The Rebellious Western Sound During the 90s, many American developers were creating brilliant game soundtracks, though there was one developer in particular, who embraced a real-life counterculture movement to bridge the gap between video games and popular culture: id Software. During the 90s, a counter-culture movement called grunge was sweeping the nation. Generation X were questioning wholesome American family values in every aspect of their lives, including music. Id Software were hugely influenced by the grunge movement, wanting to develop video
games that they themselves wanted to play. Fed up with Pac-Man and Super Mario, they developed the grand-daddy of all ultra-violent shooters with DOOM, and DOOM’s soundtrack needed to kick just as much ass as its gameplay! DOOM’s developers John Romero and John Carmack were huge fans of heavy metal music, and it only made sense for DOOMs fast-paced and frantic shooting to be met with a heavy metal soundtrack. If you listen to the DOOM soundtrack, a lot of similarities can be heard be-
tween the game and popular metal and grunge artists like Slayer, Alice in Chains, Metallica, Pantera, and more. After DOOM, many games utilized MIDI tracks that emulated rock music, such as Road Rash and Skitchin’. Some even built an entire game around how well video games could emulate real-life music, like Blizzard’s Rock N’ Roll Racing. It wouldn’t be long before optical media arrived, propelling game design into the future, and providing unlimited potential for game music...