I was just looking at the bump that Lantis made to his Chrono Break topic, and was listening to the two tracks that were to actually be used in the project when this came to me.

Do you think games should reuse music from previous games in a series?

As I was listening to the music in the that topic, I realized how boring the game would be if all the music was exactly the same or similar to Chrono Trigger's. I personally believe that the music in a game series needs to be "spiced up" a bit from game to game because listening to the same music all the time gets boring.

Sure, games could reuse popular themes from time to time, such as Final Fantasy's Crystal Theme or even the Main Theme, but if a game does reuse one of those themes that everyone loves and everyone is expecting to hear it should only be heard in certain situations, not all the time.

A great example of that scenario would be in Final Fantasy 4: The After Years.


Doing that would at least make it less boring for the player.

If games don't do that, I would rather they use an entireley new or close to new soundtrack such as with Vandal Hearts and Vandal Hearts 2. Had the second game used the same music as the first I would have found myself much less excited about what was going to happen in a scene when a new theme began to play.

So back to my original question, do you think that music should be reused throughout a game series freely? Or do you think things should be changed up?

I think it follows the same principles as movie music.

You have series like Star Wars and Indiana Jones. These series reuse the music to create a feel of continuity and relation.
Final Fantasy games would be 34% less good if they each had different victory fanfares.

Well, I'll personally say that I like remixes..

Final Fantasy IX (to my knowledge) uses a bit of recycled music from previous games.. and I'm not just meaning victory fanfares but the battle themes themself.. and it gives to some nostalgia for sure.

I really like that they brought the music over but had a different flavor to it.

I will say that I've never played a game that had all of the same tracks but polished and/or remixed.. there's generally plenty of new songs that are added on top of old ones.

But as you put it.. listening to anything over and over gets boring.

Everything in moderation

*frowns at facts's spoiler*

But... but I liked that theme. It was the most epic theme the game had.


So are we speaking "exact music" or are we speaking remixes? 'Cause in the Mario games, there are a lot of remixes of older themes, and they're a welcome addition. Though if the themes were the exact songs, it probably wouldn't be as cool. The possible exception being games like Final Fantasy IV-2, where the game world is pretty much the exact same one as before, with many of the characters still alive and active, so it makes sense that a lot of the music would be the same. Technically, the Mario games take place in the same world, too. Theoretically. But you're always exploring different lands in each one, so that calls for mostly new music, with the occasional remade song thrown in as a nod to the fans.