Music in games

...Just been thinking about this while playing Zelda: OOT on an old 64 i got here.

Do you guys acknowledge the need for good music to make a game experience so much more memorable?

Has bad music ever ruined a gaming experience for you?

I can remember on several occasions of just turning the game off due to atrocious music....Or music that just didnt help at all aside to detract from the gameplay, compared to its predecessors (tekken 4, chrono cross to tekken 3 and ct)

I think good music in games is a very good addition, but bad music has never ruined the experience for me. Althought it can matter greatly if the music is good or bad since I often get the music stuck in my head from the current games I'm playing. Like that in' win theme on all the FF's.

Yes, music is a very important part of a game. But as far as music ruining a gaming experience, there is always the mute button.

LACK of music has caused me to put down Xenosaga. I like the storytelling, the battles are OK, but damn, walking around is tedious as hell. Really long distances to walk, with nothing but the clack-clack-clack of the character's shoes on the ground.

Mute=No music+sfx...Thats not the way to go.

[quote name='Eclipse']Mute=No music+sfx...Thats not the way to go.[/quote]


Yeah, I was about to say something like, "Well, you can always turn the music down." Then I thought about missing out on engine revs, gun blasts, spellcasting effects, etc.

The Xenosaga no music issue was really strange... I really thought for a while that i had a defective copy of the game.. Guess Namco decided to cut that stuff all out.


.But the battle music helped, as well as the decent cut scene music(specially the Albedoooo).

I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the lack of music in Xenosaga strange. Even when the music was playing it wasn't all to great. The only time music has been a problem with me is on my GBA. In some of the games I have the music is just grating so most of the times I just completely turn down the sound.

[quote name='dcfox']I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the lack of music in Xenosaga strange. Even when the music was playing it wasn't all to great. The only time music has been a problem with me is on my GBA. In some of the games I have the music is just grating so most of the times I just completely turn down the sound.[/quote]


Yeah, I think it's only been on Gameboy and GBA games where I've had to turn the sound down because of the horrible music.

The thing about Xenosaga is because they wanted to maintain a level of cinematic atmosphere, so to have a tune playing in the BG constantly for the half hour you were going to be wandering around some areas (lets face it there were so ridiculously large areas) it'd just get repetative and annoying, and atleast things would be broken up by the occasional battle.

Over all I think the music in that game suffered because they'd put so much into Xenogears' themes and suddenly couldnt use them for 'saga because they belonged to Squeenix so they had to com up with soundalikes. I also think it's one reason why they have a new composer for the next game, for some fresh ideas.

One game I have to say music made a differeance in was Ephemeral Fantasia. I hated the shitty construction of the game the horrendously bad presentation to the point where I sold it 2 days later, but the on thing that made it any fun was the "guitar freaks" sections, I couldnt give a rats ass about the game but I'd still have it today if I could have played just THOSE parts.

Music hasn't ruined a gaming experience, but good music adds to make it memorable.

Nintendo's main franchises all have memorable themes that most can name from hearing them. Playing super smash brothers melee was like name that tune.

My favorite megaman games are 2 & 3, some of the best themes ever for each level IMHO. Hell I made a cd with all the themes to listen to while driving.

Megaman had some awesome tracks...Some brought back to life thanks to the minibosses. Good stuff.
Xenosaga honestly felt a bit more shallower at the beginning as a game experience. Yet the lack of music somewhat gave it a rather cryptic feel, which went well with some of the levels. =0

As for X-gears, well, it was pretty good. The music didnt get on my nerves too much, unless it was in the areas where i got stuck, which causes every aspect of the game to become frustrating and annoying.

As for gba games, yeah..Definitely budget games have GRATING ass music...why not just excude it..

The games that suffer the most from bad music is fighting games, tho. Good music pumps you up..if its bad, or lacking...the game loses...ALOT..

I think music is a key part to good gaming. Whether it's in the game or external. For me, if I don't like the music in a game, I will just turn the volume down, and play my own on the stereo or something, and then turn the volume up if it's a cutscene or some dialogue going on. But if it is good music, then I let it just play out. I just hate when there isn't enough variety. Like on NCAA March Madness 2004, if you select a favorite school, it plays the fight song, over and over and over and over again. I love Duke, but after about the fifth time in a row, I wanna kill myself.

I like music in games i played FF7 when i was like 14 and still to this day when i hear it, it brings back alot of memories and i love it lol

I have a tendency to turn down the music in most games. The only games I've willingly listened to the BGM were the Command and Conquer series and FFVII (but you couldn't turn it off in FFVII anyway.)

It depends on the game for me. In a action game it's not important but in a music game like DDR it makes or breaks the game for me.

Yeah,,,it was easy to notice the difference in music quality in the DDR games...The new ps2 versions really started to show that the music wasnt all that it used to be...=0