Music and Video Games

If you ask me, one of the best multi-media experiments you can conduct is to turn down the sound on a good video game and play your own music. The results can be surprisingly potent--with the right complimentary music, a game's mood can be drastically enhanced, or you can bring out moods that you didn't consciously recognize a game had with the addition of an unorthodox soundtrack. I've been playing around with this theme for a long time, as I'm sure most gamers have. Some recent experiences that have stuck include the following:

- Unreal Tournament 2004 demo with N.E.R.D.'s "...In Search Of"
- Ikaruga with Tool's "Lateralus"
- Phantasy Star for Sega Genesis with "100th Window" by Massive Attack

I could think of others, but the fun of this whole thing is not to follow the suggested soundtracks provided by somebody else--it's to search your own music collection for stuff that goes well with your favourite games. And definitely don't put much thought into it; just throw on some tunes that you feel like listening to and play a game that you feel like playing as if the two decisions were entirely separate.

It has occurred to me that the desire to play other music while playing a game is sort of a slam on the soundtracks provided by games these days. In the case of Unreal Tournament 2k4, for instance, they really don't have much of an excuse--I'm sure they could have thrown together the money to assemble a really rockin' soundtrack. Instead, the music in that game is so thoroughly forgettable that you end up putting on your own rap, metal, or hip-hop selection and discovering just how much fucking better the game is as a result. I think there's a serious lesson to be taken away from that.