I love video game music. For many years of my life, video game music was my primary musical interest. I would listen almost exclusively to game soundtracks and covers of game soundtracks and a lot of my presence online is kind of defined by this decision. A lot of my friends nowadays are people I either directly or indirectly met through my love of VGM. For a long time, I listened to it over more traditional "mainstream" music, I was one of those people who would look at mainstream music and kind of scoff at it, as my primary love was video game music and I thought that made me "better". I was such a hipster back then, y'all, always going against the "mainstream".
I grew out of this ideology, but my love for video game music would persist even as I adopted more traditional music tastes. I would not say that I am still actively into the VGM scene but I dabble a lot and I am famously good at VGM trivia. And as a lover of music, both mainstream and in these fringe communities, I have grown a fascination with the places they crossover. In particular, I have been, very slowly and infrequently, cataloging instances where songs that were not original made for video games find their way into video game soundtracks and their inclusion supplants the original intention. Songs that were not intended for video game music but have, through their usage in video games, joined the pantheon of the most iconic video game songs of all time. And that's what we're covering here. This will not be a comprehensive list, I don't know every game, I don't know every soundtrack, and I don't know how every community views those songs. I would personally argue, for instance, that Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand should count from its usage in numerous sports games from the mid 2000s but that's probably not correct. These are just a few of the most notable instances I can think of. And who knows, maybe if I find more interesting ones I can do a part two. This is...
Non-Video Game Music That Has Joined The Pantheon of Video Game Music
Korobeiniki
That being said, we cannot talk about this subject without talking about Korobeiniki. Korobeiniki is a 19th century Russian poem and folk song whose title roughly translate to "the Peddlers". In its original text, the song is something of a euphemism, a story of a young woman's encounters with a peddler of goods who wishes to marry her. The song goes back and forth between the two perspectives in sort of a cheeky dialog that is a clear and obviously euphemism for seduction and/or sex. It is a very famous Russian tune and, in its home country, is something of a crowd pleaser being reworked and time and time again through various different genres and themes. And the most traditional performances, those in concert halls using ancient sheets, tend to drop the vocals entirely playing it as an instrumental track.
It is here that you likely recognize it, not for its lyrics or its subject matter, but rather through its instrumental. Korobeiniki is not just a song that has become more famous as a video game track, it is one of the most iconic video game tracks of all time. It is, rather obviously, the theme music to Tetris. Korobeiniki had been in Tetris as early as some of its first Western releases. Spectrum Holobyte, the company that had secured the US license for releasing the game on home computers, or at least believed they had that license, Tetris' story is famously complicated, included a version of Korobeiniki on the Apple IIGS and MacIntosh releases of Tetris. However, when rights ended up at Nintendo, with Tetris being their flagship title for the Game Boy, the song stuck. Hirozaku "Hip" Tanaka, sometimes referred to as "Chip Tanaka", the composer of Tetris for Game Boy, included an arrangement of Korobeiniki as the game's "Type A" music, AKA the music made for the default game mode in Tetris. Tetris would go on to become one of the most iconic and successful video games of all time and, with it, Korobeiniki became one of the most recognizable songs in the medium. You probably have several relatives who could not name a Mario character, even the one the series is named after, but could sing the entire Tetris theme no problem.
Korobeiniki is, in many ways, the textbook example of this idea. It's almost kind of sad how much of its original context has been lost, to the point where more people likely know the original through a "fun fact about Tetris" post than anything. To this day, covers and interpretations of Korobeiniki will without fail call it the Tetris theme. It is actually this track that inspired me to kind of do this prompt. Funny story actually, years ago I was playing a throwaway shovelware rhythm game I picked up for free at some point and they had a level about Tetris and I was like "how are they getting away with using the song" and it turned out it's because the Tetris theme is, essentially public domain. At the same time, it's kind of endearing. What would be a kind of obscure Russian folk tune being able to live on as one of the most iconic pieces of music of all time. Something so decidedly Russian being used to represent a game that carried some mystique, a game from beyond the Iron Curtain. We all love Korobeiniki.
