My Favorite Video Game Music, #1: Smiles And Tears

#1: Smiles And Tears

EarthBound

So this is it. It's been a long journey, it's been tough, it's even been painful at times; but we've bonded together and worked through it all together, and yes, we've even had fun. I'm talking, of course, about this Top 50 list. And there's no better way to end it than with this.

I called Aria de Mezzo Carattere the most beautiful video game music ever, and that it is; but this is a close second. And while the Aria was 100% pure beauty, there's something uniquely stirring about this track that you hardly ever find anywhere else. If you just clear your mind and sit back and listen to this music, it will take your mind to unusual places.

Throughout EarthBound your play will be repeatedly interrupted by a random cameraman dropping out of the sky and taking photographs of you. (There are 30-some places in the game this can happen.) He has no apparent connection to the story and his presence in the game is never explained until the very end of the ending. EarthBound's credits come in two parts: first the in-game credits set to a funky beat (see #11), and then EarthBound's magnum opus, this music playing while the game shows you all the photographs that were taken and the credits roll. It is actually quite powerful.

I've had 15 years to think about what exactly makes EarthBound so different from every other game--and no doubt EarthBound is a unique game--and so prone to being either loved with devotion or detested with scorn by almost everyone that plays it. And I think one of the important reasons for this is, there is a very strong undercurrent of sentimentality all through EarthBound. You don't really get that with other RPG's; you get epic stories and, sometimes, deep character development, but almost every time the character in question is angsty and broken to some extent. That's absent from EarthBound; the four heroes are early-teenage kids whose regularly scheduled childhood was interrupted by the urgent need to save the world from the horror of Giygas' eternal darkness. EarthBound mixes jokes and lightheartedness with "this is serious business and these kids are really struggling" unusually well, and the further you go in the game the more it slowly tilts toward serious business. By the time you finish the Lost Underworld, the jokes are gone. Right after that is Magicant (i.e., Ness's subconscious) and it's a silly and whimsical place... but not really. And it turns dark fast and culminates with Ness confronting the evil in his own soul. Before Earth's 13-year-old chosen champion can defend it from the encroaching darkness, he must first conquer himself.

There's something a little tragic about so much being dumped on a 13-year-old's shoulders. EarthBound is full of whimsy, but the game also very subtly points you back to that point. For Ness and his friends, this was a tough road.

Leaving off the game, let's talk about this music on its own merits. Of all the video game music I've heard, this track stands up better than almost all others separated from its source. And like the game, this is because it is very powerfully sentimental. It combines EarthBound's whimsy with its nagging sense of loss. And the music is perfectly titled. Smiles and tears.

This would be perfect music to set to a five minute slide show or video show in loving memory at a funeral. Go ahead: quiet everything else in the room, put this music on, close your eyes and focus your thoughts on some departed friend or family member of yours. Or even a beloved pet, or a TV character you were especially attached to, for that matter. See if the room doesn't get dusty at some point. If it doesn't, you are a 15-to-30 year old male. Try again in a few years. It'll pass.

And so this list ends. Thanks for reading, everyone.

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.

My Favorite Video Game Music, #11: Good Friends/Bad Friends

#11: Good Friends/Bad Friends

EarthBound

Back at #17 I said that EarthBound offers the best endgame of any game in existence. It really does. And by "endgame" I mean from the events that set up the Very Definitely Final Dungeon, through the end of the ending. I described back at #17 EarthBound's uniquely haunting confrontation with its alien monstrosity of a Big Bad.

And man, do you get one heck of a reward when you fell him.

EarthBound features the most downright enjoyable ending I've ever seen. The ending comes down in three prongs: First, where you reassume control of Ness and can freely wander, as leisurely as you like, anywhere in the entire world, and talk to whoever you want, and most of the people you talk to have new things to say, while terrifically soothing, peaceful music plays. That by itself is ten pounds of awesome in a five pound bag.

Prong two, which you instigate by going back to your house, is the in-game cast of characters, which is set to this life-threateningly awesome music. (Prong three is your reward for enduring that bastard cameraman all through the game. We'll get to that in a bit.)

If you've played through the game you'll recognize this music as a remix of some of the Runaway Five's rock/blues music, or more aptly, the Runaway Five after taking a level in awesome. When people try to describe EarthBound and come up with the adjective EarthBoundy... this music is EarthBoundy. It's upbeat and cool and fun.

And you'll notice the odd name, but that's exactly how the in-game credits present everybody: not as friends and enemies, just good friends and bad friends. Everybody's a friend. That's an example of the strong undercurrent of sentimentality that, as much as anything, divides players into the "I LOVE EarthBound" camp and the "this is the stupidest game I ever wasted my time on" camp.

I could sum it up this way: if you've never played EarthBound, and you like this music, play it. You will probably love it.