Game music of the day: Loaded

Welcome to GamesRadar's daily blast of all things pertaining to the ever-growing field of game music. Each post will introduce new sounds, games, composers and fan-made remixes of gaming's greatest aural achievements.

April 28, 2010

Game: Loaded

Song: Track 05

Composer: Neil Biggin and Patrick Phelan

Above: Track 05 from Loaded

Released during the early days of the original PlayStation's life cycle, Loaded was the epitome of '90s games. It was "edgy" and "cool" and "violent," so all the fresh newmarketing boxes were ticked off nicely, but it also happened to be a relatively decent, though ultimately mindless run-and-gun diversion. Now, 15 years after its release, the only aspect that doesn't totally blow ass is the soundtrack. It also reeks of '90s design, but if you like repititious and highly catchy electronic music, you gotta listen.

The embedded song above is from the third or fourth level. Nothing especially fancy, just a great tune with a smooth backbeat. At the time, it was higher quality music (as in sound quality and clarity) thanmost other games on the SNES, Saturn and PlayStation, so it was easy to get caughtup in the "omg 32-bit" hypewave.

A bit peppier track from a later level, but it's still in the same general audio space. It's an easy listening, infectious soundtrack that I've had on my iPod for five years straight, plus on every device I own that stores music. The game itself may not hold up (nor does its crap-ass sequel, Re-Loaded), but the soundtrack will be around forever.

On the other end of the spectrum is the band Pop Will Eat Itself, which lended a couple of tracks to Loaded for what I'm sure was a calculated cross promotional effort. Their music does fit with the look and style, but I've never heard of the band before or since, so at this point it's just another "huh?" bullet point in a series that already came and went.

Space Station by Carl Larsson

Versus mode by Nagao, Tsukamoto and Hikichi

Credits music by Shimomura, Abe and Lyla