History LongSongShortScene / VideoGames

* Telltale's ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead'' has a track during the climax of Episode Five. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6-9QF-qw08 "Armed With Death"]] plays during Lee's OneManArmy moment in the streets of Savannnah against an insane number of [[NotUsingTheZWord walkers]]. You'll only hear about 45 seconds of a track that's at least twice as long. In fact the full track itself had to be edited into the extended version used for the link.

* In The Pandora Directive, fourth installment of the VideoGame/TexMurphy games, at some point you have to visit the house of one of the victims of the assassin you are chasing. A track of 4 minutes is devoted to this house, even though there's just one key item to pick up there (another one is optional), and then you never need to visit the place again.

* Ultraverse Prime for the Sega CD features music by Tim and Geoff Follin. The title music, a seven-minute rock piece in the style of Deep Purple, cuts off about three and a half minutes in, cutting off half the song. It's CD Audio though, so it can be listened to in a regular CD player....... Or [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuFXcgs606k Youtube]], for that matter.

* ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'':

** Aside from these examples, all of the battle music pieces in Blazblue are anywhere from 3 to 6 minutes in length. The battles themselves last a maximum of 3, in a game where time-outs are incredibly rare. This is egregious in the case of [[MightyGlacier Iron Tager,]] whose theme in ''Chronophantasma'' takes a full minute to get past the intro. As one might have guessed from how big his fists are, it doesn't take more than a few punches and throws for Tager to win a match within that minute.
** Altar, the menu theme of ''Continuum Shift'', is a good couple of minutes long in its full loop. Given that entering the mode you want doesn't take that long, you're unlikely to hear the full track unless you do so deliberately.
** The title screen theme for ''Chronophantasma'', White Nights, is over four minutes long. Press Start once and it ends immediately.

* ''VideoGame/GuiltyGear Xrd'': Ride The Fire, Sol's ThemeMusicPowerUp, is over three minutes long in its full version. It lasts for the rest of the round, which given that you just empowered yourself probably won't last three more minutes.

** In ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}'', [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B0ULT7FWsw "Menace"]], heard on "Quarantine Zone", only lasts about 45 seconds, and doesn't appear on either volume of the original soundtrack album, although it did finally get released as part of "Menace No More" on the ''Halo 2 Anniversary'' soundtrack. On the same level, the song "Reclaimer" only plays about halfway before fading out. Same with "Pursuit of Truth" on "High Charity".

* The background theme of the Game Boy puzzle-platformer ''Altered Space'', which runs nearly a minute and a half, restarts every time a new room is entered and takes a whole ten seconds to actually start up, when most rooms will be visited for only a few seconds.
* The Emperor's theme in SNES ''Super Return of the Jedi''; it is heard in a few (short) cutscenes and as the background music in two (also short) levels, but the game switches to its standard boss theme when you actually confront Vader and (more noticeably) the Emperor himself.

* The title screen theme of ''VideoGame/CrusaderKings III'' is five minutes long in total. One click takes you to the map screen which takes the theme away, so even when it plays on loading screens you'll only hear a minute or so. Parts of it are used alongside various in-game events so you'll probably hear the whole track eventually, but not as one continuous piece unless you wait.

* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'': [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sur4qN_4Oi8 Pinwheel's theme]]. It's a very eerie and atmospheric tune that perfectly suits the HumanoidAbomination necromancer living in a coffin deep in the Catacombs. However, Pinwheel is a very easy boss, to the extent that a prepared player can stomp him flat in less than ten seconds.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' has the music when the Lone Wanderer [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifGiqPD3QLA leaves the vault]] for the first time, which only runs for about 34 seconds, and is not heard anywhere else in the game nor on the soundtrack.

** "Gold Slouch", originally from ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'', only plays around the Wrecked Highwayman, an off-the-beaten path location you are unlikely to linger at long.

* ''VideoGame/{{Pokemon}}'':

-->'''[=YouTube=] comment''': Wow, I didn't know this theme was longer than 12 seconds.

* Subverted in ''Videogame/{{Everhood}}'' with the fight against Professor Orange's Masterpiece, which is an artificial recreation of a Godlike being meant to crush Red in what little time its energy supply holds... which turns out to be about fifteen seconds; the intense song that had been playing dies right with it. In the NewGamePlus, you find a way to fight the real deal Orange was trying to imitate, [[spoiler:the Cat God]], and thus get to hear (and dodge, and [[{{Superboss}} die to]]) the whole song.

* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'':

* Many songs in the ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' series are played in one or two events -- sometimes in the middle of a level- and never heard again. There's also a ton of battle themes which are played once for 10 seconds. Luckily, most of the games have {{Sound Test}}s.