Which video games have good jazz music in them?

Apologies for grammar, I'm typing this stream-of-consciousness style. A lot of 90's Taito games, actually, Elevator Action 2 springs to mind, kinda more jazz fusion though.

Also that one DOS PC game "Lollipop" had some nice music by Vibrants, some of their tracks are jazz. The same group made some jazz for Covergirl Strip Poker. Speaking of PC games, Alpha Waves/[[Continuum]] has a nice Adlib jazz title theme.

Oh yeah, The Twisted Tales Of Spike Mc Fang for the SNES is full of old-timey jazz. Go Go Ackman 3 has a nice strip-tease style for the stealth level, but I don't think anything else is jazz in that game.

Space Channel 5 has a licensed jazz track as it's theme, "Mexican Flyer" by Ken Woodman & His Piccadilly Brass.

Arcana Heart has a jazz track called Night Beat...

Mario Kart Wii has a few jazz tracks, I think on the Toad Factory track.

Pokemon Pinball has a jazzy rendition of the Japanese Pokemon anime theme.

OH YEAH! Ragnarok Online, my fave track from the game, Stormy Knight Battle!

Secret of Forest from Chrono Trigger is kinda jazzy...

A lot of the SNES Super Bomberman games have jazzy tracks, and in the US Genesis game there's an awesome track called Jammin' Jungle...

Oh and let's not forget the Amiga version of Wonderdog...

If I think of more I'll let you know...

'Smooth City Night' from Spore Galactic Adventures.

Thanks guys. That was all really good.

Hotel Dusk and Last Window, particularly if you're aiming for a 70's or early 80's atmosphere.

edited 6th Mar '11 11:36:39 PM by TsundeRay

@Post #12

Speaking of SimCopter, there is also the understated Streets of SimCity, which features fast-paced Jerry Martin jazz numbers.

SimCity 3000's and SimCity 4's jazz soundtrack is also available for free on the official SimCity website. It's actually pretty impressive that an EA-owned studio is still offering something from the games without a price.

edited 7th Mar '11 12:01:24 AM by MalagasyParrot

Unfortunately it has no id3 tagging, so watch out for that.

That's somehow a problem? 0_o

Jake Hunter also has nice jazz and near-jazz for its soundtrack. If you intend to honestly play it, though, get the extended version, "Memories of the past".

This might be an obscure one, but it's got a pretty heavy hitter. Jack Orlando, a polish point'n'click adventure game tapped Harold "Crowning Music Of Awesome" Faltermeyer to compose a sweet, sweet jazz/swing soundtrack in the style of Film Noir for the game. Here's the tune from the intro.

deBlob is probably closer to funk than Jazz, but it's good stuff.

Oh Jesus, I had no idea anyone else had even heard of Jake Orlando, let alone owned a copy of it. That opening theme is beautiful, it makes me wanna go pop in the CD again.

Oh, by the way TC, pretty much any film noir based game is gonna have good jazz. It just goes with the genre.

Grim Fandango. I could listen to that soundtrack all day every day.

That's somehow a problem? 0_o

Well, I like to have more information about songs that come up on shuffle than «Unknown Artist on Unknown Album».

It's easy - don't use players that display "Unknown" instead of the filename for untagged files. Which is why I don't use the default player on my iPhone. That and it doesn't allow mixing playlists together like it's the eighties or something, a feature almost all MP 3 players (and mobile phones!) of other companies have had since before iPhones.

id3 editing isn't that hard. I made it a habit to screen and edit these using a media player each time I download new MP3s through my PC, like I've always been doing the past 10 years.

edited 7th Mar '11 8:19:48 AM by MalagasyParrot

Sonic Adventure: VS E-101 Beta.

edited 23rd Jun '11 1:25:57 PM by miru

Schitzo mentioned The King of Fighters, so I see it fitting that I introduce you to Iori Yagami and his swinging sax.

