VGM Entry 47: Sim City
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

I’d like to focus in depth for a moment on a soundtrack that you might not have expected to even make the cut. Sim City, composed by Soyo Oka, doesn’t get all that much praise. It’s fairly often forgotten, and almost always blown off as a mere solid effort. But I think it’s really quite a brilliant work of art–one of the Super Nintendo’s finest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QpFy8vVdPI

Soyo Oka got her start as a video game composer with Nintendo, working on five forgotten titles for the NES between 1988 and 1989 before graduating to the SNES and being tasked with three higher profile projects: Pilotwings in 1990, Sim City in 1991, and Super Mario Kart in 1992. For whatever reason her work load diminished a bit after that: she was charged with arranging Koji Kondo’s music for Super Mario All-Stars in 1993 and then stepped back to the NES to team up with Shinobu Amayake for the final licensed game to ever be released on the system, Wario’s Woods, in 1994. She departed from Nintendo in 1995.

It’s a shame that her career with them was so brief, because during this time her distinct, often jazzy style rose to be the second voice of Nintendo. You could always tell a Soyo Oka score from one of Koji Kondo’s despite their many similarities, and if Kondo was probably better, Oka nevertheless remains terribly under-appreciated today.

The concept of Sim City presents a bit of a musical challenge. Just how ought a city simulation in a modern setting sound? I think she completely nailed it, and I rather wish this compilation was better organized to show it. The menu music that starts at 0:45 here says it all. It’s a wonderfully visual work: the lazy trumpets and accompanying hum depict towering and stationary skyscrapers surrounded by that staccato higher pitch early morning hustle and bustle, with the rapid yet never rushing stop-and-go bass tying it all together.

Following the short Dr. Wright theme (which, I should point out, is substantially better than most of the “shopping” game tunes it resembles) we are treated (at 1:47) to the first of six population-themed songs which garudoh unfortunately fails to present chronologically. “Village” is your lowest population, and the tones she chooses are just perfect to distinguish it from a standard RPG small-town theme; it puts you in the same warm, safe place, but it still feels entirely modern, in an Earthbound sort of way.

Humor me and pause the video for a moment. The next track, “Growth”, starting at 2:33, is merely a brief interlude which really doesn’t belong here, but it’s a good opportunity to switch videos since what follows in garudoh’s is misplaced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hZG208APbA

“Town” is a beautiful and brilliant transition. The main melody of “Village” is retained, but instead of a lazy country town you now have a population on the move beginning to become acquainted with sophistication. The classical theme perfectly retains a feeling of a small world while giving you a sense of progress which “Village” lacks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVEDYdRrqJ4

“City” is perhaps the weakest link of the six, but you can definitely get a feeling for Oka’s intentions here. It’s a great deal faster and less stable than “Town”, but it still clings to a sense of something classical. The musical progression has reached a stage of uncertainty; a small community is on the brink of losing its identity and giving way to the future, but it has yet to make that final step. “City” is a track best appreciated in context, and I think what follows explains a lot about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JEnGbcm1TQ

“Capital” is definitely my favorite Soyo Oka song in any game. The opening segment is just stunning. Your population has finally taken the last step and acknowledged its collective existence. It brilliantly captures that adventurous and fleeting sensation of being an anonymous unit in a perfectly attuned machine, and it appropriately comes to an end far sooner than anyone would like, returning to the more private experience of “Village”, only now presented in a sort of dreamy, surreal state, conditioned by the memory of that brief sensation at the start of the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bspGsYtEZB4

“Metropolis” lays all dreams of harmony to rest. The lazy trumpets of the menu tune are back, but here the staccato overlay is harsh and synthy, the bass down to business. It’s a real city now, not some idealistic vision of one, and this machine’s only collective consciousness is apathy triumphant. Gameplay-wise you’re getting down to business too, and if that first residential block you ever built is getting in the way of the new sports stadium, it’s time to send out the eviction notices.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ba2Kf3NR7A

“Megalopolis” is an interesting track to end on. Fast paced and pleasant, you’ve got to love the machine to get this far. The fun is in striking the perfect balance now, not in micromanaging a paradise. But the song still slows down for a moment to reflect on your roots, and for all practical purposes it’s an end credits theme. There’s no winning. There’s just perpetual motion and memory. And so the track loops on and the game continues, but in some off sense you’ve reached the end.

Soyo Oka is one of the most underrated composers in the history of the business, and Sim City is her finest work.