Inspired by The Hotspot episode 376 where Vinny, Brad, and Alex were playing short clips of numerous video game songs for most of the episode. This is my third Giant Bomb list of making a mixtape of video game songs. For this list, I decided to fill in some other notable video game songs that I recall fondly in from games released from 1985 to 2009. The only stipulation I placed on myself for this list is to not repeat games that I already selected from my first two lists within the years noted, which means I couldn’t use a number of fighting games that would easily be included. I also refrained myself from selecting multiple games within a franchise. There were other games that I would have liked to list but cross off for certain reasons. Nonetheless, here is a curated set of my standout video game songs in rough chronological order of when each game was released in North America.
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Overworld The classic Mario tune. I recall this is the first video game I played when my parents acquired an NES with the Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt cartridge. Not much else to say. [Nintendo]
Stage 3 My first exposure of the R-Type series was buying the Game Boy Color port and enjoyed it despite the game’s limitation being a port of an arcade game. I never played the original arcade version until R-Type Dimensions was released on the X-Box 360. R-Type has an excellent soundtrack to my ears and Stage 3’s song from the first R-Type stands out for how menacing it sounds as your small R-Type approaches the huge battleship from behind. [Arcade via X-Box 360]
Song A Another classic. To see it continually used and remixed in numerous Tetris games afterward easily shows the song’s test of time. Crazy to think an 8-bit variant of a Russian folk song would be one of the best video game songs of all time. [Game Boy]
Amazon I took a detour in selecting a song from this game and chose to spotlight the Amazon stage song instead of the often mentioned (and deserved) Moon stage theme. The main reason I chose Amazon is that it’s the first stage of the game and is still a bop in my book. [Nintendo]
Athletic I’m constantly fascinated on how this song can easily speed up the adrenaline when they are played in certain stages in Super Mario World. It’s all just piano! My favorite stage with this song is a World 4 stage on the bridge where it’s an auto scroller and you have to navigate the stage by jumping on small platforms that see-saw. It’s a perfect example on how all things work together. It’s also neat to hear Cuphead use a bit of this song’s melody in one of their stages. [Super Nintendo]
Flyswatter Outside of the robot-esque save theme that Nintendo neatly used in the Super Mario Maker games, this was the only song I remember from this game. This song goes with its deep groovy bass and synth horns at a fast pace as you’re swatting various flying insects in the game. [Super Nintendo]
Stage 7 A great thunderous momentum song with the heavy percussion and wavy synths set on an old western speeding train setting. I love the “Hey” thrown into the song. It keeps the adrenaline going as you progress through this classic beat ‘em up. [Super Nintendo]
Stage 2 Who knew this funky song would mesh in well in this cross franchise beat ‘em up as the first stage’s song comes flexing its muscles? It’s a nice chill change of pace that just works with its groovy bassline, synths, and steady percussion. What’s not chill, this stage? [Super Nintendo]
Studio 6 Another song that’s a bit disjointed in context but the sheer quality of the song reigns supreme here. The song makes sense that it plays like a sped up game show esque song as it plays on a television set. The odd thing about this stage is that it serves as Rat King’s stage and the song is a weird fit against his character. But the game’s story is winning a fighting game tournament for money, so it works out somehow. [Super Nintendo]
SMB2 Character Select I was kicking myself when I forgot to include SMB2’s player select theme on my previous list. For this list, I decided to include the SNES Super Mario All-Stars version as this was my first exposure to playing the other NES Mario Brother games outside of the first one. Simple yet memorable. [Super Nintendo]