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Songs Frequently Used in a Game Series


Failinhearts

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From the Mario Overworld theme to Green Hill Zone, many game franchises have one or more songs that they use over and over again. For better or for worse. Whether it's a character's theme or a stage song you keep recognizing, what are some songs that stand out to you for being used over and over again? Do you like it, or are you tired of it? What is your favorite rendition of the song?

I'll start.

For being a game series with yearly releases, you can be certain that the Skylanders series recycles/remixes some music for it's levels. The most notable of which being "Lair Of Kaos." The song that is pretty much the theme of the main villain of Skylanders: Kaos.

The song was used in some cutscenes where Kaos is on screen but it's first use in a level was in the final chapter of "Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure."

This is my favorite rendition of the song. It feels so grand, and this version gives me the chills that no other version of the song could offer. Lorne Balfe did a great job.

The song was given a more techno remix and mashed up with the main theme of the game in the final boss of the sequel: "Skylanders Giants"

The song, naturally returns for the final boss in "Skylanders: Swap Force." The boss has segments that involve different parts of Kaos' body, so the song changes to reflect each part: The Toes, The Mouth, The Brain and the Final Phase. (The Final Phase is based off another song from the series)

For "Skylanders: Trap Team" the song was used as the final boss and as the theme for Kaos when playing as him.

So, what's a song used a lot in games that stand out to you?

Edited by Failinhearts
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Technically this is the only game in the series (until X comes out) but Xenoblade Chronicles liked to reuse a lot of it's music. Which is a good thing because Xenoblade Chronicles has FANTASTIC music. Like, not even joking. The time I spent playing the game was pretty long, about a week, and not a single song outstayed it's welcome.

My favorite of the gold that Xenoblade's OST is in all of it's glory was Engage the EnemyIn case you haven't seen me splurge about it in the Status Updates already xP

Oh. My. God. Literally everytime this song plays some serious crap is about to happen. It's so emotional too, the feels flow so much when I hear this play. There's a video compiling all of the scenes that use this, but most, if not, all of the scenes are tangential to the plot and therefore are serious spoilers for the game. Seriously, Spoilers.

 

 

Edited by DBZHedgy
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I've always liked that despite the famousness of the Mario 1 theme, Nintendo's composers have never relied on it to evoke feelings of Mario in each new game.  Every main series Mario title... barring a couple new ones... has a unique main theme to call it's own, each one as "Mario" as the one that came before if you ask me, and perfectly suiting each game.

 

It's for this reason though that I have to admit I've grown tired of the overuse of the underground theme from Mario 1 for such courses.  That is a song that has somehow survived and been reused a whole bunch of times, and the remixes rarely push the boat out.  I'd love to hear a brand new underground theme in a future Mario game someday, be it a variation of the game's main theme like Mario World's or something totally unique.

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Crash Bandicoot, following it's tenure with multiple different developers, tended to get rearrangements of many of the tracks from the original games, though the Warped theme in particular became something of a bootstrapped theme for the series for a while:

The old themes were dropped when the series was rebooted, though the newer titles' composer Marc Baril did make his own little dedication to the original theme:

Even within the first titles, a few recurring riffs were used, mainly as themes for the boss characters (eg. a guitar riff played in all three of Cortex's bosses). I thought it was a shame the later games didn't keep up this trend, I like leitmotifs (some themes were rearranged but for different purposes, eg. Dingodile's theme was reused for various things EXCEPT a Dingodile boss).

Edited by E-122-Psi
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Surprised this wasn't brought up yet.

 

 

(using II's version as that's my favorite)

 

Dearly Beloved is without a doubt one of the most beautiful tracks I've heard. Whether it's the original version, or one of its many iterations, the song brings a emotional beauty to the already amazing soundtracks. Yoko really does do an outstanding job with this song, bringing the needed themes and tones into each version.(like how 3D's brings a kinda surreal dreamy vibe, or how II's just feels like a grander expansion of the original, or BBS just brings a darker more somber feel). I can never get tired of this song, and cannot wait to hear how Kingdom Hearts 3, probably, surpasses my expectations!

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