I listen to a lot of video game music. My iTunes library consists of 7000+ video game songs (11 days, 9 hours, 54 minutes, and six seconds)* including OSTs, Remixes, OCRemixes, ZREO Orchestrations, and more. Most of the music is from games I have played and enjoyed, some is from games I have never even heard of (until I found their soundtrack). I enjoy the music in part because it is mostly without lyrics (a musical feature I find distracting during certain activities like writing.)

One thing I enjoy is listening to the different styles for each game. It’s almost like a fingerprint. I consider myself a meager video game music connoisseur and my bother and I sometimes play games where we need to guess which game the music is from. MegaMan has a very distinct musical style, much different than Zelda. Metroid, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Halo, Final Fantasy, the list goes on, are fairly easy to distinguish between musically.

Of course some of the games are similar in music as well. Some remixes blend and shift the musical style and make it hard to pinpoint. Other times a single song from a game will have qualities that point towards a different game all together.

Take Nayru’s Song for example: (This version is from ZREO Music.)

Often when I listen I am not looking at the song information and when I first heard this song I assumed that it was either from Metroid Prime or one of the sequels. Only recently did I notice that the song was from Zelda: Oracle of Ages/Seasons.

Originally I thought the music was somewhere from Metroid Prime 2′s Light Temple, since I had distinct imagery in my head when I heard the piece, but upon further investigation it appeared I was wrong.

MP2 Light Temple:

Out of curiosity I hunted out other potential doppelgangers for the song.

MP Chozo Temple: 

MP2 Sky Temple Gateway: 

MP Phendrana Drifts Chozo Temple: 

None of the songs were quite as close as I had originally expected, but there are definitely some similarities. Many of the Metroid songs have high pitched flowing melodies. with deeper undertones and harmonies. The only thing that the Zelda piece is missing is a strong beat, and perhaps using voices to sing or chant the lower parts.

Part of the confusion might come from the re-orchestration provided by the ZREO team, because when I went back to listen to the original it wasn’t quite as Metroid-y.

Still it is very interesting how different games present themselves musically and have a specific audio branding.

*Notes:
1 – I only have about 9609 songs in my entire library, if that gives you an perspective on my listening habits.
2 – I use to have more video game music but I recently deleted a few soundtracks I was beginning to find annoying, such as the mario golf and mario tennis songs.

*EDIT:* Due to conflict between the MediaElement.js plugin and the Jetpack plugin the audio tracks were not showing up when I first wrote this post. Before publishing I disabled MediaElement and went with the Jetpack version, but that only uses flash and doesn’t have an HTML fallback. Today I had some time for research and discovered an alternative tag I could use with MediaElement.js and now the audio here should be playable on all devices, including iOS. Just thought you’d like to know.