I played a bit of the NiGHTS Into Dreams port on Steam today and was reminded of just how damn good its music is. And weird, too! There’s an almost completely hidden artificial life system where little cherubs living in the levels can get incidentally helped or hurt by your completely accidental actions in the game. Like, you might accidentally warp one of them into a hell dimension when you’re just trying to do a loop-de-loop, or you might end up hatching an egg and making more of them. There are not really any stats on what’s going on with them, and the only real indicator is the music. Every track in the game is split into several segments, and those segments can get swapped with alternate versions that are happier or sadder depending on the overall mood of the a-life in that level. It’s subtle enough that you often won’t even notice it.
In this video you can hear the neutral, happy, and sad versions of the forest level’s song. This presents the three as distinct pieces, but in the game you can hear different parts from them all mixed together seamlessly into a new song.
Do other games have weird personalized musical tracks like this?
rare did something similar with many n64 games, swapping the instruments out whenever you entered a particular area or went underwater, etc.
many sonic games remix the base song between acts, or things like sonic cd’s eras, etc.
there’s also the somewhat related “battle themes”, which can be as boring as zelda’s (usually just the one) or as interesting as perfect dark or kingdom hearts (every single level/area has its own).
I’ve talked about “procedural music” (it’s not really procedural but you get the idea) a lot here and there over the years on the forum. My go-to example is Wing Commander 3, but it definitely applies to lots of similar space sims - the X-Wing series does it as well, for example.
NiGHTS’ music is indeed procedural, but the thing that really makes it unique for me is the way it is procedurally generated according to the player’s actions over a long span of time, in a way that is completely obscure to the player. The music is happy or sad based on the way you’ve treated the Nightopians in the level, but you’d never know it from playing the game. There’s no direct cause and effect that’s visible to you at all, it’s all abstract. I think that’s kind of neat.
as an aside i could never figure out what the fuck i’m supposed to do in nights so i would just walk around the free roam where you didn’t seem to be able to do shit
when i tried to do the levels the “normal” way? what even is that? the camera is so close and i couldn’t discern any goals.
NiGHTS is one of those score-attack games that has a right way to play that it doesn’t tell you about at all. The thing to do is to maintain a combo by flying through rings and collecting blue spheres and stars at small enough intervals to keep the combo going. Each level is broken up into short segments that loop for 120 seconds. In every segment there’s a big orb machine that you have to destroy by collecting 20 blue spheres and flying into it. Doing this triggers a bonus phase with a x2 modifier to your score. The thing to do is trigger this bonus phase as soon as possible, then spend the rest of the segment getting as many combos as possible, then enter the gazebo you started from as close to the time limit as possible without going over. Do this for every segment to try and get straight A scores, then beat the boss at the end of the level as quickly as possible to get a high modifier on your aggregate score for the level.
The free roam stuff is completely useless and the only reason it’s in the game is to let you admire the ability to move around freely in a 3D space (still novel at the time). As far as I know you can’t really do anything of consequence there, but you can explore the levels at your pace and find fun little easter eggs. It’s a nice low-pressure way to hang out in the really charming world of the game.
It has come to my attention that Vandal Hearts and its sequel have two of the best game soundtracks ever and I kinda can’t believe I’ve never heard/seen anyone mention them before
First game’s score might not impress as immediately as the sequel’s, whose ensembles tend to be fuller, but I think it is fairly remarkable as an orchestral score that’s predominantly wind-based. And synth brass usually are tied with solo violins for being the worst-sounding instrument in synthetic orchestras, but the horns here have a warm timbral quality like those used in the Capcom D&D titles, a good complement to the often thick chords
Both scores also have a penchant for ambitious rhythmic dynamics, enlivening some of the sparser tracks which would probably have less flavor were they in a conventional meter, and complex, exciting polyphony
Look all I am saying is if listening to this doesn’t make you want to do a goofy dance in your chair that maybe you should have your doctor check and see if you’re a serial killer
Back when it was possible for Koei’s videogames to have good music, and one by Yoko Kanno to boot. These are mostly live arrangements, but the in-game originals for at least the Sega Saturn release are pretty nice too. ‘The Chase ~ Ver. #1’ almost sounds like an F-Zero theme that didn’t make it.