Beat of the Game
By: T-Wolf (he/him/his, she/her/hers)
Editorial Team Member
Music has always been a memory-keeper in my life. I’ve filled my life with music every day, hitting pause buttons and shuffling playlists whenever I get the chance. It’s all but instinctual to try and find something to fill the silence, no matter what I’m doing: working, writing, chores, etcetera. I can spend ten minutes trying to find the perfect song that fits a scene I’m envisioning for a story, or twice that time backtracking through my YouTube history trying to find that one artist I listened to a month ago. I strain my ears for the crackling radios in cars, restaurant playlists over clinking dishes, and even soft ambiance while trying to take naps. Sometimes I’ll be tapping my foot to the beat, or singing a few notes as deeply as I can without being too loud. With so many tunes surrounding me practically at all times, it’s only natural that I can associate it so well with my life.
However, there’s a certain type of music- practically its own genre, despite its wide variety in tone, instrument choice, and overall composition- that has earned a special place in my heart. That music is video game original soundtracks (OSTs). I’ve listened to plenty of them over the years, whether they were from games I played myself, ones I watched my siblings play, or ones I stumbled across on the internet. I’m hardly the first person to be wowed by the addictive quality and emotion that can go into these OSTs- analyses, covers, remixes, and reactions can all be found for many infamous video game soundtracks around the internet. Sometimes the music itself can be the hook to get someone interested in the greater game. But the connection of a video game song to the video game itself is what makes it last in my mind, too.
I’m no music theory expert; I could hardly tell you how composing a video game soundtrack is different from any other artist putting together an album- but for myself, OSTs are made special by their inherent association to their game. To their story, characters, settings, and my own player experience. I could never listen to Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s “Moebius Battle” without envisioning the protagonist party throwing themself into the thick of battle at all costs, nor Okami’s “Rising Sun” without basking in the glory of our character completing rebirth as a god, nor Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon’s “Library Piano” without feeling the urge to sway my shoulders and jam out amongst a horde of ghosts. The element of story and atmosphere is crucial to the OSTs I love the most. I want to be able to listen to them and be unable to remember anything beyond the characters and moments they’re made for. The energy. The mood.
I remember more than just the video games themselves as well. I remember the feeling of curling up on the couch in front of the huge projector screen in my house, night falling around me and my siblings as they clicked the Nintendo Switch into place. I remember gripping my Wii controller tightly in front of our old television, button-mashing frantically with them to try and beat a boss so we could finally reach 100% completion of a game. I remember the long, fifty-episode playthroughs of games that we all watched together, the graphics seeming far better to my ten-year-old self than they do now. I remember who I was when I experienced the game of the OST I’m currently listening to, all the things I had going on in my life, all the old excitements and thrills.
Even this past summer, as I’m getting entrenched into more video games again, I just know I’ll look back on their OSTs in a year or two as well, and relive my joy once again. I love turning to OSTs for mood music for story writing and scene planning, but all this time, they already have a story within them, collectively. They contain my story, my life. My game.
