Game music of the day: Epic shredfests in Lords of Thunder

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.

April 22, 2010

Game: Lords of Thunder

Song: Cielom area

Composer: Not sure, could be T's Music

Above: Cielom from Lords of Thunder

Today's track comes from a time when videogames were stuck in a bizarre technological middle ground. In the early '90s, plenty of consoles still featured graphics that were barely better than an NES or Super NES, but thanks to their CD format were capable of high-quality orchestral scores or true-to-life recordings of actual instruments. The result was a period of games that look like ass but sound flat-out amazing, and Lords of Thunder isone of the best possible examples of this audio-visual juxtaposition.

A passing glance reveals a typical 2D shooter, one filled with hundreds of enemies rushing across the screen, each blasting projectiles and laser beams and all other manner of weapons while volcanoes explode and a face-melting guitar solo rips the sky in half and angels descend into hell itself, taking you down fiery caverns laced with spiked balls, dragons made of lavaand living suits of armor bent onair-guitaring the Earth into oblivion. Holy hell, was that all one sentence?

Above: More unbelievable rockin' from the Bosque area

So yeah, the music is intense. Honestly, every single screen, menu and level is screaming with some of the loudest heavy metal I've ever heard in a game. It's truly nuts, and makes the otherwiseroutine Lords of Thunder an unforgettable experience. Even the game over music never lets up.

Above: Some sample gameplay. Make sure everything is tied down

Lords of Thunder was a marquee title for the TurboDuo (which you've never played) and ported to Sega CD later (another platform you're likely not overly fond of), but it's thankfully been on Wii's Virtual Console for quite some time. Do check it out, along with its predecessor Gates of Thunder.

Main theme by Fujita and Tamiya

Battle with the Four Fiends by Nobuo Uematsu

Go Straight by Yuzo Koshiro