Cuphead

5 Favorite Video Game Soundtracks

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Music has to be the most universal thing in the world. While people have different tastes in music, I don’t think there is a single person that doesn’t like any music. Music and video games have gone hand in hand since the very beginning and people were aware that video game music could be something great ever since Koji Kondo composed the music for Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. After recently playing Bastion and falling in love with the soundtrack, I got to thinking which video games actually had my favorite music in them.

A few quick things before getting to the list though. First, I am only considering original soundtracks specifically composed for games. So games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater or Guitar Hero will not be considered since the music remembered from those series were curated, but not made for the game. Secondly, I’ve never been a huge fan of orchestral music in games. I like the grandiose feeling they tend to bring, but orchestral music is something I have to focus on to truly appreciate and there’s too much taking away my focus while I’m playing a game. And lastly, there are some games known for their soundtracks that I just haven’t played yet–games like Jet Set Radio or Katamari Damacy are both series with beloved soundtracks that will not appear on this list. With all that out of the way, let’s drum up the band.

5) Pokémon  (Generations 1 & 2)

I’ll admit, this entry is here largely due to nostalgia. I played so much Pokémon  Red and Pokémon  Gold as a kid that they are permanently ingrained in my DNA. Hearing these soundtracks transport my back to summer breaks playing Pokémon  with friends in a treehouse. But apart from the nostalgia factor, I do think generations one and two of Pokémon   have incredible music. They have those old school 8-bit boops I love and I’ve always been impressed with the range of emotions the tracks encompass while working within the Game Boy’s limitations. The battle themes are hectic and tense, Lavender Town’s theme is notoriously eerie, Goldenrod City’s music is upbeat and cheery, and the short walk down the hall to the champion is foreboding but triumphant. While each of the generations have received remakes for future consoles with more varied instrumentation, I still prefer the originals for their pure simplicity. The music in the Game Boy Pokémon  games is so good, that composer Junichi Masada would go on to direct future games in the series.

4) Undertale

It’s crazy to me that Undertale is nearly a decade old at this point. What’s crazier is that I never actually played the game until this year. I watched playthroughs of the game when it first came out and it looked alright, but it’s definitely a game that should be gone into blind. After watching the game played, I didn’t feel a need to try it out for myself. The music, however, has stuck with me ever since the first time I saw it. Created solely by Toby Fox, the soundtrack is filled with memorable tracks ranging from the goofy battles with Papyrus and the dog knights, atmospheric town themes, and the climactic battle theme Megalovania, which is honestly one of the best pieces of video game music ever. Toby Fox gained instant critical acclaim when Undertale released and a lot of the highest praise was showered upon the soundtrack. It’s no wonder then that Toby Fox has gone on to compose musical tracks for games like Pokémon  Sword & Shield and Super Smash Bros Ultimate.

3) Cuphead

While I never feel like I fully appreciate orchestral music in video games, big band jazz is a different story. With Cuphead being a game that strives to look like a 30’s rubber hose cartoon, they needed a soundtrack that felt as authentic. Composer Kristofer Maddigan got a band of brass horns, woodwind instruments, piano, drums, and upright bass to lay down some killer tracks for the game. From kinetic and fast-paced battle themes and boppy overworld tracks to the King Dice theme with Louis Armstrong styled vocals, it’s all a great listen and truly heightens the feeling that you are controlling an old Fleischer cartoon. Cleverly, tracks for bosses were all recorded with different instrument solos that will change as you die over and over again to the bosses, adding just a little bit of variety to prevent the music from going stale.

2) Mother 3

The Mother series (Earthbound in the west) is synonymous with excellent music. While the soundtrack of Earthbound has its bops, there are too many tracks that are just strange soundscapes for me to put on this list. Especially since its sequel, Mother 3’s soundtrack blows it out of the water for me. Composed by Shogo Sakai, the tracks don’t avoid the strange and otherworldliness that the previous game delved into, but it has more recognizable and catchy melodies. While the Game Boy Advance’s sound chip is similar to the SNES’s, Mother 3’s soundtrack is so much more crisp and clean than its predecessor. I’m always amazed how much the acoustic guitars sound like guitars, how the bongos sound like bongos. It’s one of the most varied and clean soundtracks, not only on the system, but of all time.

1) Persona 5

Persona 5 has my favorite video game soundtrack of all time–there’s no contest. As Joker and his friend dive into people’s subconscious and steal their hearts, they are accompanied but banger after banger. Composer Shoji Meguro masterfully blends jazz, techno, disco, and heavy metal into a soundtrack that is robust, varied, and extremely catchy. Every palace theme gets better and better from “Sweatshop” to “Whims of Fate” to “Arc.” Each location you visit outside of the dungeons have unique themes that worm their way into your head and the battle track “Last Surprise” never gets old after hundreds of battles. The vocal work by Lyn Inaizami is absolutely stellar, heightening any track she appears on. There are tracks that are less memorable than others, sure, but I wouldn’t say there is a bad song in the entire game. And for a game that takes over 100 hours to beat, that is just incredible. 

