Geometry Wars hasn't got a bad soundtrack, it's just that it doesn'temphasise the game's concept well enough.GW is a love-letter to the early days of video games. Its graphics and gameplay simultaneously pay tribute to and update thosewireframe shooters we first trained our trigger fingers on, but with its generic trance, the soundtrack just doesn't complete the job. The following tracks however, really really do.
ElectronicMESS - Killscreen
We've mentionedMr. MESSonce before, in ourfeatureon the chiptunes music scene, and his track Killscreen is on every level the perfect accompaniment for Geom Wars. Saturated with bleepy 8-bit retro sounds brought thoroughly up to date with speedy drum 'n' bass beats, it's an infectiously bouncy, jubilant tune which, like the chiptunes scene in general,sums up the entire concept of 'retro evolved'.
Hit play below and check out a marriage made in 80's arcade heaven. Somone give this guy a job making game soundtracks now!
Giorgio Moroder - Chase
The music of early synth pioneerGiorgio Moroderfits into a strange catagory in electronic music. Ahead of its time when it was first released, but now beautifully retro compared to most of the modern scene, it's like the aural parallel to early videogames. Existential artistic critique aside, it also sounds completely brilliant in its own right, and when played with Geometry Wars instantly brings back nostalgic thoughts of sticky carpetted arcades and that '70s sci-fi period in which we all believed we'd be driving around in flying cars by now. Click below to check out Chase, from his soundtrack to Oliver Stone's filmMidnight Express.
Goteki - Do Not Listen To Goteki
UK Futurepop bandGotekiare no strangers to videogame soundtracks. They've already worked with Free Radical Design on a natty little remix of the Timesplitters 2 end credits theme, and asproud hardcore gamers themselves they've long been known to use the Commodore 64 in their own compositions. Do Not Listen To Goteki, from their O/S album, is an unashamedly raucus slice of bleepy Fisher-Price rave. Garish, unsubtle, and really rather silly, it suits Geometry Wars' anarchic blasting down to the ground.
