And yes, there are actual guitar covers of the songs. It does what any good soundtrack should do, the difference is, few games have as much personality as Battle Mania. The Japanese-only sequel is even better with tracks like ‘Driving Hunter’ channeling so much of the game’s personality. The pair drive a sports car and rescue a kidnapped prince - with time left over at the end to smash the shit out of a Super Nintendo.ġ6-bit soundtracks don’t necessarily translate heaviness well, but the hard rocking music in Battle Mania fits perfectly with the game’s over-the-top aesthetic. The game stars jet-pack-wearing super soldiers Madison and Crystal, who fly and blast through waves of enemies, heralded by a chorus of searing synth-guitars. Originally known to Western audiences as Trouble Shooter, the game was an arcade-style shoot-em-up (shmup, for short) filled with self-aware humor far ahead of its time. Sega Genesis soundtracks don’t get more badass than Battle Mania. The sequence is a testament to Treasure’s holistic design philosophy, where every batshit-crazy idea collides to create something bizarre, beautiful and impossible to forget. The soundtrack’s highlight, an interpolation of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, plays over a hypnotic sequence where Ronald McDonald has to leap on the hands of dancing rabbit ballerinas. Stages with bright, sweeping themes like ‘Magical Forest’ and ‘Magical Sea’ shift into eerier atmospheres like ‘Cave’ and ‘Sunken Ship’. Every stage has multiple themes that fit Ronald’s increasingly bizarre journey that must have left McDonalds execs baffled. The soundtrack is a collaboration between Gunstar sound designer Satoshi Murata and the company’s sound director Katsuhiko Suzuki and perfectly captures Treasure’s signature surrealism, augmenting it with childlike glee. Seriously, who looks at a McDonald’s game and thinks “I want to play that”? The game was released at around the same time as Gunstar Heroes, but mostly gets ignored due to its infamous license. It was their masterpiece Gunstar Heroes that made Treasure’s surreal art and perfectly-tuned gameplay legendary, but McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure is almost as incredible. Tired of churning out sequels and movie licenses, Treasure rejected typical corporate hierarchy and encouraged originality and creativity above all else. There are forgotten classics, unreleased oddities and hidden gems that you damn well better believe do what Nintendon’t.įew developers of the 16-bit era have as intense a cult following as Treasure, a company founded by creatively frustrated Konami employees. Instead, you’ll find below 10 of the best video game soundtracks of the 16-bit era. We’ve covered them in our best video game soundtracks of all time and published an entire Sonic mix. But what’s the point in making some list that mentions Sonic, Ristar and predictably finishes off with Streets Of Rage 2. We’ve already discussed the best music on the SNES and NES here, but as FACT’s resident Sega kid, I couldn’t stand by and see my favorite console get left out. And later this summer they’ll release Sonic Mania, a true return to classic Sonic that fans have waited their entire lives for. With the newly launched Sega Forever app, they’re reintroducing their catalog for free on mobile. Sega has recently found itself on an upswing though. There were musical classics like Sonic, Shinobi and Yuzo Koshiro’s legendary Streets Of Rage (which we can thank for inspiring a generation of rap and grime producers), but overall the console has earned an unfair reputation for music. Launching a full two years earlier than its rival, the Genesis was technically inferior. If you wanted blood in your Mortal Kombat you weren’t getting it from Nintendo.īut if there was one area where the console lagged behind the SNES, it was sound. They had the Conan-inspired brutality of Golden Axe, the brutal vigilant noir of Streets Of Rage and a smart-ass mascot named Sonic that was friends with Michael Jackson. Sega smartly advertised their console to older gamers when the industry was still targeted mainly to children. While these days Sega has seen better days, nothing made Nintendo sweat harder than when the Genesis and SNES battled over who ruled the 16-bit era. The Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive) remains the great underdog of video gaming. But rather than focusing on the well known classics, FACT’s resident Sega kid Miles Bowe takes a dive off the musical deep end into some of the console’s most obscure and overlooked games. In honor of Sonic The Hedgehog’s birthday this weekend and Sega’s new interests in reviving classics for free on mobile, we’ve decided to take a look at some of the best soundtracks on their most iconic console, the Genesis.
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