Grand Theft Autumn (Top 10 video games with licensed music)
There's a lot of rad games out there with a ton of rad soundtracks, from Chrono Trigger and & Contra with their fast up tempo fast picking, in your fast 8-16 bit paradiddles to hurry your ass through the level, to the much more melodic The Legend of Zelda, & Final Fantasy series games which crescendo you through the entire game. And then there are those games which are straight EPIC like your Elder Scrolls, Bio Shocks, and even 2D games like Crystalis (the original) and Mega Man.
But then there are games that don't have their own soundtrack, they used licensed music by musicians and artists. Some may think it's lazy but for these games, it simply immerses the gamer deeper into the atmosphere of the game. For some games, they must depend solely on the licensed music. Without it the game wouldn't survive. Let's go deep into the circle pit in this countdown.
10.) Dance Dance Revolution
Dance Dance Revolution has been quintessential centerpiece for most modern arcades of the last 20 years. Having first blown up in Japan back in 1998, it took off like a bat out of hell in the states all over arcades nation wide. In recent years with the help of consoles like the Nintendo Wii, fans of the game can take the fun right into their own home. Now with the game as part of a home platform, users who were too shy to use it publicly can so behind closed doors, or save money on all those damn tokens, use it for beer and have a drunk DDR party! What? Don't act like no one has busted out the mats before.
9.) Amplitude
Before there were hand held guitars coming out of your gaming console there was a game back in 2003 called Amplitude, not to be confused with the slightly more expensive DAW plug-in by IK Multimedia.
No this game was a primitive version of Guitar Hero using only the joystick, L, R, and Trigger buttons. Like DDR for your hands. The game allowed players to test their skills in areas of difficulty in mixing and remixing hit songs by shooting music notes in various other worldly musical environments while navigating a space craft grabbing awesome power ups like score doublers and freestylers as you go. You could customize characters and unlock a shit ton of awesome songs from bands/artists like blink-182, Quarashi, Weezer and Slipknot.
Although the soundtrack was limited; the genres, like Guitar Hero were vast and the number of difficulty levels made trying the songs over again like beating a different level.
In recent years, the Internet masses have come together for another game, and well, "the people have spoken" and Playstation agreed to release another game after a KickStarter for the game was made.
8.) Madden
Some might argue that this game should be higher on the list. Well, make your own fucking list. I'm not a real big sports guy, but I definitely had to put this one on here. Some might say "well what about the MLB, NHL & NBA games?" Well those games do have licensed music, Madden seems to be the "corporate sports" game that started it all.
Back in 03', shit was insane with licensed music in games, the pop-punk re-revolution was in full swing, thus thrashed the levee's holding back any and all bands ready and willing to capitalize on what they could get when they could.
On earlier games there would be only crowd noise, switching gears in 03 with that first soundtrack with songs like:
"Party Hard" by Andrew W.K.
"The Anthem" by Good Charlotte
"Everyday" by Bon Jovi
You get so pumped every time you play any sports game with an awesome soundtrack, EA Sports knew it, and they knew the gamer knew it too, because the trend continued.
In later years the franchise kept up with their audience adding more hiphop, metal and EDM. Always experimenting for each audience, be it MLB, NHL etc, the demographic that they try to reach by adding top 40 hits and whatever genre is popular is at the time. The music speaks in volumes (pun intended) and shows that an awesome soundtrack can make or break the mood of any game.
7.) Crazy Taxi
Created in 1998 by Hitmaker as an Arcade cabinet based driving game and was practically everywhere in the early 2000's. An early predecessor to GTA 3, the objective was to pick up random pedestrians on a map and drop them off at a certain destination pointed to by green arrows on the screen. You were given an allotted time for this, once time was up, game over. Players could pick up extra time and cash (for power ups & better Taxis) if they performed stunts on missions.
Given this and being one of the first real driving games to be in 3D at the time, NOW add 6 killer punk songs by Bad Religion and The Offspring and there was one hell of fast paced game on your hands.
Switching from arcade to home platform Crazy Taxi 2 once again had the full support of punk band The Offspring, now supplying the ENTIRE soundtrack for this game on the arcade, SEGA Dreamcast & Playstation versions. Punk band Total Chaos leant their rights to the PC versions.
Rounding off number 3 is Total Chaos, The Offspring (bringing back song All I Want from the first one) and Bad Religion with "Punk Rock Song".
Crazy Taxi Gameplay
....with any popularity of a great game, comes the possible consequence of a terrible video game movie adaptation. As was the case for this one.
Knowing how the game's overall feel was, I can see the satire they were going for, but for fuck sake, let's do the "buddy comedy". Luckily for us, SEGA pulled the fuck out of there quicker than a guy realizing he's with a clingy girlfriend, and all we were left with was TAXI, which thank fuck I've never seen, only this shitty trailer.
Get your shit bucket ready. EWW!
TAXI Trailer
6.) Fallout
Although none of the music on here is really "punk", traveling through a barren wasteland in a post apocalyptic future while listening to