[Edit: I should point out that I have no idea whether any of these are actually good songs - apart from the Robocop theme which I’m pretty sure stands up independently - they’re all too bound up with the experience of the games they provide the music for for me to be able to unpick the two things. It’s like Faye Wong’s Cranberries cover at the end of Chungking Express, I hate The Cranberries but I love that song because it’s inextricably linked with one of my favourite films]

Robocop Title Theme (Spectrum 128k) - Jon Dunn

The film Robocop is a very violent action film, it was released on video on my birthday 10 years ago. It’s also a pointed satire, you know about how big companies are bad and stuff. All in all it’s great.

The computer game, produced by erstwhile Mancunian film license stalwarts Ocean, dispensed with the satire and simply had your lumbering avatar walking from left to right and gunning things, occasionally the perspective would shift and you’d have to aim in first person which was less fun. In fact the whole thing was a rather pedestrian experience, not a patch on Ocean’s Batman tie-in of a couple of years later, the awkwardly titled “Batman The Movie Game” which I got free with my Amiga 500 and which also involved a lumbering avatar but compensated by also having a rather excellent Outrun-esq driving section which i tended to skip to with the aid of the cheat code: JAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. I really need some way to get rid of this kind of information to make room for some useful stuff.

BUT… For me Robocop (the game) was saved from mediocrity by Jon Dunn’s strangely mournful theme that stands at odds to the prevailing mood of the game. The best version is the Gameboy one but I only have an MP3 of the Speccy one.

Strangely, the Gameboy version was used in a series of Gondry-esq home appliance adverts from the early 90s:

Splash Wave (Euro Mix) - Richard Jaques

Unlike the Robocop theme tune Splash Wave (Euro Mix) from the Outrun2 soundtrack is fully in keeping with the rest of Outrun 2; relentlessly cheerful, exuberant, unapologetically digital and shiny, and frankly the best game available on the Xbox and the sooner they put it out on the Wii so I can play it again the better. The lead synth-line falling and rising perfectly mirrors the swoops and curves of the course as it ramifies through increasingly outlandish caricatures of the European landscape.

I’m not normally a fan of Richard Jaques’ work, his pastiches of popular radio genres for the Metropolis Street Racer sound track are on the whole bloody awful and his Sonic R soundtrack is only bearable because it’s so hilariously bad. But there’s something about the aesthetic of Outrun 2 that matches his style perfectly of course the lack of lyrics and the fact that the original tunes were damn fine helps.

Over the Distance - 矢井田瞳

If I had to choose who was going to win the Oscar for best use of music in a game ever it would be the level of Osu!Tatakae!Ouendan! in which you have to re-unite a girl with her dead motorcyclist boyfriend by cheerleading his ghost to knock over cups of coffee and break laptop keyboards. It’s kind of hard to explain just how great this schmaltzy J-pop ballad becomes when you’re tapping out the gentle break beats on the DS screen and watching the strange story unfold. By tapping into the melodramatic emotional cues in the music (Sadness! Surprise! Joy! Triumph!) and the investment you have in completing the level - which like the rest of the game is brilliantly choreographed (a more appropriate description than designed when it comes to rhythm action games) - this really reaches a place where few games get. It’s like the video game equivalent of a good musical over the top but genuinely affecting, or so I imagine, I don’t like musicals much so I can’t be sure.

In spite of the really excellent and improving line up of games for the DS, Ouendan remains the one I’d choose to take to a desert island with me.