Retro chiptunes made horror movie music creepier and catchier

27.10.2023 - 18:02 / destructoid.com

Licensed games have tried their damnedest to nail the original theme songs and other aspects of film scores. Horror games are no different, and we’ve seen plenty of successful examples over the years. 

Going as far back as the tinny notes of Halloween on Atari 2600, there’s something about the limitations that make these soundtracks even creepier. Without access to orchestration or even proper synths, retro horror games have held on to a unique kind of spookiness. They’re equal parts charming and, in some cases, manage to nail the vibe of their source material without carrying over every single note. In honor of those unusual, haunting melodies, we’ll take a moment to touch on a handful of them.

Wizard Video published Halloween for Atari 2600 in October 1983, a full five years after John Carpenter’s seminal slasher hit theaters. Tim Martin and Robert Barber’s rudimentary efforts featured pretty much zilch from the film, outside of the box art. It did manage to technically be gorier, though, and they put in the work to include Carpenter’s unforgettable theme. Its simplicity is one of the reasons it’s been such a bone-chilling earworm for over four decades, so it doesn’t take much to keep its vibes intact.

It would be a wild understatement to say A Nightmare on Elm Street made an awkward leap to Nintendo’s console in 1990. The side-scroller may have swapped out Wes Craven’s specific dream scenarios for bats, rats, and spiders, but the soundtrack has its own charms. The game itself was published by LJN and developed by Rare, which meant we got a David Wise score that hit both the creepy and catchy ends of the spectrum. 

When it comes to Ghostbusters games you have a few choices of extremely varying quality. For bobble-headed 16-bit action you can pop in the Genesis game, for instance. If you don’t feel like having fun, you can take Ecto-1 for a spin in Ghostbusters on NES. The latter keeps a reasonable facsimile of Ray Parker Jr.’s theme song running throughout. Seriously, it plays the entire time. Oddly enough, considering their famous lawsuit against the song, it’s about as successful a take as the Huey Lewis tunes in LJN’s Back to the Future NES game. The important thing is you know you’re playing Ghostbusters, even if you’re not likely to recommend it to anyone else.

Besides, you’ll always be better off playing New Ghostbusters II. 

Annie Lennox and Wojciech Kilar’s soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula is full of sweeping orchestration. The 1993 video games — which made their way to everything from NES to Game Gear, SNES, Genesis, Amiga, and beyond — are not. Many of the versions are wildly different from one another, with the Game Boy take playing out like a traditional