Game music of the day: The Incredible Crash Dummies

Welcome to GamesRadar's daily blast of all things pertaining to the ever-growing field of game music. Each post will introduce new sounds, games, composers and fan-made remixes of gaming's greatest aural achievements.

May 3, 2010

Game: The Incredible Crash Dummies

Song: Level 2

Composer: Tim Follin

Above: Level 2 from Crash Test Dummies

Truly one of the ugliest, downright shittiest games on the NES, Crash Dummies represents everything awful about licensed deals. Do you have a moderately popular brand? Then we need to make a game out of it. Like tonight, man. And who cares if it's good, it'll sell regardless.

Lucky for usthe team had an acid-tripping musician ready tocraft an impossibly bouncy soundtrack. Well,part of a soundtrack, as the game repeats the same two songs over and over. If you're on an odd-numbered level, you get one song.If you're on an even-numbered level, you get this one, which isa billion light years ahead of anything else the game had to offer.It's technicallyahead of the curve and a great example of how dense NES musiccould be in the right hands. In this case, "the right hands" belonged to Tim Follin, a VG composer you'll hear plenty more of as the days go on.

Above: This was somehow popular enough to warrant a media empire

To be totally honest, those even-numbered levels weren't all that bad. In addition to the music, the dummy you played as actually had legs and controlled like a typical NES sprite. The odd levels put you in control of a dummy with a wheel instead of feet, which naturally handled like ass.

Above:Yes, the wholegame is this ugly

If you missed the entire Crash Dummies "craze," I can't imagine how stupid all this must seem. Crash test dummies? Really? Were we so out of ideas that we turned topublic service announcements for our heroes? What kind of example does that set for our children, idolizing a bunch of helpful, safety-minded government workers instead of inhuman superheroes who punch their way to justice?

Ah well. At least we got this song out of it.

Extreme Outlaw by Tenpei Sato

Sakura's Theme by Yamamoto and Nishigaki

Space Station by Carl Larsson

A fomer Executive Editor at GamesRadar, Brett also contributed content to many other Future gaming publications including Nintendo Power, PC Gamer and Official Xbox Magazine. Brett has worked at Capcom in several senior roles, is an experienced podcaster, and now works as a Senior Manager of Content Communications at PlayStation SIE.