Hey! I like that song.
EVO was a game I really loved as a teen, but playing it these days it is pretty flat fare. (At least the previous game in the series went
completely mental as it progressed.) Still liked it enough to take some inspiration in one of my early
serious attempts at making a game.
The NES was pretty cursed at the high pitch notes; the
FDS version of the Kid Icarus theme is a massive improvement. The FDS Metroid theme is a bit better, too.
... of course any game where the composer actually listened to what the song would actually sound like on the hardware did better. Uematsu is still knocking out bangers to this day.
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This "worst music" thing is always one of those problem of the heap type things. Like how to make the "worst" Mario level. The worst thing possible isn't hard to key in: it's one super high-pitched screeching instrument that plays like six notes on a loop forever. Which makes
the looping Ghostbusters theme absolute heaven to listen to in comparison.
If the music is too bad, people will mute it and then not get to suffer. This is bad! So the worst music is the most miserable thing... that the average person can tolerate. There's no real qualitative difference between shit; dead silence is dead silence after all.
The truly demonic thing to do is to lead off with kickass songs, and then work in increasingly shitty ones as the game progresses. And slowly adjust the ratio as the game progresses, so they're about 55% shit and 45% pretty good. So the player is constantly torn on whether they want to mute the music or not, and constantly wondering why they remembered the music being really kickass. It's the kind of bastard thing that could only be tried out in an experimental indie game.
I'm also a bit fascinated in
good music being
too good, like the things become a cognito-hazard that traps you inside the game for far longer than you intended to be. ArKnights' soundtrack was like this - insidious lobby music you'd pause to listen all the way through. For a few loops, sometimes. The generic menu music is
mostly gentle wordless ASMR, so it doesn't get old. Event music is often
upbeat pop. Promotional music includes
edgy white teen male music. Battle themes could be any unexpected bumfuck thing, including
a sea shanty.
"Yostar is a music company" is something players say, when they forget there's a game attached to this music.
Anyway, I think the Cheetahmen Song is as close to what I'm talking about here that a single song can get. It's catchy, but not quite in a Barbie's World repetitive kind of way. So you kind of want to keep listening to it; you're probably thinking about going off and giving it a listen to
right now even though there's no link to click on, right?! At the same time, there's a lot.... a lot half-assed and busted about the thing.
... freakin' youtube comments. Now I have to listen to the Silver Surfer soundtrack. "Good songs that make you remember bad games" is yet another kind of evil...
Proud owner of SFC Bastard even though the game's a fuckin dog, just so I can blast that title BGM ;3
It's not even especially bad music, just exhausting with the combined 5sec loops and lack of groove. 5secs is plenty when you know what you're doing with it!
Formally decent with sharp controls and hit detection, and even has a notable highlight in those gleefully swarming homing missiles, but it cycles through the same few waves per stage a bit too transparently.