Big Iron - Marty Robbins
From the town of Agua Frida road a stranger one fine day. Big Iron is a classic, one of the greatest country-western songs in the history of music. The Western writers of America actually did rate it as the 11th best Western song of all time, a distinction it definitely deserves. This track, detailing a duel between an Arizona ranger and an outlaw by the name of Texas Red, is a timeless country track, the kind of track you can show a country hater and make them into a believer. The singer songwriter, Marty Robbins, did a fantastic job, and his success did not go unrewarded. Big Iron was a pretty substantial hit, making its way to #26 on the Billboard Hot 100, and remains in the discussion regarding country music to this day. Unfortunately, the song and the album it was connected to, while still in the public consciousness, have little known about their production.
Big Iron is here, however, because of its prominent use in the critically acclaimed RPG Fallout: New Vegas. Often lauded as the greatest RPG ever made, Fallout: New Vegas, and by extension the entire Fallout series, is a collection of post-apocalyptic Westerns that take place in a US that is slowly becoming habitable after a nuclear war several centuries ago. There are many memorable things about this setting, but the most notable, perhaps, is its commitment to middle-century American technology. In a way, Fallout is an alternate history, one where we never develop chip technology and so our entire world still operates on vacuum tubes and radio waves. And it is here that we hear Big Iron, as one of the many songs that plays in rotation on Fallout: New Vegas' in-game radio and easily its most iconic. Big Iron's usage in the game is pitch perfect, completely setting the Western tone of New Vegas to wonderful effect. The team must've known they stumbled onto something special, in fact, because Big Iron is one of the only songs that plays on ever radio station The music supervisor describes the decision for Big Iron as such, in fact:
"There were a bunch of songs off that record that could’ve potentially been used in New Vegas, but this one was definitely my favorite," Chris Parker, the music supervisor on New Vegas, told me. He first discovered Robbins while doing research for a film project set in the early ’60s that never came to fruition. “It was a perfect fit for the character, the persona, and the setting of New Vegas. There was a little bit more of a Western vibe to that game.” "I really like the backup singing in that song, and I think it’s a great hook," Parker noted. - Christopher S. Parker, New York Magazine, 2/13/2019 (It's behind a paywall, I'm sorry.)
Big Iron's inclusion in Fallout: New Vegas would be a great boon for the song in question. A new fascination with the song and the works of Marty Robbins would form in the 21st century, over 50 years after the song came out originally. If you have heard Big Iron in the past 16 years from this piece being written, it was probably in a remix or a meme or something to that effect. I'm quite partial to "Big Iron but the lyrics are in alphabetical order" myself. It is truly a spectacular track, one that I'm glad that Fallout has given new life, not just once but twice, as it also sparked interest in the works of Marty Robbins in a season 2 episode of the Fallout television series on Amazon Prime in 2026. Big Iron and Fallout exist in a strong symbiotic relationship, Big Iron perfectly sets the tone of Fallout and, in turn, Fallout ensures Big Iron endures across generations.
All I Want - The Offspring
That'll wake you right up. If you did not immediately hear "hey hey hey it's time to make some craaaaaaaazy money" before clicking on the video, I don't know what to tell you. Offspring's All I Want is far more obscure than most of the tracks on this list. Allegedly written by the Offsring's front man, Dexter Hollander, for the band Bad Religion, the song was rejected outright before they even heard it. Bad Religion's guitarist literally told Dexter to "play it on acoustic later or something", which probably seems very negligible from the outside but must've been devastating for someone in the scene. Dexter felt the rejection hard, and decided to rework the song into something more akin to the Offspring. It would go on to be the lead single of their fourth album, Ixnay on the Hombre, and would go on to be the fifth track on the band's 2005 compilation album "greatest hits".
However, if you have heard All I Want, it is probably in one of two places. Either blasting out of a speaker in an arcade, or blasting out of the speaker at the home of someone who owned the Sega classic, Crazy Taxi. There are many "mainstream" tracks on the Crazy Taxi soundtrack, like a lot of games of the era and especially Sega games, Crazy Taxi was trying to connect with the youth culture. Its soundtrack is primarily composed of two bands specifically, the Offspring of course, who contributed a majority of the soundtrack, and, amusingly, Bad Religion, the band who rejected All I Want in the first place. All I Want is, often, the song you hear at the beginning of a run of Crazy Taxi, blasting almost immediately after the game begins.
