Game music has been a passion of ours roughly since, oh, 1985, but in the past 10 years, it’s come to mean something more. Don’t get us wrong, we still love the beepatronic music of the 8- and 16-bit periods (and the wave of chiptune artists it inspired), but the past decade has also seen licensed music become a surprisingly important part of gaming. Sometimes, this just means a selection of familiar hits to accompany our music games, but every so often, a game will use licensed tracks to careful, brilliant effect – and in the process, will expose legions of gamers to music they might never have heard otherwise.
What follows are the games and franchises that have been the most influential in bringing strange and terrifying new musical styles to gamers’ ears – and in the interest of making this our most self-indulgent Top 7 since that other one, we’ve asked a handful of our editors to explain what made each one important to them personally...
When it comes to heavy metal, one of the pioneering “rock gods” is Judas Priest lead singer Rob Halford. These days, he has his own clothing line and is helping new generations find music through games like Activision’s Guitar Hero and MTV Games’ Rock Band. Halford also starred in his first videogame last year, playing General Lionwhyte and The Baron in Tim Schafer’s Brutal Legend.
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The secrets of their success in their own words.
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Rock Band can make anyone feel like a rock star, but feeling and being are separated by millions of dollars, obsessed fans, and a voice that anyone actually wants to hear ever. For each “Rock Band EXPERT 5 StArS!!! OMG!” video you find on YouTube, you can find another song mangling performance so atrocious that it would make Simon Cowell's man breasts explode with snideness.
Some think they can actually
If you're in the market for Rock Band DLC, odds are you tend to buy what you know and leave the rest to rot. We used to do the same... until we realized how many kickass songs we were passing by simply because we'd never heard them before.
That's where DLC Breakdown comes in. We review each song by instrument, so bassists know to check out a starred song even if they've never heard it.
You’ve heard what you really sound like when playing Rock Band . The spastic clacking of plastic instruments is enough to drive your neighbors insane. So when we recently had the opportunity to see the new drum kit for Guitar Hero: World Tour, we were immediately impressed with how quiet it played. After the demo, we filmed one of the developers wailing away on the kit. Then, back at the office, we filmed ourselves thrashing
1) Rock mushrooms
Customise your Rock Band drum kit with these colourful mushroom pads. Shame you won’t be able to customise the Wii version of the game by downloading new tracks, but this is surely the next best thing. Check eBay to see when the next set is up for sale.
2) KK noise
tinyurl.com/6lr4eoEvery Saturday night you can treat your ears to the soothing tones of KK Slider. Long-time Animal Crossing residents
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