No video game would be complete without music, but also a surprising amount of popular music would not exist without video games. Skepta announced that he’d been “producing since Mario Paint on the Super Nintendo” on 2011 release “Mike Lowery”. Street Fighter’s “Perfect!” soundbyte is arguably as much a part of hip-hop as it is gaming at this point. Hyperpop heavyweight Umru kickstarted his career by hosting festivals in Minecraft’s digital reality. Continuing this reciprocal relationship, earlier this week avant-pop icon Caroline Polachek was revealed to be creating an original track for pioneering video game director Hideo Kojima’s sequel to Death Stranding. 

The brain behind Metal Gear Solid, Kojima alone has had a gargantuan impact on pop culture. His 1987 stealth-action debut Metal Gear was a key turning point in video games being considered more than kids’ toys, with an emphasis on storytelling and immersion that cemented the medium as an art form in its own right. The series has since been cited as an influence on figures as disparate as Jordan Peele, The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann, and Places + Faces founders Ciesay and Soulz. 

2019 release Death Stranding continued Kojima’s cinematic streak with vocal performances from Mads Mikkelsen, Troy Baker and Margaret Qualley, as well as a bewitching soundtrack from Icelandic post-rock outfit Low Roar that won Best Score/Music at that year’s The Game Awards. With news landing that Polachek is appearing on Death Stranding 2: On the Beach’s original soundtrack, Kojima seems set to make a similar impression with the sequel.

In honour of Kojima’s boundary-breaking career, we look back at ten of the most iconic video game soundtracks.

GRAND THEFT AUTO V 

This one was a big toss-up between Vice City and GTA V, but the latter ultimately won for its impeccable radio station programming. 2013 release GTA V featured 22 in-game radio stations and 441 licensed tracks, with real-life hosts including none other than the founding father of dub music Lee “Scratch” Perry (not to mention the in-game Blue Ark station referencing Perry’s iconic Black Ark recording studio in Kingston, Jamaica), Flying Lotus, Big Boy of Outkast, Bootsy Collins… I mean, come on! Elsewhere, the landmark video game’s illegal antics were soundtracked to a series of original compositions from Tangerine Dream, The Alchemist and Woody Jackson, drawing on hip-hop and funk.

TONY HAWK’S PRO SKATER 4

Let’s be honest, any of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater soundtracks could be on here. The series’ original compositions are not bad at all, but it’s in Tony Hawk’s incredible selection of licensed tracks that the game’s music really shines, with Hawk himself explaining that the video game’s tracklist is composed of songs that he would literally hear playing in Californian skate parks at the time. 

2002 release Pro Skater 4 is particularly notable for celebrating the ‘conscious’ era of West Coast of hip hop that was taking hold at the time, including tracks by Project Blowed supergroup Haiku d’Etat, legendary battle rapper Eyedea (RIP) and Aesop Rock, as well as skaterboy mainstays such as N.W.A, System of a Down, AC/DC and more. 

SONIC ADVENTURE 2

The music for Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog is massively underrated, consistently matching its high-octane gameplay with a dopamine-releasing blend of pop and rock. The soundtrack to the 1994 Sega Genesis release Sonic the Hedgehog 3 even had contributions from none other than Michael Jackson, but these were left uncredited after allegations of child abuse surfaced just before the game’s release. 

But it is still 2001’s Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack that has the most iconic Sonic score to date. Any child of the early 2000s will no doubt remember the pop-punk banger “Escape from the City”, which played during the game’s opening level. Meanwhile, enough compliments can’t be given to the surprisingly gritty hip-hop track “A Ghost Pumpkin’s Soup”, which was performed by American rapper Hunnid-P (also the former manager of iconic gangsta rap group Bone Thugs ‘N’ Harmony). No lie, this song still finds itself in my rotation today, and I maintain it goes toe-to-toe with any rap classic from the early 2000s.

THE LAST OF US (PART I & II)

While many The Last of Us fans are currently underwhelmed by HBO’s adaptation of the cinematic video game, the TV series did remind many viewers just how brilliant the original soundtrack was. Case in point: the show’s theme song is directly lifted from the video games, created by multi-Grammy Award-winning Argentine composer Gustavo Santaolalla. 

With 17 Latin Grammys and two Grammy Awards under his belt, Santaolalla had reportedly been approached by multiple video game franchises before TLOU, but refused them for not having a strong enough emphasis on character-building and storytelling. It’s in this spirit that Santaolalla became a fundamental part of the TLOU’s identity, helping to produce everything from the iconic clicker voices, to the award-winning original soundtrack that blended eerie apocalyptic melodies with real-world classics salvaged from before the pandemic. 

