Friday, March 25, 2011

My Favorite Video Game Music, #3: Staff Roll

#3: Staff Roll
Mario Kart 64



The tracks I listed #4 through #8 on this list are all very highly regarded music that is almost always cited in the top 10 or 15 of anybody's list. (Except One Winged Angel, which is too popular to be popular.)

The tracks I list #3 through #1 I suspect a lot of people have never heard before. This one is probably the best known of them, as Mario Kart 64 was the most widely played game of the three represented.

Anyway, you'll notice how 4 through 6 were the three most awesome Final Battle themes of all time. At heart I am attracted to the drama and tension of that final struggle, but even more I love the thrill and triumph of final victory. And no video game music has ever been composed that says thrill and triumph of final victory better than this one. It is triumphant music, exuberant music, music that makes you instinctively want to raise your fists to the sky and exult in the sound of 30,000 people chanting your name. Funny that you'd find it in a fun little package of a game like Mario Kart 64--notable for being far, far easier to beat than Super Mario Kart, but also for being a beautiful game in graphics, design and especially music.

There is a category called "best music to set to a three-minute montage celebrating your favorite sports team winning the championship", and this track runs away with that category like Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes. (Which wouldn't be a bad thing to set to this music, come to think of it.) If you don't believe me, try it: find such a montage (they're all over Youtube), mute whatever piss-lame music it's set to and put this music on instead. Behold how awesome it is.

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