Gamin' music

Any serious gamer (defined by one who plays most of the years best games) would have atleast one slot in their playlist dedicated to in-game music. Well, atleast I think so since I have quite a few slots dedicated in my mp3 database.

All games have intro music. But only a few games have that fabulous intro music that makes you want to leave your computer in the game's main menu screen with your speakers amped up. Right now, I can think of three games that did that to me: Hitman (Jesper Kyd's score), Age of Mythology ("A cat named mittens") and Civilization 4 ("Baba Yetu" by Christopher Tin).

Moving past the main menu screen, some games' in-game music that's supposed to reinforce the game's environment can do such a good job sometimes that you will want to take the experience to your desktop either by buying the sound track (costly AND redundant = Extravagant) or by ripping the sound track off of the game's sound files (resourceful :p). I have quite a collection of ripped game music with me. Here are some of the "most listened to" ones:

Civilization 4
Here are the top five higly rated tracks i listen to from this game:

• "Baba yetu"
• "Ancient soundtrack 2"
• "El grillo"
• "Ay Santa maria"
• "The people are the heroes"

The first track, "Baba yetu", is like THE perfect song and made quite an impression the first time I heard it. It's an awesome intro song for an awesome game. The song itself is in Swahili (an African tongue) and features bold drums, a great voice and a soothing chorus. You wouldn't understand a word of it of course, but if you care to know, the song's supposed to be a famous christian prayer called "The Lord's Prayer" (weird that, in Tamil, 'Yesu' means 'Jesus'). For the lyrics, check this CivFanatics.com forum post. Don't let the religious nature of this song be a factor in keeping you from enjoy this song. I myself don't give a damn about the wordings or meaning of a song as long as the melody, rhythm and timbre are in harmony (say what?). I mean, I listen to hindi songs, german rap, romanian hits, french pop, etc in addition to those classical musical scores. And my german is not as great as my hindi or my romanian, which I am not familiar with. For that matter even english rap/hiphop isn't exactly legible to me sometimes. To me, there are no bad artists or bad genre or bad anything else, only bad songs.
Most of the other vocal numbers are by John Adams from 'Nixon in China'. There's quite a collection of classical music by Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak and the like. There are rather interesting songs/chants/opera as well. For music samples, check out this gamespy.com page for civ 4. Or, if you have the game or are planing to buy it, check the directory "<drive:>\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\Sounds/Soundtrack"
The sound tracks are in mp3 format for immediate listening without much ripping pleasure.


Age of Mythology
Here's my top five from this game:

• "A cat named mittens" (Opening theme)
• "Never mind the slacks and bashers"
• "Adult swim"
• "n. d. nile"
• "Suture self"

This game has the most amazing original score among the other games that I've played. The music ranges from the intense intro music "A Cat Named Mittens" to the soothing "The Ballad of Ace Lebaron", and every shade tweeen. As you've noticed, all the tracks are named with creativity and light-heartedness. For example, "Suture self" when read would mean "Suit yourself". "n. d. nile" could mean "In the nile".
The sound track is, obviously, not meant as a stand alone album but as a background for the game's environment. This means that the tracks are not lengthy, average 2 minutes per track, and the album as a whole don't work together well.


Grand Theft Auto
The GTA series is all about in-game, or, more correctly, in-car radio stations. All of the songs are existing movie or hit songs, masterfully mixed and presented in the form of great radio stations along with great RJ voice acting. There's also one or two talk show stations per game with humourous content. There's been three GTA games out and my preference goes in this order:
-GTA III
-GTA Vice City
-GTA San Andreas

GTA 3's top of the spot for me would be Flashback FM featuring songs from the movie Scarface. I fell for the songs and then watched the movie Scarface (Al Pachino was great) which has become one of my all time favourites.
I forgot what my preferred radio station in GTA VC was, although I guess it was one of the talk shows. Truth is, I liked atmost a couple of songs in any given station.
GTA SA. AAh, GTA:SA. How can I ever forget K-Rose radio with RJ Mary-Beth Maybell. It was the in game radio that kick-started my passion for country and western music. Now I have quite a collection of country with me.


Need For Speed
Like GTA, Need for Speed also has in-car music, albeit not in a radio station format. And like GTA, NFS too is a series of games. Each NFS has a relatively small collection of both original and licensed hard hitting songs. I especially like the ones from NFS: underground, NFS: Underground 2, NFS: Hot pursuit 2 and NFS: Most Wanted. Here's the top 5 from each game:

NFS Underground

• BT - Kimosabe
• Eastside Boyz - Get Low
• Nate Dogg - Keep it Coming
• The Crystal Method - Born Too Slow
• Fuel - Quarter

NFS Underground 2

• Paul Van Dyk - Nothing But You (Cirrus Remix)
• Chingy - I Do
• Snoop Dogg feat. The Doors - Riders on the Storm (Fredwreck Remix)
• Capone - I Need Speed
• Rise Against - Give it All

NFS Hot Pursuit

• Hot Action Cop - Fever for the Flava
• The Buzzhorn - Ordinary
• Uncle Kracker - Keep it Coming
• Hot Action Cop - Going Down on It
• Bush - The People that We Love

NFS Most Wanted

• Styles of Beyond - Nine Thou (Superstars Remix)
• Hush - Fired Up
• Juvenile - Sets Go Up
• Suni Clay - In A Hood Near You
• The Perceptionists - Let's Move

Hitman
That leaves me with Hitman. The words "Hitman" and "music" would immediately spark the name Jesper Kyd in the minds of fans of this great game. JK has done many great scores for many other games as well. Check out his site, www.jesperkyd.com/, for some mind-bending samples. All of his music are totally cool and totally eligible for an intro music for totally any game.