Game music of the day: Super Adventure Island

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 17, 2010

Game: Super Adventure Island

Song: Blue Blue Moon

Composer: Yuzo Koshiro

Above: Blue Blue Moon from Super Adventure Island

In the ongoing tit for tat between the Sega Genesis and the SNES, the latter had one undeniable advantage - a superior sound chip that allowed for near CD-quality sound. Super Adventure Island was a champion of audio, featuring an amazingly varied and listenable soundtrack from legendary composer Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage, among others).

Each song retains a tropical vibe, though this one veers to the ultra-relaxed early '90s sound, and plays while you swim through the innards of a whale (what?). Even though it's a bit cheesy, it still sounded years ahead of anything else out at the time. It also always reminded me of Duran Duran's"Come Undone."

Above is another track, this time from a side-scrolling trip through the beach. It's clear the devs knew they had a knockout soundtrack, as you could simply pause the game and the music would continue playing unobstructed. In those days, pausing usually meant everything, audio included, would stop.

One more before we go! Such a fantastic piece of work. Every single song is catchy as all hell and just floors me every time I rediscover them. Adventure Island used to be a popular franchise but since this game it's kind of died. There's Super Adventure Island 2, but that's for another day.

More awesomeness from Yuzo Koshiro

The song that launched the original PS1

Everyone Says Hi by David Bowie