What ever happened to catchy video game music?

What happened to catchy video game music like the video game music from the 80s and 90s? Yeah, video game music today is very orchestral and what have you, but most of it isn't catchy. I'm talking about that catchy gaming music you find yourself humming to yourself or even want to listen to on you portable music player. The most recent game I can think of that has catchy music is Super Mario Galaxy 2, and that has BOTH orchestral AND catchy music, so it's the best of both worlds. That's a huge exception though. Most gaming music today is mainly ambient background music to set the mood, but it's not very catchy.

I'm talking about in games that most people have heard of.

Western gaming became popular for whatever reason and with it came bland ambient orchestral soundtracks. Japanese games and indie games still usually recognize the value in having actually interesting, good, catchy music.

The Hotline Miami, Rayman Origins, and Botanicula soundtracks are on regular rotation in my ipod.

It's still out there. Just mostly in smaller indie games. Examples:

Tetrapod

Cider Time

Help

9 Bit Expedition

There are plenty of memorable, catchy songs in the new millenium, you just haven't played many games

Music is one area I think Japan is still well ahead of the west.

You can basically find that music with Nintendo and Indie games. The new Rayman series also shares this kind of music.

I just don't think that kind of music is necessary for AAA games. It works in smaller games where you're just jumping around and shit. But some games try to create a sort of atmosphere where catchy little music in the background wouldn't make sense.

It's not working for these days games. But I love to hear that kind of stuff in 2D games.

@SovietsUnited: Give me some AAA games that have catchy music in the vein of atari or nintendo games of long long ago?

Video game soundtracks in this era are awesome though.

The AAA filter is very limiting, I'll link regardless; If by "in the vein of Nintendo and Atari" you mean immediately catchy without longer listening (as in first 30s), alright:

Age of Mythology
Battlefield 1942
Conker's Bad Fur Day
World of Warcraft
TimeSplitters 2
Chronicles of Riddick
Assassin's Creed 2
Shadow of the Colossus
Portal 2
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
Halo
Morrowind
Gun
Doom 3

Older console/computer technology was limited to the number of tones that could be produced each second, so composers had a limited number of sounds they could use to make music. They had to come up with "catchy" tunes and riffs in order to make "good" music.

A lot of this can be explained by the tremendous technological advances in video game sound. The late 90s and the new millenium saw stuff like massively enhanced sound cards, mono sound being completely phased out in favor of the vastly superior stereo channel sound system, electronic audio sampling, and digital conversion made it much easier to record music that wasn't just looped/riffed bips and bleeps from a synthesizer, but actual instruments.

They're ahead of the west in most areas concerning video games.

Dude, im with you. I rant about this on every game soundtrack thread. Where the **** has the melodic content gone? Up our asses, pretty much. I hate this orchestral shit. It's terrible. Sure, the fidelity is amazing, but these songs suck. WHERE ARE THE SINGABLE MELODIES? What's the Call of Duty theme? The Battlefield theme? You can't remember them- because they suck. Sure, some Indie and Japanese games from this gen have cool soundtracks- but think about the games the general public is playing: These AAA Michael Bay military-porn games. The music stinks in these. It's giving kids the wrong impression about video game soundtracks.

Blah blah blah, the sound tech was worse back in the day so they "HAD TO WRITE CATCHY MELODIES" since when did writing bad melodies qualify as good music? Holy shit this thread has made me angry.

Look up A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda. That game has some really killer tunes. Orchestral music is pretty catchy too though, I guess it really depends on your tastes. I found that most orchestral music from Japan are extremely catchy. Every Final Fantasy may not have been great but, the music in all of them are superb IMO. Devil May Cry had some cool orchestral music though most of the songs in those games are hard rock and metal. The opera music in Devil May Cry 4 was damn good.

Examples?

I'm just gonna add some of my favorites:

Sim City 3000's entire soundtrack (best damn game soundtrack of all damn times damn it damn) - Seriously, a city builder has my favorite soundtrack of all times :D

Red Alert's Hell March

Duke Nukem Theme

Red Dead Redemption's Far Away

There's a lot to discuss here. I think it's silly to dismiss games like Resident Evil, Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Halo, as having unmemorable music as all of those games try to be realistic and/or try to offer an immersive experience, and constant background music is rarely used by those games, and music in general is used more sparingly for certain levels, certain parts of levels, or for cinematic elements.

You compare any of those to a top-down/side-scroller game like Legend of Zelda from the 80s or 90s where you didn't even have the sound of Link walking around and there were very few sounds at all, the music in that game was basically a necessity to make the game not seem incredibly dull. You take out the music in a Legend of Zelda game and it would be a crippling experience. You take out the music in Half-Life, and it wouldn't make much of a difference as 90% of the time there's no music at all.

