Email: You’re definitely out to lunch

“Metroid has great music. Yet, it serves no function.”

Metroid’s music is one of the best examples from the 8-bit era of music fitting the mood and setting of a video game. The title scene’s music is creepy and mysterious. Brinstar’s music is adventurous-sounding, like the Legend of Zelda or a John Williams theme–great way to start the game.  Norfair is dissonant and ominous–fitting for a lava cave. Ridley’s Lair has threatening, haunting music. And of course, there are specific musical cues, like the “You got an item” music and the “boss fight” music.

Yeah, you can find examples of music that clearly weren’t written (or chosen–you can choose preexisting music that you feel fits a theme even if the original writer didn’t think about it like that) to elicit any moods or feelings consistent with the theme of of the level or the game, but that hardly proves your theory that all game music is written that way. There’s a reason Doom has a heavy metal/industrial soundtrack instead of smooth jazz.

The Gyruss theme’s intro is Toccata & Fuge in D Minor, but the music itself is original. The driving theme certainly does fit with a fast-paced action game like a SHMUP, though.

Your proclamations about what “everyone” and “no one” says are interesting, too. You have polls to back that up?

That’s a nice try. But you associate those songs as being function in the game due to your own experience in the game. How do you know the songs were designed that way? What if we placed the songs to other things. Would they work?

There is an entire Youtube channel called: “Guile’s Theme Goes With Everything”. Game music can only be designed for function my ass.