this rogue. Before this point, I always hated the “bad dude” kind of characters, but this song, it paved the way for Ronfar to roll his dice into my heart.
Let’s take things down a notch. And what better way than the first song that calmed me down after a series of long hard fought battles. You had heard pieces of these melodies throughout all of Earthbound, but it took most of the game, and many, many hard, and long boss fights before you could finally hear them played together. I remember sitting in my mother’s lap the first time we played through Earthbound together, as a family. I was all riled up because I had lost count of how many times we had attempted to beat the final guardians. But then I remember falling asleep listening to the final arrangement. I still get a little sleepy listening to this, but it really brings me to peace.
Pretty much all of Kingdom Hearts Music has emotional significance to me. To be honest, as a result, I hear her musical signature in other tracks on other games and I can extend that however tenuously to all of the music composed by Yoko Shimomura. Kingdom Hearts is another game that has a strong emotional connection to me, being my hands down favourite RPG series. Before any Utada Hikaru song, Dearly Beloved is the first proper song you hear play in any Kingdom Hearts game.
Kingdom Hearts is a cross over franchise with a wide breadth of emotions each game summons in me as I reflect upon my memories with these games. A bittersweet salty joy washes over me with every thought. Beyond that, this haunting melodic climb of notes is indistinguishable from diving into Kingdom Hearts once more. I can’t think of one without the other, and as a result, I love this song so much and it moves me every way a song can as I let it play on loop. I remember being too lazy to play, but wanting to have the first game on, so I would just sit on the title screen listening to this song loop.
Wrap Up
So, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most memorable music is usually one I associate with victory in games. Be it boss fights, or climatic battles, it’s music that helped me be good at the game I was playing. This was a real fun list to compile and I was moved through a lot of emotions through its construction. What are your opinions? Thanks again to Seigi (even if he didn’t show up for the episode), Leff, Shelby, and Rob for such a great topic!
