Game Music of the Day: Red Dead Revolver

Welcome to GamesRadar's daily blast of all things pertaining to the ever-growing field of game music. Each post will introduce new sounds, games, composers and fan-made remixes of gaming's greatest aural achievements.

May 20, 2010

Game: Red Dead Revolver

Song: Lo chiamavano King (aka His Name was King)

Composer: Luis Bacalov

Above: Lo chiamavano King from Red Dead Revolver

This week's release of Red Dead Redemption has put us on something of a Western kick lately, and with good reason: it's anamazing game. As amazing as it is, however, there's one thing from its predecessor, Red Dead Revolver, that we really miss: the soundtrack. While it wasn't heavily advertised at the time, one of the original Red Dead's coolest features was that its music was licensed from old spaghetti-western and exploitationfilms. And while we don't normally cover licensed tunes in this feature,the game had such a uniquely badass sound - and used such relatively obscure tracks - that we think we can get away with it, just this once.

At the centerpiece of the game was its awesome opening theme, which immediately set the game's grim-yet-ridiculous tone and gave us dramatic introductions to every major character.

As it turns out, the Red Dead Revolver theme is also the opening theme to a 1971 Italian western called Lo chiamavano King (translated as "His Name was King"), which starred Klaus Kinski. And being a theme, there are several versions of it floating around, one of whicheven has vocals. In RDR, it was joined by music lifted from nearly 30 different films (not all of them westerns), all of which we assume were hand-picked by Rockstar for theirmemorable awesomeness, like this theme from Suor Omicidi (translated as "Killer Nun"), composed by Alessandro Alessandroni.

Above: Ignore what the title splash says, it's wrong

Great as the music was, though, there's one piece that we're a little sad didn't make the cut, even though it was featured in one of the first trailers for the game (back when it was still a Capcom project): the theme from "Vamos a Matar, Companeros!," a 1970 film witha kickass trailer of its ownand a titlethat translates to "let's go kill, companions!," making its Ennio Morricone-composed theme song a perfect (if somewhat shrill) accompaniment to every action game ever.

Title-screen theme by Shotaro Sasaki. Turn your speakers down a little for this one - it starts outshrieky

Chillaxin' beats from Yuzo Koshiro

Theme of Laura by Akira Yamaoka