Sonic and Music

 Oh yeah, this is happening!

Of the prime ingredients that make up the meal we know today as Sonic; attitude, fur, speed- I'd say that the one attribute which has been incontestable even in the darkest ages of the franchise, is the quality of the music. From the days on the Genesis even over onto modern day entries depending on what type of music you like, Sonic has never failed to at least make an effort with each game's soundtrack. At least, far more effort than it's contemporaries. I mean seriously, take a look at some of the big games from around the same time as the classic Sonic trilogy, the early 90's and compare the competition. Mega Man 2 clocks in just behind that timestamp, but it rocked two unforgettable tracks, but not an entire library of classics like Sonic has. Super Castlevania totally revitalised the series not just with gameplay but in it's soundscape too, but was its musical success as consistent as Sonic's? Not across the years as much. Truly, Sonic stands as much as vehicle for video game music as it does for gameplay.

Sonic games music is an inexorable part of it's identity now, with fans forming judgements on the taste of people with particular favourites (If you're ever speaking to a Sonic fan and find yourself in a pinch with no personal favourite, just say 'Chemical Plant Zone'; it's a solid, if cliché, baseline.) But what makes them so good? They're great tracks, that's what! They're textured, they're distinct, funky at times, rocking at others, they serve as the soul behind each and every level and stage, serving to highlight the thematic motifs within the level whilst simultaneously just being great enough tracks to exist divorced from the game too. Sonic is never a series that leaves it's music to fill the background, there's no 'incidental' tracks in this franchise. As much as Sonic, Tails or Knuckles, the backing tracks are beloved main stays of the series rooster.

Which isn't to say that the music has been stagnant throughout the years either. Sonic 1 ingrained it's iconic zone themes into every player's hearts (Especially with the irreplaceable Green Hill Zone) and Sonic 2 bought busier and richer tracks that proved to be just as iconic. (And yet somehow my favourite from that game is still the relatively simple major boss theme) But for me personally, it was Sonic 3 where this series hit it's zenith. And how could it not with a suite of tracks, half of which are said to have been composed by the Michael Jackson. (Although whether or not that is truthful is the stuff of myth and legend.) Even so the funk-carnival beat of 'Carnival Night zone' is guaranteed to get your feet tapping. Then you've got the hop and sliding keyboard of 'Hydrocity' and 'Marble Garden'. But the top of the top, the king of kings, my favourite Sonic song bar none- the final boss theme; 'Big Arms'. That is everything a final boss track needs to me. 

It starts ominous, chilling, slow and quickly ramps up into an excitable and relentless march with that layered synthetic instrument richness which makes Classic Sonic sound so memorable. But even more than that, what makes it a stretch beyond so many others; is that just before the track loops the composer remembered that a perfect boss theme needs to tell the story of the protagonist as well as the villain. We get a rousing stanza all of the Blue menace's own that slowly builds until it's cut short and cold by a single errant note that hangs for a half second of total quiet, and then the march crashes in once again! God, I could literally gush on and on about how good 'Big Arms' is for absolutely hours, truly some of the greatest video game music work ever, even to this day.

Of course as Sonic changed in the 3D era so too did the music which accompanied him, and those with a passing knowledge of the Sonic franchise would probably be more familiar with these tracks. 2000's soaked spring-break garage-band sounding songs that coloured this more 'skateboard' era of what a cool, non-conformist, hip kid like Sonic is meant to be. It has it's charms, although for me most of that leaks out from nostalgia and irony. Do I like 'Escape the City' from Sonic Adventure 2 as a track? Of course. But would it have been something I'd listened to regardless of it's connotations to Sonic? Not even nearly. But of course this is the time when personal taste becomes more important, as is going to happen when Sonic music stopped being it's unique brand and started becoming more identifiable by the genre it was placed in. Some fans are made, others are made dubious; it's the evolution.