Cuphead & Attack Patterns

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So I finally got a chance to play Cuphead and I’m now here to lay any arguments about its quality to rest: Cuphead is dope. The game caught my eye, like it caught so many others’, first with its art style. Hand drawn in the style of a 30’s cartoon, it was immediately unique, gorgeous and fresh. When the game came out and I saw it was a challenging boss rush with Megaman type run and gun levels, I knew I had to play. I knew the game was going to be hard, but I wasn’t expecting how bad I would be at it Eventually I overcame the game and realized that this was something special I had to write about.

Cuphead is a game about dodging and shooting. You have to make sure to aim so you hit the enemies during a fight, but you have to do this while avoiding all the attacks the enemies throw at you. This is pretty basic stuff and a description that 90% of all video games can fall under. But it is the way that Cuphead challenges the player to memorize attack patterns and move during the fights that sets it apart.

All the bosses in the game only have a handful of attacks they utilize. The attacks are clearly telegraphed due to the obviously cartoony art style with shorter attacks having smaller telegraph windows and longer, harder to dodge attacks have longer telegraphing. It takes some time to learn all the patterns and tells for attacks in any given fight, but after a couple tries the patterns should be ingrained in your muscles. The fights always remain challenging though. Some attack patterns, like the dragon’s fireballs, can have different points of contact while some bosses, like the genie, can have a vast pool of different attacks to draw from. The player themself also has to be taken into account. While you may know the patterns and their tells like the back of your hand, effectively avoiding them and still managing to land your attacks is still a challenging task.

Every boss in the game has multiple phases where they change forms and attack patterns. You might start off fighting a blimp only for it to turn into a giant mechanical moon by the last phase. This helps Cuphead remain challenging as each phase has unique attacks to avoid, but it also helps to push the player to keep playing. You want to learn a phase’s patterns of attacks to see what sort of crazy form the boss will take next. Each time you die a line appears showing you just how close you were to a new phase or how close you were to defeating it, making you want to give it just one more try.

There are a variety of attack patterns on display in Cuphead. Some bosses will shoot projectiles and others will move around the screen trying to hit you. Bosses like the bee lady, Rumor Honeybottoms, will have mini bosses for phases and others like Beppi the Clown will summon basic enemies as part of the fight. There are attacks that chase you around, projectiles that spin in a loop de loop pattern or fall from the top of screens, and constant bullet spirals more commonly found in bullet hell games. Some bosses will even limit where you stand during the fight, be it from having moving platforms or by taking away the ground you stand on with thorns or spikes.

The best example of all these mechanics working together has to be the pirate boss, Captain Brineybeard. He is a pirate standing on top of his ship, meaning he has a smaller hitbox than most the other bosses because it is tucked away in the upper left corner. To hit him, you’ll either need to jump or stand still to aim diagonally, making it tougher to avoid any incoming attacks. Luckily, the first phase is pretty easy with only two attacks to worry about: a barrel that will move left or right across the screen and drop to the ground if you go under it and projectiles from an octopus that the Captain will shoot at you. If you stay on the move and hit the boss when you have a safe opening, this phase won’t take long.

Phase two, however, gets trickier by limiting the players ability to avoid attacks and giving them shorter safe windows to aim and shoot. Along with the attacks from phase one, Captain Brineybeard will now summon other enemies by whistling. There is a shark that will come from the left side of the screen and take up most of the space the player has to maneuver in, a squid that will pop out in the middle background and splash ink to darken the visibility of the screen unless the player kills it quick enough, and a dogfish that will jump out of the water on the right side and slide across the ground in a set number and distance. These force the player to play within momentary limitations; be it smaller space to stand in, harder to see attacks, or just by making them decide whether it is better to jump at possible inopportune times or focus on hitting the enemies instead of the boss.

Phase three is just phase one and two but with the Captain’s ship now joining the fight by spitting cannonballs across the ground, telegraphed by an obvious chewing animation. However, phase four changes everything by having the ship throw the Captain overboard. Now the ship’s mouth is the hitbox and all that remains of the familiar patterns of phases one through three is the barrel still moving and dropping when you are under it. The boss has two new attacks you must learn. The first being fireballs it’ll spit in a devilish loop de loop pattern that I never really got a perfect grasp on. And second is a giant pink laser that you’ll either need to duck under, which means you won’t be able to move safely if the barrel moves above you, or continuously parry the laser, a far more tricky task, but one that grants more movement options.

This boss is challenging, but when I finished the game, it was my clear favorite. It’s so finely crafted to keep the player constantly on the move while the attack patterns work so well at stacking on top of each other. This limits the player in interesting ways and gives them a lot to focus on and juggle during the fight. All the bosses in Cuphead are frantic and fast-paced, but Captain Brineybeard’s fight seems the most kinetic. I lost a lot during the fight but i was never frustrated at the game. I was only ever frustrated with myself. I knew all the patterns and how to avoid them, but executing that knowledge was the tricky part. This boss works well as an example of the entirely of Cuphead itself. It’s frantic and challenging, but completely fair. The attacks all have patterns and tells, but it’s up to the player to read and avoid them.