Music in video games has come a long way since the days of the 8-bit machines. Once upon a time, music in a video game was repetitive, or a single track looped over a single level. As technology allowed, the sounds we heard from games became more ambitious and advanced, with some even becoming standalone releases. One which stands out is Street Fighter, a soundtrack which recently received a vinyl release.
As games became deeper and more absorbed, the musical score did, too. They had to become reactive to events on screen, or tailored to fit the player. One way in which some games have done this is by producing radio shows, fictional of course, to feature on stations in the game. This allowed them to play specific types of music which the gamer could select as they saw fit. For instance, Grand Theft Auto V had sixteen different stations, from reggae to rock, featuring real-life DJ’s such as Lee Scratch Perry and Gilles Peterson. Whilst that game raised the bar for radio stations in video games, these three were front-runners in developing what is now an industry norm.
Fall Out: New Vegas
Fall Out: New Vegas
Fall Out is one of two games which perhaps stand out in the production of in-game radio shows, and it is hard to pick one from three strong titles, Fall Out 3, Fall Out 4 and New Vegas. What Bethesda did beautifully was combine the radio with a haunting musical score when not in earshot, perfectly combining popular culture with the ambience and tension of post-nuclear war USA. The game is based on a fictionalised USA that imagines the future as they did in the ‘50s, and the stations Mojave Music Radio and Black Mountain Radio both worked superbly. They combined to give the player an occasional reminder of the world that once existed, before the bombs, in a beautiful and poignant blend.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Video games become successes for many reasons, but one is the world in which they are set. Games often toy with alien exploration, eras from history and even near-future settings, but few produce the experience that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City managed. It was a commercial and critical hit on PlayStation 2, spawning a generation of open-world games. Foxy Games explains how the core themes were based around gangsters, pretty girls, and cops, but it was the unique backdrop of ‘80s Miami, the fictionalised Vice City, which grabbed gamer’s attention. The scene was set using soft, ‘Miami Vice’ colour pallets and, crucially, a great set of songs played in vehicles from the ‘80s which accentuated the backdrop wonderfully.
Mafia III
Mafia III
Mafia III was not a critically acclaimed game, but one aspect it did get right was the game’s setting, which the radio station was a key part of. You controlled Lincoln Clay in a fictionalised New Orleans after he returns from the Vietnam War. As the title of the game suggests, he takes on the Mafia in a battle that tries to capture the political atmosphere of the time, race relations and all. The songs are all from the time, a huge boost for fans of ‘60s music. They are complemented by commentary and discussion from hosts which show both sides of the racial divide plaguing the country at the time.
