post music which plays during out-of-game portions of a given videogame e.g. intro music, menus, title screens, attract/demo modes, pause menus, character creation, results screens, briefings, credits, etc.
note: music which is used in an out-of-game segment but reused in-game is probably fine. specifically interested in the music which does not (exclusively) soundtrack “core gameplay”, whatever that means to you
play this shit at my funeral
The two pieces of music I think of first are both from the Media Factory 1999 release of Wizardry for SNES via the Nintendo Power service. I suppose it’s a bit subjective whether these really constitute “non-gameplay music” since you are doing certain important gameplay activities while these are on, but they’re both for parts of the game where normal play is stopped and you feel like you’re taking a break from the action. For anyone who’s played this version of Wizardry, I think both of these themes can easily come to represent feelings of immense relief and warm, cozy comfort, even, due to the role they play in the game. (It’s worth noting that these are arrangements of the same themes from the well-known Famicom port, but I like them so much as arrangements that I end up listening to them a lot more often than the original Famicom versions.)
“Camp”
“Inn”
Another game that comes to mind is Abarenbou Tengu (暴れん坊天狗) (Rowdy Tengu), an amusingly sarcastic and wacky (and stylish!) 1990 Famicom shooter from Meldac in which a Japanese tengu hears the cries of desparate Americans in the throes of an alien invasion and flies across the sea to save the U.S., reducing the country to rubble in the process. My favorite pieces in its OST are probably the title and credits themes. This is the title.
The credits music takes a similar posture.
Meldac’s games always have great music for some reason (maybe because they’ve always been more of a record label than they ever were a videogame publisher). Here’s the mysterious ending theme from their 1994 Super Pinball: Behind the Mask (スーパーピンボール ビハインド ザ マスク) on the Super Famicom:
It’s worth watching a longplay of this game for the full effect…you’ll see what I mean (hopefully):
What else…I’m sure many people have heard this one before but there’s always the awesome System Shock intro music…one of my favorite uses of '90s MIDI soundcards:
Alien Soldier has one of my favorite title screen themes—it’s so inviting:
The level select theme from Gunstar Heroes too:
Somewhere in-between them, the opening theme for Battle Garegga, made by Raizing in 1998 for Toaplan’s Version 2 hardware, which I wish went on for longer:
All of these last three tracks use the powerful combination of FM synthesis and sample playback (PCM), which was popular for “arcade-style hardware” in the '90s especially in the early-mid period, and which I feel is a very expressive and versatile approach for digital music that still works nicely today. The Treasure games do this via the Mega Drive’s YM2612/OPN2, a 6-channel 4-op FM synth chip that supported basic PCM on one of its channels, which Treasure’s Norio Hanzawa (半沢紀雄, a.k.a. Kazuo Hanzawa/半澤一雄, a.k.a. NON) used for drums on those tracks. Battle Garegga has the 8-channel 4-op YM2151/OPM paired with two OKIM6295s and an NMK112 for 8-channel ADPCM sample playback with separate per-channel sample banks, which both gives a sense of how the technology progressed over the decade and what sorts of hardware was feasible on a home console vs. in the arcade.
Others…I’ve listened like 10,000 times to the title screen theme of Aleste Gaiden (アレスタ外伝), a 1988 MSX2 spinoff of Aleste (アレスタ) which Compile released via their Disc Station; this is the MSX-MUSIC version, using the low-fi YM2413/OPLL for semi-hard-configured 2-op FM synthesis (albeit with 9 or 11 channels) paired with the AY-3-8910 for 3 channels of square-wave/noise-based synthesis:
I’ve also listened over and over to the intro music to Star Cruiser, released by Arsys in 1988 initially for the PC-88 and Sharp X1. My favorite version is the one for the YM2203/OPN, the PC-88’s “mid-grade” FM synth card:
I think often of the extremely stylish paired opening themes to Metal Gear 2, which, although it was a 1990 MSX2 game, does not use MSX-MUSIC but rather Konami’s custom SCC chip, which provides 5-channel wavetable synthesis (as far as I know Konami included this chip on the boards of all of their MSX2 games):
“Theme of Solid Snake”
“Zanzibar Breeze”
And as a closer, the fantastically bombastic staff roll music from Super Bomberman 3 (Hudson, 1995, SNES) by the legendary Jun Chikuma (竹間ジュン):
These are like the opposite of deep cuts but what can I say, the best are the best
Menu bgm, hidden away in a gameplay mode that most probably never even tried once, and then gifted with a banger track that could go on forever (yeah, searched for the extended version and of course someone already looped it for your own private e-party purposes)
Would have loved to be in the room when Nintendo decided that their second crown jewel racer shall have an intro track that could be a championship match wrestling intro, but somehow this got greenlit. 20 years later, still goes hard.
Obvious choice, i think.
Nothing else comes closer than getting you ready to race than this track.
Cheater Option:
Forza Motorsport 3 wasted its soundtrack by just letting it play as menu bgm, not sure how many people that didn’t waste hours in paintjob editor mode even heard some of these tracks. If nothing else, treat yourself at least to this one
thunder force iv has three different themes for the high score table
the stars plays when you’re just looking at it
remember of “knight of legend” plays when you’re entering your name for positions 2-10
and because you’re the number one plays when you’re the number one
This game,
It has so many bangers, it’s really hard to think of another OST from that period that would rock as much as TF4 did back then.
and even the relaxed traxxx are still slappin’
(So in short, massive TF OST fanboi-alert here ~~~)
whenever i hear the battletoads pause music i picture avgn dancing to it
