Narrative Flood

Now That’s What I Call Gaming #1

Nothing adds a bit of spark to a game like a quick musical number. A comic song is often a game’s funniest, most memorable moment – a spooky vocal track the most haunting bit of sound. In the first of this irregular series, let’s take a look at ten interesting ones from the world of adventure games. Not a Best Of, not a comprehensive look, just a random pick of interesting tunes, served up courtesy of YouTube. Let its name be praised.

#1) The War Song – Sam and Max

Jared Emerson-Johnson’s music is one of my favourite things about Telltale Games’ episodic adventures, and never more so than when a musical number kicks off. Just listen to the fantastic You And Me And Ted E. Bear about how the Mafia is definitely, absolutely not involved with the city’s casino, or the soft World of Max that plays out as the main characters happily travel the world punching people in the face. I really want a full-musical episode of Sam and Max in the next series, though I’m not holding my breath because that would probably kill the writing team stone dead.

At least we’ve got The War Song. This was originally intended as a quick sequence… just a few funny lines… but got quite badly out of control when Jared wrote a full showtune instead, resulting in this hastily but wonderfully choreographed song and dance number. We join our heroes in the Oval Office of the White House as they manipulate America into a war for their own benefit. You think they’ve been looking forward to it a little too much? Their bloodlust is our gain.

#2) Ballad of Freddy Pharkas – Freddy Pharkas

Ah, Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, otherwise known as “The Game Al Lowe Did After Leisure Suit Larry, Except That Larry 7 Came Later and Also There Was Torin’s Passage”. Odd how some bits of gaming slang don’t catch on. The interesting thing about this one is that it’s not one song, but two. The full version used it as a prologue to the main game, sung by Lowe himself…

…while the demo reused the tune and idea to pitch the full product. It was made for floppy disks, so there’s no singing on this one, and if I remember correctly, the actual tune sounded better if you didn’t have a soundcard – it hit the notes much better. In keeping with the new song (and as with Space Quest VI, many years later) the demo itself wasn’t a slice from the full game, but a whole new situation using some of the same assets. Not being a fan of Westerns, I never really clicked with Freddy in the same way as many of Sierra’s other adventures, but I remember liking that.

#3) End Credits – Journeyman Project 3

So, you want a song? Don’t have anywhere to put it? Don’t want to spoil the serious tone of your game? That’s what the End Credits are for – in this case, to the Myst style Journeyman Project: Legacy of Time. You won’t hear it for quite a while – first, there’s the epic (and pretty cool) main theme as all the actors get their due. The technical guys? They’re… not so lucky. The singing guy is Arthur, an AI who accompanies you throughout the game, mostly cracking wise. Some loved him. Some hated him. Me, I liked the little guy. And he got the final word.

#4) End Credits – Legacy: Dark Shadows

And then… there’s this. Legacy: Dark Shadows is an appalling adventure, but it reaches a whole new low when you hit the credits. As a general rule, if you’ve got a cast that isn’t comfortable with the English language in the first place, and has all the acting ability of a kumquat, I’m going to suggest that the ideal way of ending your incredibly serious, incredibly boring, sci-fi conspiracy is to actively avoid mashing up lines of dialogue into…

…into whatever this is. Just listen. Or don’t. In fact, just don’t. I’m sorry.

#5) King of Limbo – Limbo of the Lost

In centuries to come, historians will have long bitter rows over the great question of our age: Was the Legacy song worse than the ending of Limbo of the Lost? I’m going to say yes, but it’s a damn close thing. What everyone can and will agree on is that if you’ve just spent the last ten years making the horror game of your nightmares, and you choose to end it like this, you need sectioning. Or trepanning. One of the two. Maybe both.

Limbo of the Lost became infamous when it was discovered that almost all its graphics were stolen. That’s fine for a platform game over on Newgrounds, but this was a commercial release from an actual publisher packed with stuff stolen from everyone from Disney to Blizzard. I still don’t know how they avoided being sued until there was just a crater where they were standing, but somehow they managed it. It’s a truly fetid game, stolen art or not, and one that really hammers home how so many adventure fans are ridiculously lenient on the genre – despite all its problems, and oh, there were so many of them it almost seemed like a practical joke, it actually racked up pretty good scores before the plagiarism was spotted. Ridiculously good scores.

To read more on the thefts, head to this wiki. Instead of playing it, just go here. Trust me, it’s a million times more fun than actually suffering through it yourself – and yes, I own a copy.

In a game of nothing but crap, it takes a lot to stand out. Which brings us to the ending. It won’t make any sense, but it doesn’t in context either. One minute, the main character – Briggs, the captain of the Marie Celeste of all things – is saving the world from the dark machinations of Fate, the next… this happens. Thank goodness the sequel is never, ever happening.

#6) Room of Angel – Silent Hill 4

Enough of that incoherent garbage. Here’s a horrible-but-in-a-good-way song from Silent Hill. This is a fan slideshow, but with one of the creepiest songs in one of the world’s creepiest games. Love or hate the games, they know how to build some serious atmosphere…

#7) The Archaeologist Song – Laura Bow 2

Shudder. Let’s cheer things up a bit by diving back into the Sierra archive for one of its cheeriest, yet most infuriating songs. This one comes from a speakeasy in Laura Bow: The Dagger of Amon Ra. This is the 1920s equivalent of the worms from Wrath of Khan – burying into your skull and refusing to let go. Ever. You’ll hate it, but you’ll catch yourself humming it at some point.

You have been Warned.

#8) When You Met Her – Discworld Noir

A slightly classier song, for a much darker bar. Discworld Noir was a fantastic game – a Chandler style spin on Ankh Morpork that replaced the over the top cartoon style of the previous games with a dripping sense of light-hearted murder, mayhem and werewolves. Here, our hero walks into what totally isn’t Rick’s Bar from Casablanca, only to be reminded of the love he lost… who absolutely, definitely won’t show up and drag him into the middle of a convoluted conspiracy that goes from a simple missing person case to an Old Horror eating the city. Definitely not. Not at all.

#9) That’s Death – Discworld 2

This is definitely cheerier though. With Eric Idle signed up to play Rincewind, and the story involving the disappearance of Death (in a way based on, but infinitely less interesting than Reaper Man), the developers hit on the idea of using Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life over the opening credits. Idle pretty much threw up in his mouth at the idea of retreading that old ground for the millionth time, and instead, the game ended up with a brand new musical number based on selling the concept of death itself. Wise choice.

#10) You Are Dead – Total Distortion

Finally for this round, the best game over scene ever. Ever. I wasn’t going to put this one in, just because it’s no longer that obscure after videos like this, but if we’re ending on death, it really has to be here, right? Yes, it does. And here it is, in all its glory.

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