It is a perfect track for its purpose, a high octane punk track to get you in the headspace of its characters and setting. Crazy Taxi is a game about being a punk burnout, someone hustling at their day job in San Francisco to try and get as much money as they can as fast as they can, all the while learning their route back and forth. All I Want is practically the theme song for this mindset, I'm impressed it wasn't a bigger hit honestly. It kind of sat between two bigger Offspring hits, with "Come Out and Play", one of their most well known songs to this day, being off their third album, and "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)" appearing on their fifth. All I Want though is the Offspring in its purest form, a track which perfectly encapsulates the band's 90s punk aesthetic and which matches the tone needed for its use in Crazy Taxi. And, it's short. At a mere 1:55, incredibly short for a song made after the 1960s, it is perfect for the fast-paced arcade gameplay. The purpose of this list is to detail songs that have become video game music over time, but I think All I Want is probably the song who is definitively most well known for being in a video game of the batch I have here.
Butterfly - smile.dk
But if it's not All I Want, it's definitely this one. Butterfly is such a peculiar track. In the time honored tradition of Eurodance tackling global cultures that the performers, both the studio musicians producing the songs and the physical band members performing them (or pretending to perform them, in most cases) are not Japanese. They are from Sweden, or maybe Denmark, I'm pretty sure the ".dk" in "smile.dk" is for Denmark. Despite this fact, the song is about a Japanese woman seeking her samurai, attempting to connect the song to Japanese culture by evoking Japanese imagery. Eurodance got away with so much back in the day, never ask me who Dr. Bombay was if you don't want to learn about how racist it could truly get.
However, in possibly the craziest instance of a song fulfilling its purpose, Butterfly HAS become a hallmark of Japanese culture in a way. Butterfly is, by a long shot, the most well known song from the 1998 rhythm video game, and its many many sequels, Dance Dance Revolution. DDR, in general, used a lot of random dance tracks to fill out its tracklist. I remember the first time I heard "Captain Jack" was a remix on the one DDR game I owned, DDR Extreme 2, and to this day I can bring forth "left right left" from the deepest recesses of my mind. And while many of those songs have almost certainly become more associated with DDR than their original context, Butterfly is practically the DDR theme song. It's impossible to think of a DDR track and not think of Butterfly. It's unfortunately not a very interesting to talk about, like most Eurodance tracks it was likely fulfilling a niche in their release and its use in DDR is pretty obvious, being a dance track in a dancing game. But still, Butterfly is iconic.
Superman - Goldfinger
Superman is my favorite song on this list. That's not really relevant, I just really adore this song. It's probably also one of like three songs you think about when you hear this prompt. Superman by Goldfinger is kind of a Cinderella story, and it is basically because of its usage in video games. Superman was the opening track off Goldfinger's second studio album "Hang-Ups". Hang-Ups was a decent success, especially for the less than mainstream genre of Skate punk, but at the time Goldfinger was a fairly obscure band in the grand scheme of things and despite their high standard of quality they were still pretty underground. Hang-Ups making it all the way up to the 80s on the Billboard 200, a famously easy chart to get up on as its often populated by years and, heck, decades old albums, was considered a massive win for the band.
Superman would, however, gain new life thanks to one of the most iconic video game series of all time. The Tony Hawk's series has always nailed it when it comes to their soundtracks. The series has included an eclectic mix of punk, ska, metal, and hip hop over the years which has always perfectly encapsulated skate culture in all its forms. One thing I adore about the more modern entries, actually, is the shift from the harder metal stuff being dominant to having more chill, insightful hip hop at the forefront as the culture of skateboarding has gradually changed from being hardcore and punk to being more chill and vibey. I actually talked to some friends about this but it was wild to me that "Can I Kick It" by A Tribe Called Quest was a new addition to the Tony Hawk oeuvre, it feels so perfect for this series in basically every way.
But there is no track more true to the spirit of Tony Hawk than Superman by Goldfinger. It may just be because I already have the association between Superman and Tony Hawk, but to me Superman IS the sound of skateboarding. Its upbeat energy, incredibly ska punk hornline, the connection to Superman as an indicator of the freedom and high flying air you get when skateboarding. I would, unironically, argue that Superman is one of the greatest VGM songs of all time, and it has made Goldfinger a beloved band in the community. Superman is so synonymous with Tony Hawk and, by extension the entire extreme sports genre that the documentary about Tony Hawk that has come out in the past decade is named after the iconic line "so here I am, doing everything I can, holding onto what I am, pretending I'm a Superman". We are blessed for the decision to include Superman in Tony Hawk every day.
