Reggie White

Since I posted one a few weeks ago, I thought I'd try to do it here on a weekly basis. Anyway, here's another one.

Bring Back The Sound Test Option
By Reggie White

I think all you old-schoolers know what I’m talking about just by the title of this column. However, for all you new-school players out there, I’m gonna be a nice guy and give you the run down.

Back in the day developers would implement this wonderful little feature in video games known as the sound test (sometimes it was called “music test,” BGM, etc.). Sometimes it was available on the regular options screen. Other times you had to input a code to bring it out of hiding. Basically, the sound test option allowed you to listen to your favorite tunes in the game without experiencing it through actual gameplay. I really miss those days. I could listen to Spark Mandrills pulse pounding rock theme in Mega Man X without having to fight that pesky glue middle boss (all you hardcore Mega Man nuts know what I’m talkin’ about.) Those radical tunes from TMNT IV: Turtles in time were available at the touch of a button. Even some PlayStation and Nintendo 64 games had sound test options (all the WipeOut games, all the Ridge Racers, Perfect Dark, just to name a few).

These days the odds of finding a sound test option in most games are about the same as your odds of coming across a copy of Herzog Zwei for the Genesis: pretty stinking slim.
I don’t think developers know how much we love our video game music. Personally, I think video games have some of the best music ever and being able to listen to it at my leisure was quiet a luxury. You have know idea how badly I want the sound test option to make a return. When I battled Lich for the first time in Final Fantasy Origins (FFI) I was met with this amazingly powerful, sweeping musical score. It was so good that I just had to set my Dual Shock down on my futon and listen to it for nearly an hour. Then Square tormented me by forcing me to play hours more into the game before I could hear it again.

Yeah, I know you can buy Tokyopop soundtracks and other official game soundtracks but why should we have to shell out $15 or more to hear our favorite game tunes? Is it too much effort to give us our blasted sound test option back? I think not. Maybe developers are too lazy to do it or maybe they think many of us have forgotten about sound test options all together. I’ll be the first to admit that I sure didn’t know how lucky I was to have that option in the old days.

Maybe if we start bombarding developers with e-mails about how much we love video game music, the sound test option will make a comeback. Hey its worth a try.

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Play your games.

cAtDaFeLiX

I remember those......Guardian Legend for NES (Best RPG shooter ever!!!!!) Full sound-test options.

I picked up: The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2 last week (Some good stuff on there, pick it up if you are a MGS2 freak!!!) They have a sound-test option with tons of other stuff to do. I think it's hard to find now, but worth it. Was $34.99....picked it up at EB new for $14.99, last copy!

I'm not sure about bring back the sound-test option. It seems like a cool opiton, but listing to a door open gets somewhat.....you know. Plus, as games have grown up to include thousands of sound effects and stuff, they wouldn't take the time to do it. I would just like to have a more "final" tweaking to the game so it's A+++++.

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Reggie White

Oh I could care less about the sound effects being included in the sound test option. I'm just all about the music.

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Play your games.