Name That Tune Vol 1 Answer Key and Explanation
I know most of you want to get to the answers, and if you want you can skip down to find the 50 musical selections. But if you will indulge me for just a few minutes, I wanted to explain how the idea came about and ultimately what I wanted to accomplish.
To get a little insight into how my mind works.. or how some content gets posted on the website. This originally began when I was watching an interview about PlayStation All-Star Battle Royale, in which they commented that the game would feature remix of popular Sony themes. In the back of my head, I attempted to think of songs from Sony games that had really stuck with me, and the only one that came to mind was the Uncharted theme.
Now I have this in the back of my head, it can’t be the only one so I ask some of our Twitter followers to name popular Sony theme songs and got a handful of answers. Still wasn’t a great number, but then my mind morphed and I began to think, have we really had many memorable themes this generation? I was curious and wanted to test.
If I had simply asked people to give me a list of themes they thought were memorable, they would start to dig into the games they’ve played and the music that stayed with them. While I respect that, it wouldn’t exactly give me the information that I wanted. To me to be a truly memorable piece of music, I think it needs to trigger something from even the tiniest of cues. I mean how long of a sample would you need to recognize the Super Mario Bros theme? What about John Williams’ Superman’s theme or Elfman’s Batman theme?
This is where the idea of the Name That Tune contest came from. It would allow people to really think about the music, and if got enough responses would give me a fair sample of what has and hasn’t stuck out to gamers this generation. It works better than asking people directly because it doesn’t offer a confirmation bias, I guess. You aren’t going to say like of course Game X from Developer X is memorable because I love it, but because you truly remember the music. And there was a chance for any and every one who visited the site to participate so it wouldn’t just be Nintendo fans or Sony fans or Microsoft fans, but anyone.
Sadly, we got only about a dozen responses, and while I truly do appreciate the responses, I wouldn’t feel comfortable drawing any real conclusions from them.
That said, I would also like to announce that @AdamChase won the contest with 34 correct responses. A few folks were in their mid 20s, and really it was up for grabs until the very end!
Now that everything is out of the way, what you really wanted is to know the answers. First, a link back to the original samples since reposting it will slow down the loading too much! And now the answers!
- Starcraft 2
- World of Goo
- Mirror’s Edge
- Angry Birds
- Perfect Dark Zero
- Xenoblade
- Metal Gear Solid 4
- Valkyrie Chronicles
- Skyrim
- Street Fighter IV
- Fable 3
- Gears of War
- Uncharted 2
- Bioshock
- Team Fortress 2
- Blue Dragon
- Sonic Colors
- Assassin’s Creed
- Fat Princess
- Banjo: Nuts and Bolts
- Bastion
- Pokemon
- inFamous
- Shadow Complex
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Batman: Arkham City
- Red Steel
- Metroid Prime 3
- Mass Effect
- Cut the Rope
- Skyward Sword
- Diablo 3
- Peggle
- Ratchet and Clank
- Donkey Kong Country Returns
- LittleBigPlanet
- Rayman Origins
- Heavenly Sword
- Final Fantasy 13
- Castle Crashers
- No More Heroes
- Left 4 Dead
- House of the Dead: Overkill
- God of War 3
- Fluidity
- Mortal Kombat 9
- Resistance
- Kirby’s Epic Yarn
- Halo Reach
- LocoRoco
I tried to mix it up as much as possible. So we have exclusives from all major platforms. There are a few iOS titles in the mix. A couple of arcade titles. Multi-platforms and the likes. I attempted to avoid games in which the music might be confusing (like Super Smash Bros Brawl since mostly pulled from other Nintendo games or Rock Band and Guitar Hero or sports games with licensed music). There are genre specific picks like major RPGs from all 3, platformers from all 3 and the likes.
Things were added to the list as they came to mind as I searched for them. And then to be extra cautious that list was randomized with a random number generator, and that’s how we ended up on the order that we got. So listen to the songs with the answers in mind and see if they work out better for you!
