Although I will sometimes listen to an eclectic mix of music when playing WoW—and so that list may be long and varied—I don’t listen to much or any music, in-game or otherwise, these days…I usually have a video playing in the background or no music at all. However, would say “music that gets the most hyped” does still apply to most instanced PVP (well, specifically random battlegrounds) because I do like to have music then. I do have a playlist for that which includes different non-video-game-related songs (except for the 3DO CD-arranged versions of Zangief and Ken’s Super Street Fighter II Turbo themes)…I haven’t played through that in a couple years.
Instead, I’ve gravitated towards a specific subset of video game music only during random PVP battleground matches that, to me, perfectly pairs with the skull-bashing mayham: beat-em-up music. That does include the venerable Double-Dragon/Renegade-clone side-scrolling beat-em-ups which competes with fighting games for my favorite video game genre (I don’t know why, but I absolutely hate the word “belt-scroller” for this genre that has popped up online in more “recent” years). And, because they are also tangentially-related game genres, I also include both the (Irem’s) Kung-Fu-based “single-plane beat-em-up” genre (including Vigilante, Sega’s Black Belt, Taito’s The Ninja Warriors series, Namco’s Splatterhouse, and Data East’s entries like Bad Dudes and Two Crude Dudes) plus the extension of that genre into the “single-plane, projectile-firing Rolling-Thunder-clone beat-em-up-with-guns/walk-and-shoot action game” genre (which I normally just refer to as Rolling-Thunder or Shinobi clones…my long description was to separate them from Contra-style run-and-guns…“walk-and-shoot” includes games like Namco’s Rolling Thunder games, most of Sega’s Shinobi series as well as sort-of their Dick Tracy game, Data East’s RoboCop arcade game, Arc’s Code Name: Viper, Taito’s Crime City [Ninja Warriors is a bit of both genres], the fairly-recent Shadow Gangs, etc). Those two single-plane Kung-Fu/Rolling-Thunder-clone genres also two of my favorite genres of games, so they are in my “beat-em-up music for PVP” playlist too, just because.
As is the nature of my forum posting, I am obligated to include this GIF…and why haven’t I done a side-scrolling-beat-em-up-inspired GIF?!?
![](https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZjQyYmE4ZjE1YzgzMmNlNGUxMmM2MzA4YzRhMmMwM2QxYzkwMzM4OSZjdD1n/IRMZGTu9hJOFbyn9Yl/giphy.gif)
I will only post my favorite 5 beat-em-up/walk-and-shoot songs that really get me in the PVP other-faction thwacking mood:
1.) The entirety of arcade version of Double Dragon’s soudtrack:
Okay, I’ve already cheated and listed an game’s entire soundtrack instead of an individual song…simply because I love the whole thing, with Kazu Yamane composing what is my favorite game soundtrack of all time. None of the ports’ music compare to the arcade version though Arc did a pretty good job with the FM-Unit tracks on the Japanese Master System (the non-FM, PSG versions in the US Master System port are okay-ish though not great; the Genesis port’s music on the other hand fall far, far short of what they should have been) and Kazu Yamane’s own versions of the tracks in the Game Boy are some of the best music on the system (and better than his music in the NES version).
If I had to narrow it down to one favorite track from the game…I would instead choose two because it’s impossible to decide between the excellent title theme (at the beginning) and the Mission-02/Industrial-Area/Riot/Great-Fray music (at 5:27).
2.) “Daddy Mulk” from Taito’s The Ninja Warriors
Zuntata has always made good game music, and this is my absolute favorite track from them (though my favorite overall soundtrack from Zuntata/Taito is the Saturn soundtrack for Galactic Attack/Layer Section/RayForce by Tamayo Kawamoto, though my favorite soundtrack from her specifically is the arcade Ghouls 'n Ghosts when she was working for Capcom). This live recording is my favorite version followed by the studio recording in the CD-Audio, arranged version of the Sega-CD’s port’s soundtrack; the arcade version of the song is good, but it’s held back by Taito using the lower-end YM2610 instead of the more expensive YM2151+(AD)PCM-chip combination that Sega, Capcom, etc used during the period.
3.) “Go Straight” from Streets of Rage 2
Of course, you can’t have a playlist of beat-em-up soundtracks without something from Yuzo Koshiro. I absolutely love (good) FM-synth video game music since it IS the embodiment of mid-late-80s through early 90s arcade games to me. It’s one of big reasons I bought a Genesis (absolutely love the SNES too [though didn’t have one until late 90s, unlike the Genesis], but I prefer that Yamaha FM-synth over the sample-based music]…there are only a very small handful of SNES games [mainly because it eats up your available sound channels] with music tracks making heavy use of the pitch modulation feature of the SPC700 on the SNES to get similar results, and those are almost exclusively tracks from Dean Evans [and the games themselves are not great]: Waterworld, The Flintstones, the unreleased Green Lantern, the “Flying Saucers” track in Eek the Cat, etc). Though “Go Straight” is not my favorite FM-synth beat-em-up track (see Mission 01/Riot above in the arcade version of Double Dragon), it’s is great and iconic.
4.) “Shinobi Walk” from Shinobi III
My playlist includes this, “Japonesque”, “He Runs”, and “Whirlwind” from Shinobi III, but “Shinobi Walk” is my favorite. I do have “Chinatown” and “Ninja Step” from Revenge of Shinobi in my PVP playlist; however, I prefer the Shinobi III soundtrack (and much, much prefer the game…it’s my favorite Genesis game) over The Revenge of Shinobi’s. Also, as great of a video game commposer as he is, I didn’t want to give Yuzo Koshiro two spots in this top-5 “songs for thumping skulls” from beat-em-up, Kung-Fu-clones, and Rolling-Thunder-clones games list here…which wouldn’t be possible if I put a Revenge of Shinobi song here.
5.) “Move Out” the 2nd level theme from TMNT III: The Manhattan Project
There has to be a Capcom or Konami song on my playlist to make the top-5, and it’s a tough choice. I settled on Konami and on one of the TMNT beat-em-ups…I could have gone with something from the arcade versions of TMNT and Turtles in Time, whose soundtracks I love (I’m not as big of a fan of the SNES ports music changes to the music…it’s good, just not great like the arcade version…there is an MSU patch that swaps it for the arcade music, which is great because otherwise the SNES port is a better game overall…I prefer SNES Turtles in Time over Hyperstone Heist on the Genesis too, including the music). Although those are great soundtracks, my favorite of Konami’s TMNT beat-em-up music tracks is this one here from TMNT III on the NES. I also like a few of the other tracks at least as much as the Turtles in Time tracks, and I actually prefer this game as a whole over all of the rest of their TMNT games. I always wished that it would have got a 16-bit up-port…
Thanks for subscribing to my side-scrolling beat-em-up, single-plane beat-em-up, and beat-em-up-adjacent single-plane walk-and-gun music newsletter! ![:dracthyr_hehe_animated: :dracthyr_hehe_animated:](https://d2ertrwg9e34np.cloudfront.net/original/1X/f93da56cb6b047f5b99748929bbc49ebccfc1edb.gif?v=12)