12 VIDEO GAME MUSICAL ODDITIES

If music is what feelings sound like, then the history of gaming is littered with the feeling of a digestively-challenged shrieking cat squatting above your head, while its warm diarrhoea drips into your ears.

Great songwriting and great video games rarely go hand in hand - as anybody who heard Paul McCartney's contribution to the Destiny soundtrack will attest. Here are another 12 times that the worlds of songwriting and video games collided - with varying results.

'COMPUTER GAMES' by Mi-Sex

You might not have heard this song by the New Zealand pop group Mi-Sex - or, indeed, the New Zealand pop group Mi-Sex - but it was a number one hit in Australia, and a Canadian number two (ha ha), in 1979.

It's the first documented song to mention video games, as far as our half-arsed research went anyway. It namedrops no fewer than three actual arcade games: Speed Freak, Star Fire, and Atari's Basketball... perhaps the three greatest games of all time.

Here's an interesting bit of trivia: the band took its name from the Ultravox song "My Sex". However, when you do an online search for "Mi-Sex", Google's autocomplete suggests "Michigan sex offenders".

SAMPLE LYRIC: "I fidget with the digit dots and cry an anxious tear/As the XU-1 connects the spot/But the matrix grid don't care..."

'VIDEO GAMES' by Ronnie Jones

American born, but based in Italy, Ronnie Jones was the presenter of the Italian pop music show Popcorn, from 1980 to 1985. The show's theme tune, Video Games, was a number 28 hit. In Italy.

Unlike Bowie, Prince and Corbett, Jones has yet to succumb to 2016's wholesale decimation of the music industry. Alive and well, he continues to tour sporadically with his band The Soul Syndicate (no connection to the video game series of the same name, probably). 
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SAMPLE LYRIC: "Pinball hockey, tennis, ping pong/Play them video games/Speedway/Starwars/Space Invaders/Love them just the same..."

'WAR HAS NEVER BEEN SO MUCH FUN' from Cannon Fodder

Despite its intended anti-war message, Sensible Software's Cannon Fodder caused something of a tabloid storm upon its release in 1993. It was slammed for its tongue-in-cheek attitude to warfare (it was unveiled to the press on Remembrance Sunday), its cover artwork (depicting a poppy), and this theme song.

You only have to look at the tabloid media's response to Matt "le" Blanc doing "donuts" near the Cenobite to realise that you don't mess with the poppy.

​Indeed, once he'd been whipped up into a righteous fury by The Daily Star, the game was described by no less a figure than Viscount Montgomery of Alamein as "monstrous".

SAMPLE LYRIC: "Go to your brother/Kill him with your gun/Dying in the sun... So much fun!"

'HOLD MY HAND VERY TIGHTLY' by Whistlin' Rick Wilson

Inspired by the chart success of Rick Astley, Your Sinclair magazine made a bid for chart success of its own, sort of. In 1989, its cover tape consisted of this one-off 'single' by Whistlin' Rick Wilson - aka the magazine's own David Wilson. It even got a spin on Radio 1 courtesy of Phillip "Pip" Schofield, a man who these days is more typically found on morning telly telling viewers to check for lumps.

​Three decades later, the irritatingly catchy number has finally appeared in a game: it features as lift muzak in the sublime isometric adventure Lumo. A classic.

SAMPLE LYRIC: "Hold my hand very tightly/Very tightly/Very tightly/Hold my hand very tightly/Ooo-ooo ooo-ooo-ooooooo..."

'VIDEO GAMES' - by The Toons

American radio personality Dr Demento was something of a connoisseur of the novelty song - and The Toons were regular contributors to his show, with tongue-in-cheek songs such as Punk Polka, and Looking At Girls.

​Which just goes to show how far we've come in the past 30 years, that in the early-80s video games were considered a suitable subject for novelty whimsy, much as people now write novelty songs about selfie sticks and Fitbits.

SAMPLE LYRIC: "All I wanna do is... Play play play play play play... Video games! Video games!"

'THEME FROM NIGHT TRAP' - by Blue Skyes

Digital Pictures' pioneering Mega CD "interactive movie" was plenty controversial enough, with its gritty and realistic depiction of slumber party girls being abducted by vampiric aliens.

Indeed, it was cited in the 1990 Congressional hearings into video game "nasties", despite featuring no nudity or graphic violence, and the player's actual role being to protect the females from the aforementioned space-slurpers.

Upon reflection, arguably the most offensive thing about it were the soft rock stylings of its theme song. Which, admittedly, does seem to allude to being abducted by a human sex pest.
 
SAMPLE LYRIC: "Night Trap! That boy will find you! Night Trap! Watch out behind you! Night Trap!"

'COMPUTER GAMES' - by George Clinton

Computer Games is the title track of the debut solo album from "funk" icon George Clinton. Arguably the best proper song on this list, it nevertheless has the distinction of being about 'computer games' in name only... Witness the lyric below. 

SAMPLE LYRIC: "Hello, I'm the computer game Dracula/I like to suck necks."

'THE DK RAP' from Donkey Kong 64

Irritatingly catchy, the infamous DK Rap was written by Rare's Grant Kirkhope, and performed by George Andreas and Chris Sutherland, whoever they were.

The rap got a second outing in Super Smash Bros. Melee, where it was sung by one James W. Norwood Jr. Additionally, the use of the terribly naughty word "Hell" was replaced by "heck". 

SAMPLE LYRIC: "W-w-w-walnuts/Peanuts/Pineapple smells/Grapes/Melons/Oranges and coconut shells!"

'YOU ARE DEAD' from Total Distortion

This original, but otherwise unremarkable, FMV game nevertheless gave the games industry potentially its greatest ever game over screen: a mocking rock song, in which your feeble playing skills are shamed by a hideous, derisive, CGI demon.

Suffice to say, it got old fast, not least because the game was famed for its severe difficulty level.

SAMPLE LYRIC: "You are dead, dead, dead/Your heart has stopped and your brain is cold/You are so so dead and now your body is starting to mould/You are so so dead/This dimension cuts like a knife!"

'A PIRATE I WAS MEANT TO BE' from The Curse of Monkey Island

The Curse of Monkey Island was the first instalment in the beloved point-and-click adventure series to feature voice acting - and LucasArts made the most of it with this deliberately annoying shanty.

Indeed, no simple theme song, it became part of the gameplay, with you - as Guybrush Threepwood - attempting to ruin a pirate singalong by introducing the word "orange" into the lyrics.

SAMPLE LYRICS: "We'll fight you in the harbour/We'llbattle you on land/When you meet singing pirates/They'll be more than you can stand."

THE CLAYFIGHTER THEME from Clayfighter

At the time Clayfighter was released, spoken words were rare in video games - and full on songs were virtually unheard of. Somehow, Interplay managed to obtrude one atop the title screen of its generally unloved, golem-based, beat 'em up.

Though inevitably the audio quality wasn't the best, given the available technology, it wouldn't have sounded out of place as the theme to a Saturday morning cartoon show.

SAMPLE LYRIC: "Clayfighter! Clay-clay-fighter! Come and fight them if you dare!"

'I AM THE WIND' from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

The jarringly mawkish, saccharine closing title theme to 1997's Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was co-written by Tony Hayes, who had previously written lyrics for the TV show Fame, The Pointer Sisters, Robert Palmer, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Kool & The Gang.

​With a CV like that, you can see why Konami approached him...

SAMPLE LYRIC: "I face my destiny every day I live/And the best in me is all I have to give/Just like the sun/When my day's done/Sometimes I don't like the person I've become..."

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