Quality has waxed and waned over the years but the overall calibre of Sonic soundtracks makes it so that the truly bad Sonic tracks are the standouts. And I can refer to them in designations of tiers. From the 'this just isn't really my style of music' for a lot of the Sonic vocal tracks (Apart from 'Sonic BOOM' from Sonic CD of course) to 'okay this is outright cringeworthy'; a tag I'd happily slap on the chest of a track like 'Infinite's Theme' from the latest 3D Sonic outing; Sonic Forces. (Sample of the actual lyrics "I am the toughest of terrors, I am the darkest of days"- "I am a dangerous weapon, I am the sharpest of blades, I'll cut you down in a second, 'cause I was born in this pain, it only hurts if you let it, so if you think you take me, then you should go and forget it." Reminder, this is an anthropomorphic Jackal in a mask expositing all this edge.) And if we look really closely, we can find the abjectly terrible Sonic tracks.

Music from games that most people haven't even heard of before, like 'Tails' Skypatrol', a standalone title where the suite of music can best be described as obnoxious arcade machine ditty, but for every single track. Not very appealing. And a rung even lower than that lies a game that I've mentioned repeatedly in passing on this blog for it's simply legendary status as terrible Sonic spin-off music. If you haven't heard it, seriously; look up the 2 player theme for 'Sonic Eraser'- it's a college of sounds and noises that defies the designation of 'music', so garishly awful that it almost swings back around into masterpiece territory. Until last week that would have been the music track I would happily label the worst that Sonic has to offer. But since then I've been enlightened with a track from a game that might not be as objectively terrible musically, but which is so much worse because of one simple thing: it's a homage to an earlier Sonic masterpiece.

During the dark ages of quality control in the Sonic licence, Bioware (yes, that Bioware) got their hands on the IP in order to make a Sonic RPG called 'Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood'. Having never seen anyone talk about it, I just assumed it to be another one of the companies lost gems next to 'Jade Empire' and went about my way before learning of it's negative perception by the Sonic community. Apparently they really hated the thing. Why? Mario RPG games have such a cult following, so it couldn't just be genre mismatch, could it? No, it's the music. The terrible, badly-ripped, MIDI suite which is based around various older Sonic tracks cherry picked across the franchise, although a lot of the tracks are bad 'remixes' from Sonic 3D Blast for some reason. But the crowing turd on this mud pie? The music of the final zone in the game and the capital of this eponymous Dark Brotherhood? It's a track called 'Nocturne' which is a butchering- of 'Big Arms.'

Yes, my favourite Sonic track of all time dissected and chucked in the garbage in a MIDI monstrosity that strips the layering, the progression, the texture- the SOUL of the song- in a butchering in breach of the Geneva convention. The rumour has it that the game original featured an orchestral suite which Sega turned down a week before release leading to a mad scramble to replace the music with these crappy synthetic rips; but even that is a weak excuse. I've turned my entire library of music into MIDI files before and it sometimes comes out a bit distorted, but that's because I'm turning actual percussion based tracks into a synthetic format; Sonic music starts on synthetic instruments- how did they screw it up during the port? Unless there was some morbid desire to remix totally remotely without any human input, that explanation holds no real water!

For the most part, Sonic Music is a standout and sometimes standalone bright spot of the franchise that persists through generation of games and fans. There's something transcendent about a musical spirit that can be captured again when developers so choose, as was proven through Sonic Mania, and no matter how bad the Sonic games get there's always at least one banger in the soundtrack which worms under even the most grim skin. Unless we're talking about 'The Dark Brotherhood' I guess, which deserves annihilation from orbit for its crimes. (Okay, the opening theme and battle themes are okay, I guess. But to do that to 'Big Arms'... look how they massacred my boy...) So now you know the only standard Sonic Frontiers needs to meet in order to justify its existence. Forget being a good game, screw establishing a coherent world space; just slap in one head banger and for the love of god don't sample 'Big Arms' unless you know what you're doing. That's all I ask, Sega.