When considering what makes a great sports game, there are a lot of elements that come to mind. The quality of the gameplay is an obvious one. The diversity of game modes is important, as any modern game will be expected to have enjoyable career and franchise modes as well as a bumping online community. Something obviously important to any sports gamer that an outsider may be surprised to learn about, however, is the accompanying soundtrack.
For some games, the soundtrack dictates your experience while playing the actual sport. For others, it’s just a matter of what’s going on when you’re in the menus. What’s the same in both these situations is that whenever you’re hearing music in-game, it better be good, or fans will not be happy.
The right soundtrack for a sports game sets the mood for what you’re about to play while possibly even introducing you to your next beloved artist or band. Join us as we look at some of the most iconic sports series when it comes to musical accompaniment and what makes a great sports video game soundtrack such a special thing.
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The Sports Gaming Series That Defined Musical Tastes
The soundtrack to a game may not be something you’re likely to be thinking of when deciding whether to purchase it, but that doesn’t mean that a killer soundtrack didn’t become something gamers came to expect from certain franchises. These games were known for having taste-making soundtracks that delivered song after song after song:
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater: You simply cannot talk about video game soundtracks and not start with the undeniable king of the genre in the Tony Hawk’s series, particularly in its early years under the Pro Skater branding. It’s easy to see why the bond here is so strong as, unlike most sports games where the music ceded its place to the in-game sounds and commentary while outside of menus, in THPS games the soundtracks were fundamental to gameplay. Every two-minute run saw you grinding and flipping to a song designed to get you feeling amped and like a real skater. Now, nearly three decades since the first game dropped, an entire generation of gamers has dozens of songs that instantly bring them back to the feeling of chasing tapes and hitting tricks.
- FIFA/EA FC: The further a game reaches, the more ability it has to shape popular culture and trends, and games don’t get much further-reaching than the FIFA and EA FC series. In FIFA: Road To The World Cup ‘98, EA dropped a generational sports game, and with it a generational sports soundtrack. The sound of “Blur” ripping through your speakers while the game’s intro video played let you know you were in for a good time. Through the years, the series has continued to be a massive platform that combines established hits with songs about to be by virtue of appearing in one of the biggest video games in the world.
- Madden NFL: The reach of American football may not be quite as large as the reach of world football, but that doesn’t stop the Madden games from being massive players in the sports video game market every year. Correspondingly, getting a song into a Madden soundtrack can be a game-changer for an artist. Through the years, the team at EA responsible for choosing the music established a strong track record of nailing song selection, creating playlists with a mix of songs that almost all prove to be bangers that get you in the mood for some football.
- Wipeout: Some game series reveled in diversity in their soundtracks, mixing rock, pop, rap, and more. Others decided to lean into a single genre that developers felt meshed with the gameplay, and that’s where Wipeout can lay claim to being among the more influential sports game soundtracks for helping grow a genre. The futuristic racing games were paired with electronica music, introducing gamers who had never even heard of the style to musicians who would go on to become some of their favorites.
- NCAA Football: Not all the most influential and popular game soundtracks use radio-ready hits to make their mark, however. With the NCAA Football series EA hit on a unique advantage that only a series about college sports could lean into: the wonderful world of college marching band fight songs. If you played enough of the series you will have carried over an encyclopedic of college fight songs that endured even through the long gap in releases brought about by EA’s licensing problems. There are musicians today who can chalk up their time spent learning an instrument in their school band entirely to hearing the awesome fight songs featured in these games and wanting to give that a try.
How Game Soundtracks Shaped Songs’ Trajectories
These iconic soundtracks undeniably did a lot for the games they featured in, setting the mood and making the experience of playing just feel right, but they benefited greatly, too. The right soundtrack selection could change the way a song and band are remembered in the greater cultural zeitgeist forever:
- Creating New Fans: The most obvious benefit to any band featuring in a popular sports game is the potential to find new fans who only heard your music thanks to their video games. A band getting a hit on a sports game that blows up like a Madden or Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater can have their entire trajectory changed by the influx of new fans. While the soundtrack song serves as the hook, it can introduce gamers to the rest of a band’s catalog and create lifelong fans born entirely out of a menu jam they really dug.
- Tying Songs To Sports: Our sense of hearing is often a strong grounding force in how we feel, with certain songs or sounds becoming strongly associated with certain actions or activities. My brother, our best friends, and I spent an entire summer playing soccer exclusively to “Mas Que Nada” after a particularly excellent Nike commercial with the Brazilian national team. This is true of sports video game soundtracks, too. If you know a skater and gamer who claims they’ve never done a session while listening to music from the THPS games, then you know a liar.
- Building Nostalgic Links: Sound is also a key component in a lot of people’s memories, with use of songs to bring back memories or feelings a popular technique. For songs that became iconic within a game, doing that activity doesn’t just make you want to play the corresponding songs, but hearing the corresponding songs can bring back those memories for gamers. To this day, if Good Charlotte’s “The Anthem” comes on, my mind goes back to being home from school, playing Madden in bed for hours on end.
Sports video game soundtracks will forever be an important consideration for developers, even when the games feature no music during actual sporting-play. What soundtracks and songs are your favorites of all-time and will forever be linked in your mind?