It's Tricky - Run-DMC
This is the least justified song on this list. It is certainly the one that probably has the biggest life outside the video game it is connected to. It's Tricky is one of the greatest hip hop songs of all time. Run-DMC's first single after their critically acclaimed rap-rock fusion album "King of Rock", an album where they declared themselves to be the kings of Rock and Roll. A bold statement to be making in the midst of Van Halen's chart dominance but we love that boldness. It's Tricky sees the group making a return to straight hip hop after their more rock focused efforts, although never losing the rock background, as it includes a brash sample from the Knack classic "My Sharona". It is a song about how great hip hop is, but also how difficult hip hop is, how it can't be fired off like a firearm. And it is a song which declares Run-DMC as one of the greatest of all time. Amusingly, I also first heard this song in DDR Extreme 2.
It's Tricky sees Run-DMC at their wittiest, just a song of straight rapping. Utilizing an excellent sample and a interpolation of a popular contemporary pop song, Micky, Run-DMC fires off hard bar after hard bar about rapping and its difficulty, their career, their audience, etc. It's a foundational text, a showcase of what rap truly is to a wider audience, an audience that had just had their eyes on Run-DMC after the world famous Live Aid charity concert, in which they were a featured act. The music video does an excellent job of illustrating the purpose of the song, starring magicians Penn and Teller as a pair of hustlers on the street who ask the group to illustrate the medium of hip hop, at which point the group asserts that "it's tricky to rock a rhyme", i.e. "stop bothering us, we can't just spit on command". It's a fantastic song, one of the most well known hip hop songs of all time.
As such, it could be argued that It's Tricky, regardless of its presence in video games or its association with a specific game, should not be here. It clearly exists as an entity outside of games and very few would immediately associate it with gaming. Heck, the game I want to talk about is like the fifteenth thing to use It's Tricky. To that I say, yeah, It's Tricky isn't solely a video game track. But it would be ludicrous to not talk about its usage in, and association with, the well beloved extreme sports game series SSX. Yeah, there are multiple extreme sports games on this list, what can I say, it's the genre that is most likely for this to occur.
SSX is interesting in comparison to the previously discussed Tony Hawk. Whereas the environment of skateboarding was far more punk and metal at the time, the environment of snowboarding was way more of a dance vibe. SSX's soundtrack is dominated by electronic and house music, a lot of deep cuts from notable DJs that bring a new vibe to the snowboarding experience. There is, however, one standout track in the soundtracks, and it is It's Tricky. Rather than being just something you solely listen to as you shred down the mountain, It's Tricky is all over SSX's branding. The second game in the series, and perhaps its most famous, is literally named "SSX Tricky", both referring to the song and to the process of comboing tricks. And indeed, when you perform a trick combo, you will hear It's Tricky start to play in game. It's not the most clever usage of the song you could ever ask for, you know. "Oh they're doing snowboard tricks, let's play It's Tricky". But it has given the song a certain presence in the minds of people who have played SSX and are good enough to do trick combos (read: not me, I never understood tricks in SSX). I don't think it is fair to say that It's Tricky is primarily a VGM song, unlike many of the other tracks on this list, but I also think it would be unfair to say it hasn't become part of the VGM canon just because of its extended life outside of it.
Always - Erasure
Y'all didn't think I would forget about Robot Unicorn Attack, did ya? Y'all probably forgot about Robot Unicorn Attack yourselves, let's be real. Someone is reading this and going "what a pull, oh my god", shoutouts to that person. Released in 1994, Always was the lead single off Erasure's sixth studio album, I Say I Say I Say. Widely considered the best song on a pretty mediocre album, Always was part of the burgeoning synth-pop/disco revival scene that was finding its place in the early to mid 1990s. Always is a song that, once you hear it, you will be hearing it forever. Whether you like it or not, this song will never leave you. It changes you. I hum it constantly and it's been years since I first heard it.
