Geek Beats: Episode #1

What's not to love about good video games and good music? I would wager that most of the world has heard the iconic scores from franchises such as Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy. For me, music and video games have been a major part of my life for years. I've been a band geek since elementary school, have played many different instruments, and even graduated from college with a degree in Music Theory and Composition. As long as I've been playing music, I have also been gaming, and one of my favorite things is to listen to great video game music. I've decided to incorporate my two loves through this blog to show you all songs from games that maybe you've never played before, or perhaps you've forgotten about a game and the nostalgia boot kicks you in the ass. These are just my opinions on my favorite songs, so feel free to love it or hate it.

My first pick today resulted from my own nostalgia ass-kicking a few days ago when I was browsing YouTube and stumbled upon the music from the game Soul Blade. I find it suiting that this is my first pick because this was the very first game I bought as a kid without any help from my parents, and independence as a child is the cornerstone of fond memories.

Soul Blade is a 2-player Fighter developed by Namco that was released as an arcade game until its port to the PlayStation. The game was the predecessor of the Soul Calibur series and established the lore of subsequent games. From what I can remember from my six-year old opinion, the gameplay was great, and it spurred my obsessive love of fighting games for the next ten years or so. But the music, now THAT was fantastic. The opening song is a driving rock tune that sets the stage for the tone of the game and serves as a good contrast to the more orchestrated sounds of the in-game score. On the game disk there was an option to go into Theater Mode where you could listen to all of the game music and see the cutscenes, and I spent a lot of time there listening to the two different soundtracks that were created for the game. Super nerdy, I know. Don't judge me, I'm a band geek and video game nerd rolled into one, I can't help it.

Without further ado, here is the opening title.

Game: Soul Blade/Edge
Title:  The Edge of Soul - performed by Khan
Album: Soul Edge Original Soundtrack - Khan Super Session