Furthermore, the significance of the improvements made in the sound design of video game consoles and computers cannot be overstated. Back then, original score was the only kind of music possible to add to a video game. Today, games like Bioshock use real-world music from the 1940s almost exclusively over making their own music, and that was just impossible to do even in the late 90s.

This actually brings me to a different point in that if we are talking about game designers making their own music for their game then maybe the AAA games of the 80s and 90s are superior, but if we can include music that's not something original, Bioshock would take the cake for my favorite video game soundtrack just because of all of the oldies music that they used.

Anyway, as far as games nowadays, I'm partial towards some of the music from the MW2 soundtrack, which was at least partly written by composer Hans Zimmer, but some of it I did not like because it was far too dramatic. Also I liked the Battlefield: Bad Company music.

I find that most Japanese games these days still have impressive sound tracks.

@Shmiity: Do you think that the Mario Galaxy games have the catchiest orchestrated soundtrack in the past 5 years?

Super Hexagon has catchy music.

Yes, OP!!!! I agree!

Although I think Halo (the main theme, at least), Final Fantasy 13 and Metal Gear do have memorable orchestral music, for the most part, today's games have ambient music. I do wish there were more games with melodies and catchy riffs.

Nintendo is still excellent when it comes to music. I don't know how they do it!

@psx2514: Eh. Not really. They tried, but it's not very good. Mario games are hard to critique, because the musical themes of older Mario games are so ubiquitous to our society. There is just the inherent bias that newer Mario songs just can't compete with the Mario melodies we already know. I get that they went for orchestral arrangements because it would be "bigger" like the Galaxy theme, but it's still stale. I would have preferred a synth track. I'm listening back to that OST now, and it's not very good.

In my opinion, good modern video game song moments are: "In the sky" church version from Bioshock Infinite. It's so gorgeous. The OST version sucks though, because it's too dry. They cut the room reverb out.

Also, Skyrim's "Streets of Whiterun" is nice, too. I didn't care for the manly, boisterous vocal main Skyrim theme, though. I thought it was obnoxious.

I think it's because Japanese composers have been phased out of the gaming industry in the West, and Japanese composers tend to make the catchiest music.

Also, it IS possible for music to be both ambient and catchy. Aren't the Metroid games good examples of this?

It went the same way as good level design and innovation.

@psx2514: last of us (please tell me you've heard it), tales of xillia, playstation allstars, mario 3d world, donkey kong country tropical freeze has the original composer from 1994 back....

It really depends on your musical preference I think

@psx2514: Why just settle for catchy music when you can listen to stuff like this?

Yeah... Every game wants to sound like something out of a Transformers Movie....

But trust me you can still find catch music, and when you do it might get stuck in your head and then you might realise why most developers stopped using that type of music,

Ive noticed that in indie games you hear alot of cool "catchy" music like in some of those old school games from the 90's but you can't really put that type of music into modern western AAA games.

Btw my favorite gaming Original Soundtracks of all times are metroid prime opening OST, final fantasy 7 opening OST and Tomb Raider opening OST.

My favorite newer ones are The Last Of Us and Shadow Of The Collossus.

Some games works great with that type of ambient soundtrack through the game though like in Kill zone Shadow Fall, the soundtrack in-game is really good and catchy.

I need to get out more often

With the exception of Conker none of those are what i would call catchy when compared to the likes of Sonic or Aladdin or Streets of Rage or any number of 90s 16bit classic games.

Don't, it's raining out there

Blaster master for 8 bit music heaven

Rogue Legacy OST - [03] Trilobyte (Castle): http://youtu.be/O8J4pTNZFjc

@newmusic2183: Please don't bump old threads.

-Byshop

What? What are you talking about?

@The_Last_Ride

I should probaly check my grammar before submitting.

How do all games sound like Transformers? I showed you 4 videos where the music is not even near that type of music

Old threads? clearly even if its a few months old its still a topic that can get people to write. So even though i normally agree with the idea that thread necromancy is bad, this is a good thread to have come back.

And i agree with Ride , yes the old music was catchy and good and together with nostalgic it makes it seem one of a kind. But look at the music made today its amazing.

@The_Last_Ride

Can't see them..... And only 4 ?

How many games are there in total again ?

i posted 4 prime examples of why games don't need catchy tunes and they don't sound like Transformers...

@The_Last_Ride

Thats what you're on about ?

To be honest I don't even remember the music from transformers, I only said it because.... Well.... Just because.....

i posted 4 videos of music, did you even listen to them?

@The_Last_Ride

Nope... They don't show up on my phones Browser.

@Lulu_Lulu: you should look at it from a pc then and judge it then