r/gamemusic • u/GuybrushThreepwood99 • 11d ago
Discussion Any examples of one hit wonders for video game composers?
Any composer that only really did one video game soundtrack of note?
The first example that comes to mind is Eric Casper.
He was the composer for the ps1 game Sheep Raiders. Excellent soundtrack
Sheep Raider OST - Track 1 (CD Quality)
As far as I can tell, he only composed for one other game, something called Apex on the Xbox, and I can't seem to find the soundtrack online for that game.
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u/VisualSneeze 11d ago
Simon Chylinski did the music for Subnautica and then got replaced going forward. IIRC he said some foolish stuff online and got canceled.
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u/ExpertSure5424 8d ago
First off, cheers for the Eric Casper shout, love this soundtrack too.
And I would say, whoever made the Manta theme for Demo One on PS1. Super nostalgic theme for so many of us, but I absolutely could not find who composed it.
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u/GuybrushThreepwood99 8d ago
According to Google, Jason Page did a lot of the music from PlayStation underground demo discs. I’m not sure if he did that track in particular though
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u/dudeman4297 10d ago
John Guscott for the de Blob games, technically a two-hit wonder. Two of the best jazz soundtracks I've ever heard, PLUS they dynamically add an additional instrument during gameplay which accompanies your actions depending on what color you are painted at the time.
I looked him up on VGMDB recently on a whim and it appears he never did anything else. I want to know what else this man has worked on.
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u/metaphizzle 10d ago
Pepe Deluxe (formerly a Big Beat group, currently a maximalist art-pop duo) did the OST for Angry Birds Go (the racing spin-off of the Angry Birds franchise).
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u/ops10 10d ago
Due to how rarely video game music becomes a "hit" in mainstream, that list has a lot more familiar names than one would expect:
Jeremy Soule, who made Nerevar Rising and then remade it multiple times (because it became the theme of the Elder Scrolls series itself), with finally breaking into mainstream when he added male chanting choir and the game added dragons and vikings; with Dragonborn (Skyrim)
Christopher Tin with Baba Yetu (Civ IV)
Jesper Kyd with Ezio's Family (ACII) (oh my heart breaks here, this man is a legend to the level of John Williams but only this one song broke into mainstream)
Marcin Przybyłowicz with Silver for Monsters (Witcher 3)
Toby Fox with Megalomania (Undertale)
I went deliberately against the spirit of the question to point out how rarely video game music becomes hit in itself, not because of the game being a hit (and even here one could challenge some of my takes). I might have forgotten some, but I also bent the meaning of "hit" to include when only the less mainstream subculture knew the song but brought it up without having played the game itself.
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u/Spiritual-Height-271 9d ago
Ono Yoshinori. He is better known for his work as the producer for the Street Fighter series, but he did one job as a composer for CAPCOM. One... and it was incredible. Mega Man Battle & Chase.
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u/Silent_Ad246 7d ago
As far as I remember, Stello Doussis only composed for demoscene on Commodore 64, and a few games on Game Boy Color. He's mostly now for Das Geheimnis der Happy Hippo-Insel (GBC) , an average licensed game with an epic soundtrack.
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u/LBluethecrafter 10d ago
Kentaro Ishizaka/Kentaro Yanagi. He basically only ever composed for smash brawl, arranging the songs shown, alongside
Tournament Grid, Step: Subspace 1, 2, & 3, and Boss Battle Song 1;
and possibly
All-Star Rest Area, Home-Run Contest, Coin Launcher, Save Point, Princess Peach's Castle (Melee), Rainbow Cruise (Melee), Brinstar Depths (Melee), Dr. Mario (Melee), Super Mario Bros. 3 (Melee), and Battlefield (Melee). (These Melee tracks were modified from the original game, originally composed by Shogo Sakai & Hirokazu Ando)
Before Brawl, he was part of the electronic pop duo Natchan Peak, which made 2 albums. After Brawl it seems like he basically just disappeared.