Games With Atypical Soundtracks
Inspired by a similar list on RateYourMusic. To qualify, a game must have a majority atypical soundtrack (i.e. a regular soundtrack with only 1 or 2 "atypical" tracks does not count).
Entries will be added as they are suggested but Standout Tracks and Write-Ups may come at a separate time from the initial addition.
Open to suggestions.
Entries will be added as they are suggested but Standout Tracks and Write-Ups may come at a separate time from the initial addition.
Open to suggestions.
80 Games
25 Comments
oh yeah, also the genesis version of the adventures of batman and robin's ost is EBM for some fucking reason, when the snes one is just gothic background stuff like the show
@GutterTrash Yooo, good shit! I'll look into all of these. Thanks for the suggestions
- Bravely Default - by Linked Horizon (the band that does Attack on Titan OPs) a bunch of orchestral stuff, but varied in instrumentation and the battle themes are symphonic metal that also get somewhat proggy. Maybe too normal sounding for this list though
- Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance - GBA game that uses the GB sound chip (idk which ones even do this other than this) and it sounds dissonant as hell while doing so. Maybe not atypical in the intended sense here though, it's still chip music really
- Cuphead (yeah, I still have to mention it) - big band, swing, barbershop, etc
- DOOM (2016)/DOOM Eternal - Mick Gordon's industrial metal and synthy stuff here really just sounds like its own thing
- eXceed 3rd: Jade Penetrate Black Package - like tinny sounding synthy power metal that sounds really distinct. Done by Saitama Saisyu Heiki who really has a unique sound imo
- Gitaroo Man - pretty much every song is a different genre
- House in Fata Morgana - Whatever the fuck some of this falls under. Absolutely deserves to be on here though I can't do a write-up that does it justice
- Looney Tunes: Sheep Raider - Funky, goes liquid funk/dnb at times? Uses all kinds of instruments, is pretty all over the place
- MOTHER 3 - behemoth of a soundtrack with a fuckton of influences and messy time signature variants of each battle song
- Saya no Uta - horror, generally ambient, some tracks get quite noisy, unsure what genres to slap on this honestly
- Streets of Rage 3 - weird sounding experimental techno
- Splatoon (1/2) - another genre hopper, gets jazzy, metally, all the vocals are... Splatoon
- Tetris Effect - somewhat varied, there's like some tribal stuff and jazz though I remember most of it sounding a bit samey still. Maybe ignore
- Thunder Force 4 - jazzy, metally Genesis game
Stuff generally by (personal recs in parantheses):
- Masafumi Takada (God Hand)
- Danny Baranowsky (Crypt of the Necrodancer)
- Tim/Geoff Follin (Plok)
- Dean Evans (Waterworld (SNES))
- David Wise (Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze)
would qualify imo
- Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance - GBA game that uses the GB sound chip (idk which ones even do this other than this) and it sounds dissonant as hell while doing so. Maybe not atypical in the intended sense here though, it's still chip music really
- Cuphead (yeah, I still have to mention it) - big band, swing, barbershop, etc
- DOOM (2016)/DOOM Eternal - Mick Gordon's industrial metal and synthy stuff here really just sounds like its own thing
- eXceed 3rd: Jade Penetrate Black Package - like tinny sounding synthy power metal that sounds really distinct. Done by Saitama Saisyu Heiki who really has a unique sound imo
- Gitaroo Man - pretty much every song is a different genre
- House in Fata Morgana - Whatever the fuck some of this falls under. Absolutely deserves to be on here though I can't do a write-up that does it justice
