Heartbeat Soundtrack / Video Games

• Abuse uses this as a Critical Annoyance.
• The briefing for the final mission of Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies has the faint sounds of a heartbeat and machinery in place of the usual soundtrack.
• In the Ar tonelico series, some of the songs, such as EXEC_SPHILIA/. and both versions of Rustling Throb have heartbeats as part of either the main melody or as background sounds. Even one of the soundtracks' bonus songs, Planet Gene, opens and closes off with the sound of heartbeat.
• Asteroids handled it pretty masterfully — the heartbeat's speed increases as you take out asteroids.
• The Rom Hack Banjo-Kazooie: Eraserhead Edition (requested by the Game Grumps as a joke, but then a bunch of people actually made it), has, per the request "No music, but a heartbeat. And, like, a couple arguing in the background".
• Outside of some jingles, Baraduke has no BGM, just a faint heartbeat in the background that becomes slightly faster when you're on your last energy point.
• Bendy and the Ink Machine: A heartbeat plays whenever Bendy is close by, signaling the player to hide.
• The FMV shooter Blood Bath has a pulsing bass soundtrack that gets faster as you take damage.
• In the adult anime PC game Brave Soul, a pulsing heartbeat sound is played during Marin's sex scene.
• Call of Duty 4: In the last moments of Pvt. Jackson's life after the nuke goes off, all you can hear is the gusting wind and his own heartbeat.
• Card Shark: A heartbeat sound will begin playing if your opponent's suspicion reaches critical levels.
• Cassette Beasts has Archangel Encounter, a discordant piece with a heavy bass heartbeat rhythm fitting for an encounter with an Eldritch Abomination.
• From Cave Story, "Pulse."
• In Chrono Trigger, the inside of Lavos' shell replaces background music with Lavos' heartbeat and breathing, which get louder and faster as the party approaches the core.
• The aptly titled Heartbeats from online game Colour My Heart uses this.
• In Custom Robo, a heartbeat sound is used for Rahu's chamber.
• DanceDanceRevolution has a song called "Healing Vision" that, near the end of the song, has a heartbeat segment. The song at this point slows from 196 BPM to 49 (and yes, you step on the panels in time with the heartbeats). "Healing Vision -Angelic Mix-" has heartbeat segments at the very beginning and at the very end, and ECG beeping for the rest, with a flatline at the pause and last section of the song.
• Darius Force has this for the final boss theme of Galst Vic
• One of the puzzles in Dark Fall: Lost Souls involves selecting several increasingly-arrhythmic Heartbeat Soundtrack sound clips in sequence, to re-create the impression of someone succumbing to heart failure.
• Subverted in Dark Souls II: it initially seems that The Gutter and Black Gulch have this as background music, but closer observations reveal that the beating noise is actually produced by those goddamn poison-shooting statues.
• Plays a major role in Dead by Daylight, where it acts as the survivors' signal that the killer is near them. When the killer starts actively chasing you, the heartbeat melds into a tense musical track that slowly calms down once you break line of sight.
• Deltarune: Berdly's Battle Theme Music, "Smart Race", has a heartbeat-esque beat in the background. On the Weird/Snowgrave Route, in his second fight, it is replaced with a far slower and more menacing remix that brings the heartbeat to the foreground. Considering that all of his usual bluster is absent due to him being horrified by what you've done with Noelle and knowing full well that he's fighting for his life, it's very fitting.
• Demon's Souls has the tower of Latria; the heartbeat is the only sound you hear the entire time in the second zone. No wonder: the heart in question is approximately the size of a large house, swollen by demonic infestation, suspended in the middle of the place by heavy chains. Appropriately sickening.
• Invoked in Descent II's briefing theme, which features a heartbeat-like synth that plays through the entire track if you listen carefully.
• Desire has a music track like this, appropriately enough named "Beat".
• Dicey Dungeons: "Prepare to Dice" is an ominous track with a heartbeat in the foreground and an unsettling hum in the background, which plays whenever your health is low or you're approaching a boss fight.
• In Dungeons Of Daggorath, the heartbeat represents your health/stamina. As you use your weapon, run or take damage, the heartbeat goes faster and faster, until the screen fades to black. If you are fighting a monster at the time, you die. As you go deeper into the dungeon, your heartbeat increases more slowly.
• Earthworm Jim 1 has a heartbeat in the music for its 'Intestinal Distress' level (for the Sega Genesis version).
• The Ecco the Dolphin series' generally haunting soundtrack does this from time to time, for example in the themes for Sea of Darkness and (appropriately) Heart of The Foe.
• The main theme of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Nerevar Rising. This actually has an in-game justification of sorts: the MacGuffin of the main quest is an actual gigantic heart, belonging to the dead god Lorkhan.
