thomas ohashi / blog

Fake video game soundtracks

Monday, March 24th, 2025

In recent years I have found that when I am working on something I can no longer listen to music with lyrics. Words are too distracting but I still want to enjoy what I’m listening to instead of putting on some random “beats to study to” playlist or weird algorithmic focus music. I play a lot of video games and you might think that there’s a wealth of albums to listen to there, but for me that isn’t really the case.

While there are a lot of video game soundtracks that I love, there are very few that I would choose to listen to outside the context of their game (shout out VA-11 Hall-A and Paradise Killer). When each song is specifically designed to suit a particular location or scene you get great geographical and emotional range, but when listened to back to back the abrupt transitions you end up with between songs can create serious tonal whiplash. On top of that, songs like It Happened Late One Evening from Secret of Mana or Tonoe de Pon from Phantasy Star IV are passable in their respective games (actually, maybe not so much Tonoe de Pon) but absolutely not something I would choose to listen to otherwise.

Fortunately, some cool electronic artists have come up with a solution. Please give it up for fake video game soundtracks.

Since there’s no actual game the artists are free to arrange songs in a way that feels natural while still covering a wide range of soundscapes should they choose to do so. If you have never heard a video game soundtrack before then you might not really connect with these in the same way, but I think the narrative journey they take you on could still resonate.

The first one I found was I Dreamed of a Palace in the Sky, released by the electronic musician Equip in 2016. Taking inspiration from 16-bit RPGs and vaporwave, Equip created an album with the adventurous spirit and progression of a SNES RPG soundtrack but with much more deliberate sequencing so it’s pleasant to listen to from start to finish. As one might expect from the vaporwave influence, it’s a pretty chill album and makes for great background music.

I had actually forgotten about this album for years until another Equip release popped up on my radar, this time a collaborative album released in 2022 called Nameless Dreamers with an artist called R23X. For me, Nameless Dreamers hits the nostalgia notes harder and at times it’s almost uncanny how much it sounds like I’m listening to lost songs from Chrono Trigger, A Link to the Past, or Final Fantasy VI. The sporadic menu and battle sound samples really help sell it.

Around the same time I came across Leon Chang’s 2017 album bird world and its 2020 sequel return to bird world. It feels like there’s a lot of Nintendo influence in Leon Chang’s work, with whimsy that makes me think more of Super Mario RPG than of Final Fantasy. Some of Leon’s tracks would fit perfectly in a game while others tend to sound a bit more inspired by games, with strong melodies that have a little too much presence for soundtrack music, but that are nonetheless great for background music in normal life.

Deviating from the RPG formula is a more recent Leon Chang release called Leon Kart, inspired by Mario Kart, which dovetails nicely with some newer work by another electronic artist I like called Mitch Murder. Recently he has dabbled in 32-bit racing game inspired soundtracks like Pit Stop Hero, released in 2023, which purports to be from a Sega Saturn F-1 racing game, and Anti Gravity Tournament, a collaborative album with the artist Pizza Hotline released late 2024, that is heavily inspired by Wipeout.

In a similar vein, Hello Meteor has released two PlayStation/Saturn era racing game inspired soundtracks of his own, The Oahu GP in 2021 and The Oahu GP 2: Hyper Tropic in 2024. Compared to the RPG inspired soundtracks these racing game albums are faster and more upbeat, featuring fun breakbeats inspired by jungle, house, trap, and drum & bass, but they still have some sense of progression and escalation between songs as races get more intense or locations change, and in some cases there are even opening, menu, and failure tracks to round things out.

Circling back to Equip, his newest release is another collaboration called Music 2, released this year with the artist FM Skyline. Both artists heavily incorporate nostalgia into their work and this album feels less like a specific game soundtrack than an attempt to capture a particular vibe. Listening to it, I hear Ape Escape, Panzer Dragoon Saga, and Ridge Racer, among other influences, but with funkier breakbeats and more vaporwave. I’m almost more inclined to just call this a good electronic album, but I think it still deserves a place somewhere on this spectrum.

Last but not least is a personal favorite that I stumbled upon mostly by accident, Bubble Blade AKA Grimfather. While I was looking for more fake video game soundtracks I also found dungeonsynth, which could be a whole other post, and Bubble Blade immediately caught my eye as a video game looking thing. Like a lot of dungeonsynth Bubble Blade has a slightly more sinister vibe, but unlike most dungensynth it has much a harder electronic edge. Both 2024’s Vaporous Halls and the newly released Acid Path have an adventurous dungeon crawling spirit but with more reverb and much harder breaks. I had the pleasure of seeing Grimfather live and let me tell you, some of these songs go hard. It’s still RPG music but it kind of makes you want to dance too.

I also want to give an honorable mention to Lena Raine’s soundtrack for Earthblade, a game that we will sadly never play. I’m not sure how many of the songs were designed for a level that actually existed but it’s repackaged in a way that feels very deliberate as an auditory experience.

It still surprises how few of these albums seem to exist. It’s probably a pretty niche format so maybe it’ll never really take off, and plenty of people are likely satisfied with existing video game soundtracks, but I think there’s something special about one that’s made specifically with listening in mind. If you know of any others please share them with me at contact (at) thomasohashi (dot) com!