Most other first-person shooters had ambient music when Serious Sam was released. However, Damjan Mravunac, the main composer for the entirety of the Serious Sam series, went directly for something fitting for action, and kept following. And it paid off, big time.
Serious Sam 1
Serious Sam: The First Encounter- "Let's get SERIOUS!" Nothing sets off The War Sequence like "WAA
AAAAAAAAAAAR!" - "Dunes" is without question the most iconic track in the entire franchise. Not so much the ambient tune, which is a perfectly fine mood-setter in its own right, but the combat Medium steals the show. It is not only featured in one of the game's best levels, but it has been remixed several times in subsequent entries.
- The Great Pyramid is also brilliant. (Better quality, but slightly different version of the same tune.)
- The final boss is accompanied by a track simply called "Ugh Zan III". It's like a rock version of The Phantom of the Opera. Awesome!
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
- The absolutely awesome "Jingle Bells" remix from the level "Land of the Damned".
- The Grand Cathedral. An unexpected but undeniably good deviation from the rest of the game's pieces, perfectly fitting for the final level of the game. So good that it will make anything you do epic while listening to it.
- All three boss themes are instrumentals provided by the Croatian heavy metal band Undercode and all of them are absolute bangers:
- Kukulkán's theme is made of equal parts of badassery and The Power of Rock, perfect for a test in combat from an actual Mayan deity.
- The Exotech Larva has a pulse-pounding track fitting for fighting a monstrous failed experiment underneath the Tower of Babil.
- Mordekai's theme, as much of an Anti-Climax Boss as he is, gives the fight a great sense of finality for a long adventure.
- Kukulkán's theme
Serious Sam II
The audio team got the music right in Serious Sam 2, too.- Planet Doomed Canyon Fight takes an earlier riff and puts a darker tone to it.
- The Greendale level theme has the orchestra kicking in. Specially during the fight.
- The final level music which rivals the ones found in last level in other installments.
- Mdigbo - City Metropolis.
Serious Sam 3: BFE
- The game gets a powerful Real Song Theme Tune in the form of Undercode's neck-breaking piece of Heavy Metal, "Final Fight". Starting with a hard riff that gives way to hard-hitting bass and drum, this mid-tempo will have you headbanging to no end.
- How does BFE actually start? With "Wild Life", a neat rock song ideal for travelling on a motorbike, eerily similar to Steppenwolf's classic "Born to be Wild". This song is reused in the teaser trailer for Serious Sam 4 and just to point out the similarity, it also begins with Sam riding on a motorbike.
- Guardian of Time has a level theme which gets more intense as the player slowly works their way towards the final boss.
- Boss Fight (Strings), which is a remixed version of "Dunes (Medium)".
- For your first real taste of horde fighting in the mosque, you are greeted with Mosque Fight.
- The aptly titled War Themes:
- War 1 - Hero, with its vocal version, is used in the suitably epic trailer and when you fight the first horde of Beheaded Kamikazes.
- War 2 - Storm plays during the first Warship battle, in which Sam chases off a warship which is stated to be strong enough to require strategic weapons to take down the hard way.
- War 3 - Final Fight, for when you first fight a Khnum, which plays way too shortly considering how quickly you can kill it with either C4 or the Cannon. Song is still epic, though.
- War 4 - Gladiator, while you have your rematch with the Warship and bring the giant bastard down for good while simultaneously pummeling the literal hordes teleporting out of its hatches.
- War 1 - Hero
- Temples Fight starts out somewhat foreboding before eventually picking up. It is especially well suited for The Power Of The Underworld, the level it appears in, as monsters usually don't start spawning until the intensity picks up.
Serious Sam 4 / Siberian Mayhem
Main Game- Vatican Suite starts as a peaceful track which wouldn't feel out of place in Assassin's Creed, then becomes pure fucking badassery with Heavy Metal music mixed with Ominous Latin Chanting and orchestra when the fight starts. It is so awesome, in fact, that it was played on Croatian national television.
- The "Jingle Bells" Remix played during the Christmas event selectable in the options is a Hard Rock track very reminiscent of the one used in The Second Encounter level "Land of the Damned".
- Hero Too, a remixed version of "Hero" that plays during The War Sequence before the final boss fight of 4, featuring guitar work from Robin Finck.
Siberian Mayhem
- Freedom Too, a remix of the Kukulkan the Wind God boss theme from The Second Encounter, with added dramatic Latin chanting and orchestra, for the final boss fight of the Siberian Mayhem DLC.