• A loud, slow heartbeat is heard alongside the background music in the final level of Epic Mickey, but only in the main area. Appropriate, as the level takes place inside the Blot's body, and it's Mickey's stolen heart that's beating.
• Eversion:
  • World X-7 has no music aside from a heartbeat.
  • And World X-8 has, among other creepy noises, an accelerating heartbeat.
• Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas play a heartbeat sound in the background when your character's health is extremely low. The "Level Up" four-beat military drum tune sounds like a heartbeat as well.
• Far Cry has this during Shell-Shock Silence moments.
• In FEAR, a heartbeat is heard during the part where you're in an elevator with Alice and you must leave it to turn the power back on again.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy VII, the theme of Sephiroth "Those Chosen by the Planet" makes use of a pulsating heartbeat, along with synth vocals. It's also there in his other two themes, "The Birth of a God" and "One-Winged Angel". Although it's drowned out by the other instruments.
  • "The Landing" in Final Fantasy VIII starts by playing a slow heartbeat. In this case it likely signifies the calm before the battle.
  • You can hear a heartbeat pounding as time slows down in Final Fantasy X with Tidus's overdrive Blitz Ace.
• In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the music stops and is replaced by a heartbeat on two occasions in the Black Eagles route- when you decide whether to go to Enbarr with Edelgard and if you attend Edelgard's coronation, when you decide whether to side with Edelgard in the Holy Tomb.
• In Flashback, the Ultra Mind has a heartbeat that increases in speed the more you damage it.
• Forewarned: Sometimes you'll hear what sounds like a heartbeat. Presumably it happens whenever you're near something scary.
• Glider 4.0's in-game music consists mainly of one bass note played in a syncopated rhythm that speeds up if you remain in one room for more than a certain time.
• GoldenEye: The Facility theme at one point features a sudden drop in volume, leaving nothing but a faint heartbeat, before gradually returning to normal.
• Parodied in Grand Theft Auto V. Go watch Jimmy play the in-universe CoD spoof game Righteous Slaughter 7 in his bedroom when controlling Michael and you'll hear this gem of a line.
  Mission Control: I can hear your heartbeat, stop getting shot!
• Gynophobia: You start hearing a heartbeat whenever the Player Character sees either a spider or a girl.
• In Haiku, the Robot, a heartbeat sound plays when Haiku's health is down to one hitpoint, which is rather curious since they are a robot.
• Some of Halo's soundtrack pieces, like Halo 2's "Destroyer's Invocation" and Halo 3's "Dread Intrusion".
• In Hitman (2016), a faint heartbeat can be heard when you are in close proximity to a target.
• Inazuma Eleven GO Chrono Stone had one of Tenma's first new dribble hissatsu called "Aggresive Beat" which involves him clutching his chest as he feels his heartbeat, then using it to get past his opponent.
• In Jak and Daxter, a heartbeat plays if you swim when there is a Lurker Shark in the water. It get faster the closer the shark gets.
• Heard in The Journeyman Project if your oxygen runs low in the Mars Maze. In all cases, an EKG flatline sound is heard when Gage dies or otherwise gets Game Over.
• The ambient opening movie to Katawa Shoujo features both a heartbeat and the sound of a monitor. As Hisao has heart arrhythmia, it also shows up at various points in the game when he's having problems, usually starting very faint in the background and layered in with the oftentimes happy music, but it generally gets louder and faster.
• In King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, the last few seconds of "Alexander's Suicide" are coupled up with Last Note Nightmare, as they are incurred by Alex's heartbeat slowing down to a stop via "Drink Me" potion.
• Klonoa has "Untamed Heart", which is accompanied by a faint heartbeat through the whole song.
• This occurs in Kuon whenever an enemy is approaching. The quicker the heartbeat, the closer the danger.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has the Shadow Beasts' theme, a reprise of twilight enemies' bass theme with synths and heavy drums, giving the impression that your heart is beating extremely fast.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:
    • During the No-Gear Level Stealth-Based Mission in Eldin Volcano, a heartbeat plays over the soundtrack if you get too close to a Bokoblin. Useful if you can't see where he is and need to get to cover.
    • When you're at low health during a fight with a regular enemy, one of the percussion tracks switches to a heartbeat-like rhythm.
• A heartbeat sound plays in Little Nightmares whenever Six gets close to a monster, and it becomes faster and louder when she gets spotted and chased.
• The song "Merure Merure" from LocoRoco has a heartbeat playing in the background during the beginning, which is fitting since the song plays while you're in the innards of the Big Bad.
• In Madden NFL, you will hear heartbeat sounds when attempting a last-second potential game-winning field goal. Probably used to show how nerve-wracking such situations are for the kicker.