There's a very ethereal quality to Always that makes it so ingratiating. It's very off kilter synths, it's bizarre pacing, it's monotone and otherworldly vocals. Always kind of feels like you are listening to music from another planet, or maybe an alternate universe. It's one of the most unique tracks I've ever heard, a true synth-pop masterpiece that feels both so of its era and timeless. It's kind of shocking to imagine that this was a hit, but it was, it is actually the closest any song in this article has gotten, which tells you a lot about how competitive the 90s were, This peaked at #20 on the Billboard Hot 100 and yet this song is arguably one of the least remembered.
But it's weird ethereal quality makes it perfect for the game that it has become synonymous with. Robot Unicorn Attack began life as a browser game made in Flash by the games division of Adult Swim. It's a very simple and highly addicting game, an endless runner where you play as a robotic unicorn running through an endless alien planet covered in colorful, 80s pop metal iconography. It's the kind of game you will play and then wonder why you love this so much, an incredibly simplistic endless runner flash game that you cannot tear yourself from. But, the thing that truly makes it special is Always. Always was the background music, perhaps not completely legally, to the original release of Robot Unicorn Attack and its wonderful synth-pop vibes and ethereal nature really set the stage for the game. It elevates this simple, kind of memey endless runner into something that really sticks with you. So much so that something was unquestionably lost when the later rereleases had to remove the song due to licensing, putting in stock music and ultimately working out a deal where it was like "if the player wants the song, they can purchase it as DLC so we can recoup the licensing fees". Always maybe doesn't belong here, the game being too obscure and the song being somehow even more mainstream than It's Tricky technically. But I think it has a right to be on this list.
Re: Your Brains - Jonathan Coulton
When I first began researching this topic, this was one of the wildest revelations to me. Jonathan Coulton is geek rock royalty. Originally famed for his weekly podcast, wherein he challenged himself to write, produce, record, edit, and release a song in a week's time, and later famed for having drama with the Fox multi-camera jukebox musical comedy-drama fever dream Glee who just stole one of his covers word for word, JoCo is one of the true icons of 00s geek culture. His music has found its way into numerous TV shows and video games that were targeted primarily towards existing geek audiences, and the dude even wrote for the "way too good, I mean, it is way better than it has any right to be" Spongebob Squarepants Broadway adaptation, most notably writing its opening number "A Bikini Bottom Day".
I have, however, buried the lede a bit there haven't I? JoCo had one (technically two) other massive contribution to nerd culture, one that probably far eclipses his already eclectic career. In 2007, game company and future PC gaming monopoly Valve released the Orange Box, a compilation of new releases for PC and console. The Orange Box included within it the long awaited second expansion/"episode" of Half-Life 2, as well as Team Fortress 2, a sequel to a mod for Quake that spun off into its own game and one of the most famous online multiplayer games of all time. Included as a bonus to the Orange Box was, perhaps, its now most famous game. A small first person puzzle game called Portal. Portal's impact cannot be overstated, I think an argument could be made that the Portal games have far eclipsed Half-Life in the gaming pantheon, and Half-Life is one of the most famous PC games ever made. But at the end of Portal, and also at the end of its sequel Portal 2, there are songs sung by the antagonist of the series GladOS. And these songs are composed by Jonathan Coulton.
You can then, perhaps forgive me for the assumption that a similar thing happened with Left 4 Dead 2. Left 4 Dead 2, as an easter egg, also included a Jonathan Coulton song, that being "Re: Your Brains". Re: Your Brains is one of Coulton's most famous tracks from his Thing a Week series, a comedic rock song that tells a story set in a Dawn of the Dead style zombie apocalypse. The narrator of the song is a former coworker of one of the survivors of the apocalypse, who has now been zombified. The song is, essentially, the zombified coworker attempting to use corporate speak to negotiate a surrender of the survivors so that the zombies can consume them. To quote Jonathan Coulton's summarization of the song:
If Hollywood has taught us anything, it’s that being trapped in a mall surrounded by a million zombies would be really troublesome. But how much more annoying would it be if the head zombie used to be your co-worker, and he was kind of a prick even before he got infected? And now he’s right outside and he just keeps talking and talking – still the same jackass, only now he wants to eat your brains?
