Jungle music in 1990s video games

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Gustavo Pezzi offers a splendidly specific retrospective of jungle/drum 'n' bass music in 1990s video games.

One of Sony's big decisions before the release of the PlayStation was the acquisition of the British game development studio Psygnosis. The Liverpool-based studio was involved not only in the development of the official PlayStation SDK but also in launch titles for the console.

One of the most important games for the Sony PlayStation was Wipeout. Unique at the time, the game was noted for its futuristic setting and by its influence of electronic music and rave scene. The development of Wipeout overlapped with a boom in popularity of EDM, and the British-based developers were able to inject their experiences from the UK rave scene into the game's sound and visuals. 1994 was considered by many as "the summer of jungle". Many legal stations started to play the style and several CD compilations of jungle music appeared on store shelves. Wipeout's electronic music soundtrack featured original in-house compositions by Tim Wright (a.k.a. CoLD SToRAGE) and some modern versions of the series also include tracks from famous EDM artist like Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, Orbital, New Order and The Prodigy.

The British vibe in gaming was very strong heading out the 80s. It was driven by an intense interest in personal computing, but the local industry was always on shaky ground. Sony was perhaps not a good endgame for Psygnosis, all told, but boy did some culture get done. Actually-existing Weyland-Yutani (i.e. Leyland-Toyota), but games; see also The Designer's Republic.

Previously: Psygnosis Game Generator