• Mana Series:
  • Secret of Mana has "In the Dead of Night", which plays during the intro.
  • Trials of Mana's Ghost Ship theme prominently features a heartbeat. The game also has "Political Pressure", which is featured in areas like Fiery Gorge, Cave of Darkness, and the Chartmoon Tower.
• Used extensively in Manhunt.
• The first two entries in the Mass Effect series plays a heavy heartbeat sound when the player character is low on health, the third game to a lesser extent. Also in the first two games, the background soundtrack playing during the culmination of a potential romance employs an instrumental version of this to increase the drama of the interaction.
• In Max Payne, activating Bullet Time will start with a 'crack' kind of sound effect, then drown out the soundtrack, backing the action with dull, measured heartbeats while it is in effect.
• Meteos: the planet Globin. The DS version sounded like breathing that got more frantic as the playing field filled up. Wars takes this more literally with faint heartbeat in the background. It is shaped like a red blood cell...
• Metroid:
  • Some puzzle segments in the Metroid Prime Trilogy that have to be solved without leaving the area (some of which are also timed puzzles) use a minimal soundtrack with a bass played in a heartbeat pattern.
  • The first Metroid Prime has a heartbeat in Tallon Overworld's second theme.
  • Metroid Prime 2: Echoes uses hearbeats in basically all the music on Dark Aether. Heartbeats also appear in the Title Screen and Agon Wastes music.
  • The Nest from Another Metroid 2 Remake features a steady heartbeat rhythm.
• The soundtrack of Mondo Medicals consists entirely of heavy breathing and what appears to be a heartbeat.
• Mother 3 utilizes this to the player's advantage: When an enemy is put to sleep, a heartbeat track in sync with the current battle music plays very prominently, making it easier to pull off combo attacks. This can be especially helpful for tracks where the beat isn't quite obvious, or ones that have an unusual time signature. The only exceptions to this are the fights against the Masked Man, who apparently lacks a heartbeat (and their song is in twenty-nine sixteenths time). Also used as an indicator that things are getting serious when the Ultimate Chimera is around; the music doesn't change, but you hear Lucas' heartbeat speed up as the beast closes in on him and his party.
• Myst III plays the aptly-named "A Heartbeat Away" track as you explore J'nanin.
• The A Nightmare on Elm Street PC game had this and only this for its soundtrack.
• The Intellivision game Night Stalker had a constant heartbeat sound in the background.
• OMORI: When Omori comes back to White Space at the end of the day a faint heartbeat can be heard in the background. It stops every time Omori stabs himself to wake up as Sunny in Faraway Town.
• Oracle of Tao has it in a few significant times. Several of them are romantic scenes, however, there are two major instances where it is used in a non-romantic setting:
  • The first is when the main character, Ambrosia has an existence crisis, and start to fade away. She remembers her friends, and this sound happens right as as she winks back into being.
  • The second is a steadily slowing heartbeat when Ambrosia dies of old age.
• ''Distorted Evolution'' from Parasite Eve 2 features the heartbeat rhythm.
• In Persona for the Playstation, the track "Awakening" (played when someone calls their Persona for the first time) has a brief period in the beginning with and obvious heartbeat sound. It continues through the remainder of the song in a more subdued form. Sadly, this song, like most of the others, wasn't retained in the Updated Re-release.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 during the Pokemon World Tournament Finals, a heartbeat can be heard at the start of the battle music.
  • Pokémon Legends: Arceus: A heartbeat can be heard in Giratina's battle theme. As a remix of its theme from Pokémon Platinum, it also includes a section that leads up to the sound of a heart monitor flatlining, during which the heartbeat is clearly audible until it stops.
  • In Pokémon Snap, a heartbeat sound is heard when Mew is separated from its camera-obscuring bubble in the Rainbow Cloud, the final stage of the game.
  • Hey You, Pikachu!: Toward the end of the song "Goodbye Forever Pikachu," soft beats resembling Pikachu's heartbeats play, to heartbreaking effect. This theme is reused in Hey You, Pikachu!'s Spiritual Successor, Pokémon Channel, as the track "Stargazing."
  • From Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team, Mt. Thunder Peak (both the original and the remastered version in the remake) features a pulsing, heartbeat-esque rhythm in the background, along with what sounds like the rumbling of thunder in parts of the song.
• The SNES port of Populous had a heartbeat superimposed on the game's ambient music track. The heartbeat played at about 120 beats per minute as long as the computer player wasn't winning by a large margin over the human player. If it was, the heart rate would increase as the computer came closer and closer to victory and decrease if the human player made a comeback. The heart rate capped at a ridiculous 480 BPM, just before the computer wiped the human player off the map, and stopped completely when the human player lost their last follower.