- Looney Tunes: Sheep Raider - Funky, goes liquid funk/dnb at times? Uses all kinds of instruments, is pretty all over the place
- MOTHER 3 - behemoth of a soundtrack with a fuckton of influences and messy time signature variants of each battle song
- Saya no Uta - horror, generally ambient, some tracks get quite noisy, unsure what genres to slap on this honestly
- Streets of Rage 3 - weird sounding experimental techno
- Splatoon (1/2) - another genre hopper, gets jazzy, metally, all the vocals are... Splatoon
- Tetris Effect - somewhat varied, there's like some tribal stuff and jazz though I remember most of it sounding a bit samey still. Maybe ignore
- Thunder Force 4 - jazzy, metally Genesis game
Stuff generally by (personal recs in parantheses):
- Masafumi Takada (God Hand)
- Danny Baranowsky (Crypt of the Necrodancer)
- Tim/Geoff Follin (Plok)
- Dean Evans (Waterworld (SNES))
- David Wise (Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze)
would qualify imo
Oh yeah, there's a Berserk Dreamcast game where they got Susumu Hirasawa (guy who did the OST for the anime, Satoshi Kon stuff, and a lot of his own albums) and he makes extremely distinctive weird sounding stuff
@turdl3 Another behemoth of a suggestion there! Kudos, I'll take a look at all this as well
Earthbound has a few surreal tracks and obscure samples afaik
And as @turdl3 suggested Mother 3 also fits the bill even though i think it's much more tame compared to Earthbound. Another one is Pathologic 2, absolutely insane soundtrack. Ritual/tribal vocals on top of trip hop instrumentation, and there's a couple of unorthodox instruments in there too, one track has a cow mooing at the beginning and the rest of track mixes in the moos with the background instrumentation, the whole thing is uncanny
- Ghost in The Shell - techno
- N++ - techno
- Wipeout games - techno, breakbeat
- Flywrench - jungle, juke
- Quake - dark ambient, industrial
- Postal 1 - heavily distorted short ambient loops played between levels
- Bomberman Hero - drum and bass
- N++ - techno
- Wipeout games - techno, breakbeat
- Flywrench - jungle, juke
- Quake - dark ambient, industrial
- Postal 1 - heavily distorted short ambient loops played between levels
- Bomberman Hero - drum and bass
eye of the beholder mega cd port for sure
https://youtu.be/xhLSXx_rB1o?t=295
it's a dungeon crawler so of course the game is backed by... club music
https://youtu.be/xhLSXx_rB1o?t=295
it's a dungeon crawler so of course the game is backed by... club music
Some other sugestions:
Vib-Ribbon - J-Pop, Glitch-Pop
Planet Dob - Breakbeat, IDM, Drum and Bass
Streets of Rage II - Acid House, Acid Techno
Tetris (CD-i) - New Age, Lounge
Ecco the Dolphin - New Age, Tribal Ambient
Vectorman (Sega Tunes ver.) - Techno
Robots (GBA) - Synthwave, Ambient, Sequencer & Tracker
LSD: Dream Emulator - Ambient (LSD and Remixes are IDM but it's not on the ost)
Kirby: Canvas Curse - IDM, Sequencer & Tracker, Glitch
King's Field 4: The Ancient City - Dungeon Synth, Dark Ambient
Doshin the Giant - Exotica, Downtempo
Lost Eden - New Age
L.O.L. (Lack of Love) - Ambient, New Age, Ambient Techno
Echochrome - Chamber Music, Baroque Music
Vib-Ribbon - J-Pop, Glitch-Pop
Planet Dob - Breakbeat, IDM, Drum and Bass
Streets of Rage II - Acid House, Acid Techno
Tetris (CD-i) - New Age, Lounge
Ecco the Dolphin - New Age, Tribal Ambient
Vectorman (Sega Tunes ver.) - Techno
Robots (GBA) - Synthwave, Ambient, Sequencer & Tracker
LSD: Dream Emulator - Ambient (LSD and Remixes are IDM but it's not on the ost)
Kirby: Canvas Curse - IDM, Sequencer & Tracker, Glitch
King's Field 4: The Ancient City - Dungeon Synth, Dark Ambient
Doshin the Giant - Exotica, Downtempo
Lost Eden - New Age
L.O.L. (Lack of Love) - Ambient, New Age, Ambient Techno
Echochrome - Chamber Music, Baroque Music
I forgot Rez!
