Awesome Music / SimCity

• If you're a fan of jazz music, then you can't go wrong with the soundtracks to pretty much every SimCity game since 2000. Their composer, Jerry Martin, is a genius. The songs are especially awesome due to the fact that they aren't just jazzy sounding melodies, but full, complete jazz songs, right down to the amazing improvs, which aren't generally used so completely in regular gameplay elsewhere (generally being only used for credits or special sequences and such), and they have a great band besides, especially in SimCity 3000:
  • Central Park Sunday.
  • South Bridge.
  • Updown Town.
  • Seriously, of all the SimCity 3000 Music, Broadway is the most upbeat and dynamic.
  • The Ambient and Epic New Terrain, which almost always plays when you're staring at a blank canvas that will become a new city.
  • Magic City is six minutes of distilled, beautiful awesome.
  • If you're not a fan of jazz, you may enjoy the complex, layered, and soothing sound of Window Washer's Dream. It's a relief to hear when rebuilding after a disaster.
• While the literally horrifying graphics of SimCopter left much to be desired, the soundtrack went a long way towards making up for it. Some of the best tracks:
  • The Career Menu theme, and the orchestrated version that plays as the Hangar Backdrop.
  • Jazz 5 especially shines among the jazz tunes (just listen to that sax!), but we've also got Jazz 4 and 6
  • Techno 1, 2 3, and 4.
  • Rock 1.
• Streets of Sim City received the same Jerry Martin treatment in the music department. Despite the game being unfortunately riddled with bugs that probably will never be fixed (since it was released back in 1997), the soundtrack actually manages to be even more memorable and awesome than the SimCopter score, and many of the songs were recycled into The Sims and even The Sims 3. Some notable examples:
  • Techno 2, 3 and 5.
  • Bluegrass 3 and 6 ("I'm just a splatter...splatter...splatter on the windshield of life.")
  • The entire hard rock playlist ("YOU'RE THE CZAR IN YOUR GOOD OLD KICK-ASS CAR!").
  • ...and then there is the garage music, which is predominantly composed of garage noises.
• Sim City 4 has the stunningly awesome Epicenter.
  • Along with the mesmerizingly epic Oasis.
  • Rush Hour is a rather spicy jazz piece that is very suiting for a city full of highways, shopping malls, offices, and "busy" areas in town.
  • Sim City 4 also has "Wheels of Progress".
  • "The Morning Commute" from the Rush Hour expansion is even more stunning.
  • "Night Owl" is fitting for a seedy area at night.
  • "Chain Reaction" is a great piece for building and admiring high-tech industrial zones.
  • The beautiful, rolling "No Gridlock" easily evokes Arcadia.
  • Then there's dusky, sleepy "Street Sweeper".
  • And now we have the terrifying "Primordial Dream", a terrifying and, quite frankly, oddly out of place tune which would fit in quite well in a series like Silent Hill or Fallout. It always plays after you obliterate the city... over the barren wasteland. Worse still, it's unchecked by default, and if you do check it, then it's the only song that plays!
• The SNES version of SimCity has a different BGM for all six city sizes, every one a winner: Village, Town, City, Capital, Metropolis, and Megalopolis. The gradual increase in energy from the laid back Village track to the triumphant Megalopolis track suits the growth of the city perfectly.
  • "Village" and "Town" were orchestrated for the second Orchestral Game Music Concert back in 1992. This is every bit as awesome as it sounds.
  • Composer Soyo Oka named "Metropolis" as one of the favourite tracks she has ever composed (alongside "Rainbow Road" for Super Mario Kart and the menu theme for Pilotwings). It is the only melody to appear in both the (unreleased) NES port of the game as well as the SNES port. Clearly she thinks highly of it.
• The 2013 reboot expands the soundtrack as your city increases in population and they saved the better tracks for later.
  • The first time you hear Town and Out feels monumental.
  • Make a megalopolis and you'll get the wonderfully sophisticated Tale of Sim Cities.
  • SimCity, November 2019. Holy Crap.

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