• Portal 2 uses two distinct heartbeats with a BGM Override for dramatic effect in the final portal shot of the game.
• Prince of Persia has a heartbeat soundtrack accompanying the Death's Hourglass cutscenes between levels. Later on, the heartbeat is replaced by a more urgent-sounding piano ostinato following the same rhythm, and if time runs out, resulting in the Princess's death, it slows to a halt, followed by a funeral dirge.
• In Radiant Historia, an ominous heartbeat-like sound is heard just before the villains' secret weapon is used.
• RayStorm uses this in the pre-Final Boss cue, appropriately titled "Heart Land" on the soundtrack.
• Resident Evil:
  • Resident Evil – Code: Veronica has two versions in some of the "room transition" cutscenes. The more ponderous one happens when it's implied that something scary will happen in the room you're entering, and a much faster and more frantic version plays over every transition after the Self-Destruct Mechanism of the day gets activated.
  • "Cold Sweat" from Resident Evil 4.
• Rez features this at the very end of Stage 5, once you've cleared the Boss Rush and are on your way to Eden's chamber. Bonus points for tying into the image flashes you see as each phase of Eden is reawakened— which all feature some aspect of life, including a TMI-cam-like view of a capillary with pulsing blood.
• Used as a low-health warning of sorts in Rift, along with desaturated graphics and muffled standard game sounds.
• In Risk of Rain the main theme has a heartbeat segment somewhere, although you likely won't hear it without a headset.
• Zig-zagged in "Rhythm Doctor". Gameplay consists of pressing a button in time with a character's heartbeat, but the heartbeats move in very irregular ways, and each character has their own sound for their heart- none of which are actual heartbeat sounds.
• In Samurai Shodown 1, The first part of Amakusa's stage theme is a really creepy sounding heartbeat. Creatively, arranged soundtracks replaced this with slow, steady taiko drums.
• The track Spooky Scape from Saya no Uta has a heartbeat in the background. It plays throughout most of the song, but it's difficult to notice except towards the end.
• Both versions of the hotel in Silent Hill 2, and the Meat Moss-covered alternate hospital patient wing in Silent Hill 3, as heard in the OST track "Heads No. 2." The series as a whole uses heartbeat-like controller vibrations when the hero's health is low.
• In the character creation screen of Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion, a slow, faint heartbeat can be heard as part of the background music. Very fitting, as the player is floating around in a test tube and barely showing any signs of consciousness until you customize them.
• In Superman for the Nintendo 64, a heartbeat sound starts playing when Superman's health gets low.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • The boss theme for Tubba Blubba's Heart in Paper Mario has the sound of a heart beating play just before the song loops.
  • Whenever you get near Champion's Road on the World Crown map of Super Mario 3D World, you will know how challenging the level may be when you hear the heartbeats.
• In Super Mario Maker and Super Mario Maker 2, this is one of the many sound effects the player can put in their levels.
• Tiny Invaders is a Womb Level game where you help the titular aliens infect various humans from their legs up to the brains over the course of fifteen levels per human. What plays in the background changes every five levels as your infection spreads: A steady heartbeat is prominently heard in the first five levels, but is replaced by techno noise and what sounds like a fast motor in the background for the next five. The final five levels (starting, appropriately enough, just after the level whose icon features the heart) have deep and slow ominous, string tones with a quiet, arrhythmic heartbeat-like noise in the background.
• A song used in Tomb Raider 2 and 3 (and 1 in the PC version) is mainly composed of a heartbeat along with some other Hell Is That Noise sounds.
• Tomodachi Life uses a heartbeat in romantic senses where a Mii is about to confess their love or during proposals (it speeds up when the Mii is about to pop the question). A heartbeat along with a violin is used in a rare sense when a Mii is ready to propose to his or her sweetheart.
• From Touhou Project, the track "Fires of Hokkai" (from Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object) starts with a heavy drumbeat layered over a sample of a heartbeat, leading up to the final boss.
• Undertale:
  • The song "Heartache" that plays when you fight Toriel has a distinct, heartbeat-like bass.
  • Additionally, the song "But the Earth Refused to Die" features a heartbeat playing in the background. It's poignant for the scene considering that Undyne is fighting for her life after a blow that should have killed her instantly. Adding her monologue's words about being able to feel everyone's hearts beating as one really drives the theme home.
  • At the very end of a Genocide run, when the Fallen Child speaks to you directly, all you have is a stretching sound coupled with footsteps and a heavy heartbeat.
• Vanquish has the Critical Annoyance type.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour's shadow duelist ambush music, "Card as Blade," features drums akin to a sped-up heart rate—which the player will likely be feeling as well if it's a hard duelist.

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