Four Underrated Video Game Soundtracks From The 1990s
When it comes to finding some great music that can carry you through a weekend, it can be taxing to sort through your Spotify favorites or just settling on the same old mixes that you’ve been loading up on for years.
Why not open your spectrum up a little wider and dip into the world of video games? While you may even already have your personal favorites, here are a few OSTs that make for some great extended listening that may be a little off your radar.
Jaki Crush - SNES (JP) - 1992
Do you like pinball? Do you also like mythical Japanese demons? Then Jaki Crush is already a game you need to try out. Part of the Crush Pinball series by NAXAT, Jaki Crush features a beautifully-rendered pinball table with plenty of charm and animated pixel art evoking mystical Japanese folklore.
That’s all before you even get to the music. Charging synths and crystalline, bitcrushed beats pound away and converge the longer you listen, as they merge into a crescendo that is something out of a Rocky movie. Daring you to keep your streak alive and to not let your ball fall out of play.
Tetris Plus - PSI - 1996
Speaking of keeping your streak alive, we have Tetris. Specifically, 1996’s Tetris Plus. The one that featured the exclusive mode where you had to destroy blocks to free a tiny Professor from getting trapped and killed by spikes.
In a previous piece, I asked why The Tetris Company had to go so damn hard on their music. The answer is actually quite simple. If you want me to play this game for hours on end, you’d better make sure I’ve got something good to listen to.
Tetris Plus not only delivers on that promise, but occupies a very specific type of 90s sound. Almost a Jazzy City Pop vibe that certain games were able to pull off during the transition from simple compositions that could fit onto 8 & 16-bit games from just a few years earlier, but now turbo-charged with the benefit of clear CD-quality audio and brighter synth instruments.
Castlevania: Rondo Of Blood - PC Engine Super CD - 1993
For years, if you lived in the United States, you couldn’t even buy Rondo Of Blood. In fact, you were forced to play its bastard suedo-port, Dracula X, for the Super Nintendo.
What were we missing out on? Only one of the best Castlevania games of the era. Hard as nails, but with gameplay & music so tightly refined that it’ll keep you getting back up for just one more try, over and over again.
The music took full advantage of the new CD-quality Redbook audio. Featuring beautiful, multi-layered tracks that can hit you with atmospheric world music melodies one minute and then ramp up to 11 with crisp electric guitar and breathless basswork the next.
Sonic 3D Blast - SEGA Genesis - 1996
1996 was already late into the SEGA Genesis’ life and people were already getting set for the SEGA Saturn and the then-incoming (but ultimately cancelled) Sonic X-Treme. When that game eventually fell to the wayside, SEGA decided to ramp up the marketing for the Genesis’ final Sonic game, a non-traditional collect-a-thon platformer, Sonic 3D Blast. A game they rushed a port of to the Saturn as well as being a game disconnected from the mainline Sonic games of the time.
While the Saturn got its own unique soundtrack, it’s the Genesis original, overlooked due to circumstance and time, that might have the best soundtrack from any of the OG Sonic games.
Unlike Tetris Plus or Rondo Of Blood, where they had use of new technologies to advance their musical palette, Sonic 3D Blast is like a capstone project. Taking everything the series had learned about making music over the life of the Genesis and putting those skills to work one last time to maximum effect.
Some of these tracks are so good, they’ve actually been reworked into later Sonic games. If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then Sonic 3D Blast should be looking back at its musical accomplishments and blushing.
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