A Closer Listen
While the long tail of the 2023 videogame industry crisis seems to have no end, musical talent and creativity have flourished. Last year’s trend among the bigger (AAA) developers of renovating old musical formulas continued, from Reynatis to Metaphor Refantazio. We directly revisited the music of Final Fantasy, Silent Hill and, while technically new, Stellar Blade ~ an homage to NiER: Automata. But there were also signs of innovation, spearheaded by Ubisoft’s combining both fresh and existing talent across two (!) Prince of Persia OSTs, both featured below. The AAA industry’s definitely still banking on nostalgia, but 2024 could be seen as a welcome inflection point.
The running theme in our lists for the past few years has been how the indie and AA space is where the actual novelty lies, and this year is no exception. Arguably, this space was not as experimental as it was last year, but production values seem noticeably higher. There was more orchestral and ensemble output (New Cycle, The Thaumaturge, Hand in Hand, Neva and so on), a shrinking of the sonic gap between them and the AAA space. This apparent investment in a more listenable sound characterizes most of the releases we’ve covered in 2024, with a distinct lack of the bedroom-quality recordings of recent years.
The wave of eclecticism we identified last year has coalesced; in albums like Arctic Eggs, The Axis Unseen or Nine Sols you can identify the expertise that the current wave of VGM artists have developed around genre mash-ups. While the best VGM has always embraced this (Koji Kondo tracks often mix genres), the level of seamless integration has perhaps never been so high.
Our singular entry in this year’s Retro category is a surprise. After at least a couple of years of our retro barrel being empty, UFO 50 makes the list ahead of other notable releases not quite distinctive enough to make the cut (Crow Country and Witching Stone among them). UFO 50, however, is a classicist’s dream, a return to form so powerful it might just spark something new ~ something not tied to nostalgic reproduction but to imaginative exploration of our shared history.
Two final notes: First, we strive to be extensive but can’t possibly cover everything. We’d love to know which of the smaller soundtracks captivated you this year! Second, if any composers and musicians are reading this, please make your music as accessible as possible for audiences beyond the gaming world! Bandcamp remains our favourite platform, but Spotify and YouTube Music work well. (Even Nintendo’s finally caught up, in a typically Nintendo-like fashion.) Please don’t restrict yourselves to Steam or GOG to sell or stream your work ~ there’s an entire world of music enthusiasts out there ready to listen.
And now, by genre and in alphabetical order, we present the *Press A* best videogame soundtracks of 2024!
Eli Rainsberry ~ Wilmot Works it Out
Thu Dec 12 00:01:02 GMT 2024