Believe it or not, I never really got “in” to music until around the age of fifteen.

Nobody I knew had access to music videos, I never paid much attention to anything on television unless it was a cartoon, and randomly switching on the radio whenever I was in the mood for a little rhythm seemed to satisfy any musical cravings I might have had at the time.

All I can remember was my mother’s love of opera, the weekly hum of the ‘Archers’ theme tune from my father’s radio in the kitchen, and my brother’s brief (and somewhat scary) obsession with happy hardcore.  And all seemed completely and utterly alien to a bumbling teenager.

Of course, the one thing I had really got “in” to was computer games.  And unbeknown to fuddled, musically challenged moi, it was the music in computer games that quietly snagged me and held me in its grasp, far before the atrociously scary six packs of East 17 ever did.

You may think you were untouched by its harmonious tappings, but if I were to play an Amstrad CPC 464 owner this, you would find that nine times out of ten it would cause convulsions, spasms, and general cries of “OH GOD!  I REMEMBER THIS!” from the listener (It’s 3D StarFighter, by the way.)

In a sense, I was fortunate that my first experience with gaming was via an 8-bit machine, capable of tapping out multi-tone sounds that many would consider awful by today’s standards, but none the less set the benchmark for the growth of video game music

And as console and computer specs continued to grow, so did their musical capabilities.

Ah, Outrun.  Your shiny summer sizzling helped me through the long, cold winter months.  And who can forget the Super Mario Bros music for the NES?  I bet you’re all doop-a-doopin’ your way through it in your head right now.  And it wasn’t just original themes that touched me - I had no idea who Ozzy Osbourne was as I sat and hummed along to Paranoid in Rock and Roll Racing on my SNES.

I spent a lot of time playing these games.  And because my early gaming was during the period when game saves often just weren’t an option, it meant that I could be playing specific levels or specific games over and over and over again.  Listen to anything long enough (Amstrad loading noises included), and you begin to hum along to it - a tactic now sadly flogged to death with the success of the Crazy Frog single.

And that’s not all. If you were blessed with a decent local video game shop, you might have been able to pick up your favourite game music on CD.  I can clearly remember the first one I purchased - Secret of Mana (or Seiken Densetsu 2) on the SNES.  I still listen to it to this very day, and remember my intense excitement as I loaded the first track on my CD player.  It’s still absolutely beautiful.

Music has progressed a lot since then.  In 2004, a one-off Final Fantasy concert was held in America, with music performed by none other than the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra - all seats were sold out within a single day.  Walk into your local HMV and you’ll probably still be able to pick up the box-set of the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas music - like Rock And Roll Racing, just a collection of previously released music, but done on such a scale and integrated into the game in such a way it was a landmark, and revived the careers of several artists.  Even I have attended gigs, purely based on the fact that the band playing had music featured on a video game (Guitar Vader, Jet Set Radio, for the record.)

However, the course of true love never did run smooth, and the topic of what game music rules supreme is always a tricky one, not just because one’s judgement is clouded by the fact that, if you love a particular game soundtrack, chances are you’ll love the game itself too. There’s simply so much variety out there, the deate of the ultimate gaming music is as difficult to judge as the ultimate non-gaming music.

How can one ignore the ingenuity and interactivity of the wonderful sounds featured in Rez?

The critically acclaimed but sadly over-looked beauty of Beyond Good And Evil? (featuring some rather good French Hip-Hop, I’ll have you know.)

The guitar-wailing anthems and anguished vocals of the Silent Hill series?

It is impossible to acknowledge them all.  Contenders emerge each and every day, and with fan-driven music-mixing forever on the rise, no doubt the debate will rage on for all eternity.

I’ve given you some of my choices.  Make your choice known at the Frag Doll UK forum, where results will be compiled into a poll to determine who rules the roost.

...  Well, at least until the next chicken comes along.