A personal favorite of mine is his first theme "Arashi no Saxophone" (Stormy Saxophone) from KOF '95.

SNK in general has a pretty good selection of jazz themes (they do a variety of musical genres). For example, Blue Mary's Blues (Real Bout Fatal Fury) and Swing the House! (Art of Fighting 2). Seriously, SNK's music department was chock-ful of musical genius.

edited 23rd Jun '11 1:49:02 PM by X2X

Portal 2 has some smooth jazz in 'ere.

Oh yeah, that's right:

I like this better

edited 23rd Jun '11 2:03:26 PM by Aminatep

Sorry to necro, but Skullgals has some nice jazzy stuff in there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEnA-D3d_3Q

(La la la la la la, la la la la)

edited 2nd Mar '13 7:55:47 AM by TropeEater

This is a pretty sizeable list/post so apologies in advance.

Peggy Lee

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Peggy_Lee

is a jazz singer, yeah? She shows up in the soundtrack for Fallout: New Vegas, singing "Why Don't You Do Right?" which sounds more jazzy than her other track on the record, "Johnny Guitar"

Helen Forrest (as seen here)

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Helen_Forrest

sings "Mad About the Boy"

Billie Holiday -

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Billie_Holiday

sings a couple of songs on the Fallout 3 soundtrack - "Crazy He Calls Me" and "Easy Livin"

Nat King Cole,

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Nat_King_Cole -

one of the greatest jazz singers of all time, (along with Billie Holiday) shows up on Fallout: New Vegas singing "Love Me as Though There Were No Tomorrow".

I think that is enough to go on with for now, eh?

It also depends on what kind of jazz you want - a lot of video games with original jazz tunes these days use jazz-house, jazz-soul or jazz-funk (basically some kind of jazz fusion). Big band shows up in video games only every once in a while, (though a lot of the time it's kind of stereotypical sounding Theme Park Version stuff like the stuff in Marvel Vs Capcom 2).

The Sonic series has always had a lot of R&B, funk and disco-type tunes to it, and several of the games mix those styles with jazz: as someone already pointed out, Rouge from Sonic Adventure 2 has a very Fertile Ground-esque group of themes. Sonic Unleashed is all over the place when it comes to R&B and jazz - tons, tons of jazz fusion in both the Day and the Night stages, and a lot of different R&B types and smooth jazz themes for the Hub worlds.

The Mario series has a lot of jazz in it, and I think might be the only game series that has Dixieland-style stuff. I think someone over in Nintendo really likes jazz music, since they've associated it with Donkey Kong, and it pops up in Wario games as well (then again, that might be because Shake-It's music was composed by Tomoyo Tomita, who seems to really enjoy jazz music).

Someone already brought up Street Fighter 3's jazz-hip hop, and yeah. It's cool. Atypical of Capcom, too. Speaking of fighting games, in a similar discussion a while back someone got me onto Slayer's theme from Guilty Gear, which is more like rock with jazz overtones but is definitely awesome (it's sounds kind of like what they might've been trying with Marvel Vs Capcom 2, but actually good).

Of course, the crowning series for video game jazz (in my opinion) is Sim City, and to a lesser extent the other Maxis/EA games that have Jerry Martin for a composer - the end result is always some really well put together jazz. Sim City 3 has one of my favorite video game soundtracks of all time:

edited 2nd Mar '13 8:48:55 AM by KnownUnknown

Skullgirls has some pretty swinging jazz, though I'm not sure if it's fused with anything other than possibly techno. Here's an example:

I wonder, would Riders of the Light (Bayonetta) count as some form of jazz? If not The Gates of Hell certainly would…

Rose Guns Days definitely has some good stuff in terms of cheery or relaxing jazz musics, considering the universe (mafia and stuff).

edited 3rd Mar '13 7:44:52 AM by Lyendith

What is point of necroing at least a year old thread where OP asks for something?

Oh, and The Blackwell Series

edited 3rd Mar '13 7:53:26 AM by SpookyMask