FINAL FANTASY VII

Everything about Final Fantasy VII was massive. Released in 1997, it was the first real blockbuster video game, sprawling across three separate video game discs and multiple in-game continents, and this is reflected in composer Nobuo Uematsu’s grand soundtrack. With 88 original compositions, Uematsu utilised the advanced processing power of the then cutting-edge Playstation 1 console, which for the first time allowed the use of live instruments and vocal samples in a video game. 

The resulting score matched Square Enix’s high-fantasy odyssey with a sweeping rock-infused classical score. It not only produced perhaps the single most iconic video game composition (“One Winged Angel”), but also reached number three on the Japanese music charts.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME

It’s probably been 15 years since I last played the 1998 N64 release The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time but I can still remember the “Lost Woods Theme”’s lead melody perfectly. Created by legendary Nintendo composer Koji Kondo, who was responsible for many of the early Mario and Zelda soundtracks, the catchiness of Ocarina of Time’s music was further cemented by the game dynamics itself. A key focus of OOT’s gameplay was teaching players how to play Link’s magical ocarina instrument in order to warp space and time, and that meant that melodies had to be as simplistic but as memorable as possible.

Kondo clearly understood the assignment, because the game has since become one of the most sampled games of all time. Navi’s “Hey!” and “Listen!” soundbytes has been used by everyone from Skrillex to Mk.Gee, while the “Lost Woods” theme was interpolated as the lead melody in UK trapper Sam Wise’s “Nemo”. 

ANIMAL CROSSING: NEW HORIZONS 

Fun fact: I had my first experience with music production software on Animal Crossing’s island tune creator, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. That mini-game was one of many small details that made this laid-back slice-of-life series such a fan favourite, somehow making mindless tasks like fishing and collecting fruit both addictive and relaxing (and not in an opiate sort of way).

The series’ soundtracks are created by Nintendo mainstay Kazumi Totaka, who has since become legendary for their signature insertion of the “Totaka’s Song” easter egg into every game they’ve worked on. Totaka’s compositions have formed a key part of Animal Crossing’s appeal, with stripped back whimsical melodies that are both unobtrusive and incredibly uplifting.

STREET FIGHTER (SERIES)

If you hear a Street Fighter soundbyte “Oooouuuuu ouuuu”, “It’s a mreee mreee” and “Bluku bluku” doesn’t immediately come to mind, you need to brush up on your grime. D Double E’s iconic Street Fighter Riddim is just one example of many crossovers between video games and British dance music, with Skepta reportedly beginning his music career with Super Mario Paint’s production mini-game and UK dubstep producers Benga and Skream creating early hits on Playstation’s Music software. However, the Street Fighter series has likely had one of the biggest impacts on music out of any video game, with iconic lines like “Perfect!” and “Shoryuken!” appearing everywhere from Charli Sloth’s Fire in the Booth series to battle rap. 

DONKEY KONG COUNTRY 2: DIDDY KONG’S QUEST

The Donkey Kong series has always had bangers (shout out to the “DK Rap” from Donkey Kong 64), but the Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong’s Quest stands a cut above the rest. This 1995 classic squeezed an incredible breadth out of the SNES’ 16-bit cartridge, soundtracking the young ape’s eccentric quest with elements of both classical music and hip hop. 

The score was composed by American producer David Wise, who was reportedly first brought on to create reference tracks that would then be recreated by veteran Nintendo composer Koji Kondo. After hearing his initial demos, Nintendo gave Wise free rein of the soundtrack and the result is a set of bit-crushed melodies that are still relevant 30 years later. Case in point: the lead melody of Drake’s “6 God” is directly lifted from Donkey Kong Country 2’s mine cart level. 

MINECRAFT

No, really. This is a great ambient album that lends itself to hours upon hours of mindless block digging. In fact, I maintain that some of my best writing has taken place to the background listening of “Key”. As with most iconic video game soundtracks, it was the limitations of the software that became its defining feature, with composer C418 (AKA Daniel Rosenfeld) telling the Guardian that the game had “a terrible sound engine” that couldn’t handle multiple sound files playing simultaneously. Instead, Rosenfeld had to take a more minimalist approach to the soundtrack, inspired by Brian Eno and Eric Satie, and thank god he did.