Now, I am not going to pretend to know a great deal about Left 4 Dead. I missed the boat on it, in 2009 I was very anti-PC gaming and anti-online multiplayer in general. So of the games on this list, this is the one I know the least about. However I think that while Re: Your Brains has come to be associated with Left 4 Dead, it is also the most tonally mismatched song on this list. As an easter egg rather than a part of the text, like so many of the other listed songs are, it is allowed to be a bit off-kilter from the text. From what I can gather, this seems wildly out of place, more for the audience who loves Valve than the audience who would love Left 4 Dead specifically. Left 4 Dead is famous for creating some of the most horrifying monsters in horror game history, creatures that to this day terrify the audience who played it. This kind of jokey song about zombies is a wild swing, but in a way that makes it more endearing. It may not particularly fit with Left 4 Dead's tone, but it feels like it still belongs, as a celebration of Valve's impact on the community and, in a way, of the PC gaming culture as a whole.
Through the Fire and Flames - Dragonforce
There is no other way to end this post than to talk about possibly the only instance of this happening that could eclipse Korobeiniki. If you grew up at a very specific point in time, Through the Fire and Flames is one of the biggest video game tracks of all time. DragonForce's power metal classic has defined rhythm games, and the people who play them, to this day. It is not simply a metal anthem, one of the most notable songs in the incredibly over the top genre of power metal, but it is the anthem to a community. It is so intrinsically associated with video games that it's almost hard to imagine that it existed before its inclusion in Guitar Hero III. I had to double check, even that, it wasn't made for that game, like they commissioned a contemporary metal band to compose an intentionally difficult song to serve as the game's triumphant finale. But it was released beforehand, and has defined a generation of gamers.
Released in 2005, Through the Fire and Flames was the lead single off of Dragonforce's third album, Inhuman Rampage. Even before its usage in other media, TtFaF was the band's biggest hit, being a very mild success in both the US and Canada. It peaked at #86 on the top 100. Before its usage in Guitar Hero III, it was already a famous song among rock and metal circles, hence its inclusion. It's a killer track, to quote a Louder Article on the subject, it "fused dementedly galloping guitars and OTT sweeping with skyscraping vocals and air-punching melodies." It was such an intense work, going louder and crazier and more, fusing numerous insane guitar solos into a seven minute goliath of a power metal track. Guitarist Herman Li literally breaks a string in the midst of the song's extensive solos, and it fit so perfectly into the track that it is in the final recording of the song. And he probably had time to replace the string and retune his guitar before the final verse and chorus came in.
Through the Fire and Flames ending up in video games, however, must've been a treat for Dragonforce. Power metal music, especially that which came out during and after the oughts, is a genre heavily inspired by 1980s nerd pop culture. Namely because that was also the space their forefathers occupied, it is after all a stereotype that nerds were blasting Zeppelin in their parents basement while they played Dungeons & Dragons. Aside from the Dungeons and Dragons influence on the genre and likely Dragonforce specifically (they are called Dragonforce), the band was heavily inspired by retro arcade games. The album TtFaF is off of has another song on it that literally sample's Ryu's theme from Street Fighter II, and the band cites Pac-Man as an influence for its high energy and fast progression. You can definitely hear it once you know it, there is a part of the solo which sounds exactly like playing a game of Pac-Man, complete with what sounds like the Pac-Man death sound. It's usage in Guitar Hero III, as such, is almost a prophecy being fulfilled.
Through the Fire and Flames is most notably, however, for its high difficulty. It is emblematic not just of the rhythm game genre but, in a broad sense, the video game superboss as a concept. I do not think there is a more iconic, more well known, more celebrated superboss in video game history. The closest I could conceptualize is Mike Tyson in the NES release of Punch-Out!!. With its long length, high energy performance, and its combination of both speed and technical prowess, Through the Fire and Flames made a perfect superboss for not just Guitar Hero III, but the series as a whole. Through the Fire and Flames is persists to this day as shorthand for a very hard challenge in rhythm games. People used to upload their playthroughs of it to the internet, early YouTube gaming culture is built on the back of this one song. They would full combo it, and when that got too easy they would do it at 125%, then 150%, then 200%, then blindfolded. There are few songs who can claim to have changed gaming culture forever, and even fewer that originated from outside the landscape of gaming. But Through the Fire and Flames is one of them. One of the most iconic pieces of VGM ever, and one that decidedly did not originate from gaming.