Rez - Trance, Electronic Dance Music, Detroit Techno
Rez - Trance, Electronic Dance Music, Detroit Techno
Cruelty Squad has some industrial/dungeon synth sounding shit that no one can really seem to describe as anything except "slurpcore". Also Quake and its Trent Reznor tracks are essential to this list, I will never stop mentioning that game for any reason
I might think of something else, but off the top of my head, Final Fantasy XIII-2 has an amazing underrated OST. There are a fair amount of orchestral/symphonic tracks like the predecessor, but there's also plenty of tracks with electronic beats, as well as splicing rock with classical instruments and features plenty of songs with vocals which is rare for FF as a series, even so far as including rap and heavy metal. It's a surprisingly eclectic set and I'm not versed enough to think of a single unifying term for it all, but it's nonetheless distinct from the rest of the series.
We <3 Katamari?
Oh and that Taz-Mania Game Gear game that has such wildly discordant music that most people think the entire OST is either randomly generated or just an unfixed glitch
Christ that was a quick turnaround on my recs lmao, completely agreed with each description and I'm glad a lot of them seem to fit what the list was going for
Mad Rat Dead - Electro House, Electro Swing, Drum & Bass
Majora's Mask
The soundtrack tends to be just okay, a slight improvement over Ocarina ambiances and folk tunes overall.
However, a great amount of tracks that take inspiration (I counted 11 in the yt soundtrack list), just like the game itself, with brazilian indigenous group Marajoara, who practice a genre of afro brazilian music called Lundu. Just as an example of what it usually sounds like, the inspiration is clear: https://youtu.be/6nJ4AfBXnzQ
Sure, it can be seen as just 'tribal' from an outside view but I think it's neat how clearly inspired by this particular subset it ended up sounding like, specially with the limited resources they had for making music in the n64
The soundtrack tends to be just okay, a slight improvement over Ocarina ambiances and folk tunes overall.
However, a great amount of tracks that take inspiration (I counted 11 in the yt soundtrack list), just like the game itself, with brazilian indigenous group Marajoara, who practice a genre of afro brazilian music called Lundu. Just as an example of what it usually sounds like, the inspiration is clear: https://youtu.be/6nJ4AfBXnzQ
Sure, it can be seen as just 'tribal' from an outside view but I think it's neat how clearly inspired by this particular subset it ended up sounding like, specially with the limited resources they had for making music in the n64
The World Ends With You features a pretty vast variety of Alternative Hip Hop and Electronica, also throwing in some Rock in a few tracks. Standout songs for me are "Three Minutes Clapping" and "Calling"
"Deja Vu" is also a good song to fit in there too
great list! one i always think of is Thief: The Dark Project using intense dark ambient and industrial jungle for its soundtrack. It's one of the few fantasy-tinged games to use electronic music.
Would Tetris Effect count? Aside from covering many different genres, the entire OST is sync'd to your gameplay. It's hard to listen to the soundtrack on its own because the music is so inherently informed by the way you play - it ends up sounding "wrong" on its own because of how different it is.
Oh, Untitled Goose Game would be a great fit for this list!
System Shock 1 should definitely be there, synthwave, industrial and noise (literally) all into one.
GutterTrash
2 years ago
-Buck Bumble's ost is basically entirely UK Garage/Jungle type shit
-TF2s ost is primarily big band type stuff, but also runs the gambit of a lot of other mid 1900s genres, from surf rock to klezmer to western music
-Ape Escape is atmospheric drum n bass stuff
-The Neverhood's ost is bizarre avant garde folk with a lot of dixieland stuff, and all the lyrics are just gibberish mumbling
Pathologic ost is like, tribal illbient
-Katamati Damacy is Shibuya-kei
-Street Fighter 3rd Strike is acid house
-Sonic R is Eurodance
-Runescape is dungeon synth