And I’m back!

Yes, I haven’t had a column the last two weeks. I wrote one the weekend before my vacation but forgot one the weekend after, which is a rookie mistake. Then I got sick.

I’m sure our illustrious editor Roman Gokhman expects me to write a column of songs about being sick, because that’s 100-percent my personal brand. I expect that from me, too. But, shockingly, I’m not. I don’t want to think about it, but also because I don’t want to subject you to the details.

Instead, I’m going with something more fun: video games!

Next week (or yesterday if you dropped $100 for the premium edition or a staggering $300 for the “Constellation” edition) will see the release of “Starfield,” the latest game by legendary studio Bethesda. This is a major event because, while the rest of the entertainment industry has focused on cranking out quick and generic content as fast as possible, Bethesda gives us an expansive, obsessively detailed, almost eerily lifelike world every four to five years.

Well, usually. After “Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” in 2011 and “Fallout 4” in 2015, we’ve gotten nothing from that genre. And they used the extra time to make something even bigger than they ever have. Rather than one region of the post-apocalyptic United States or the fantasy continent Tamriel, there are something like a thousand planets to go to.

I’m pretty excited.

To celebrate, let’s listen to five of the best songs from video games.

---

Friendship — “Let’s Not Talk About It”

What, you don’t think this is video game music? Listen closely. Do you hear it?

This was composer Koji Kondo’s inspiration for the music from the underground levels in “Super Mario Bros.” And I use “inspiration” charitably because the “Mario” music is basically just the bass line of this song. The music for when you get a Starman is based on “Summer Breeze” by Piper and the main theme was based on “Sister Marian” by T-Square, which you don’t hear for about a minute until suddenly you get the exact notes with which you’re familiar.

Back then nobody cared about video games, so presumably this wasn’t a big deal. Now there would be the world’s largest lawsuit.

Deep Purple — “April”

Then, after not getting sued, Kondo repeated that same trick!

Try to guess this one, too. I’ll give you a chance to hear it before I tell you. Listen for about 25 to 30 seconds, and if you don’t pick it up, 50 to 60.

Yep, this song inspired basically every song from “The Legend of Zelda.” If you listen to the whole thing you can hear the core of the main title theme and the dungeon theme very clearly. Not quite as exact as some of the “Mario songs” but it is absolutely there.

That said, I don’t take away from Kondo’s work on “Zelda.” Even though he got to the two-minute mark of “April” and just started taking notes, it’s still a great song that’s turned into a timeless classic in its own right.

Hirokazu Tanaka — “Tetris Type A”

This one is lightly stolen, too, but from a traditional Russian folk song called “Korobeiniki,” so I’m giving it a pass. “Tetris” was a Russian game, the title screens had a Russian theme on the original Game Boy edition, and “Korobeiniki” is public domain, so rearranging it to be more simple and uptempo is fair game.

Most importantly, this music plays in my head whenever I’m trying to stack anything, pack a suitcase, or cram things in the trunk of a car. Ask Gokhman; a while back I helped him take a load of junk to the dump and caught myself humming it while trying to fit it all in the bed of the truck. [Gokhman note: True. The song also seems to never be too far from the public consciousness. Check out this song by K-pop group aespa, who just played it at Outside Lands].

Christopher Tin — “Baba Yetu”

Now we get to more modern songs, by which I mean songs from the era when budgets are big enough to commission wholly original music.

“Baba Yetu,” the main theme from “Civilization IV,” was the first song from a video game to win a Grammy, back in 2011. And it won for Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals against non-game music, since this was before it got its own category! Considering that Grammy voters are 1) stubborn and set in their ways and 2) historically really bad at voting for the best songs in a given category, that it won is a major achievement.

---

Jeremy Soule — “Dragonborn”

Finally, in keeping with the inspiration for this column, I have to include a song from a previous Bethesda game.

“Skyrim” is a vast, epic game set in a fantasy version of Northern Europe, complete with lots of ice and Viking-inspired Nords. If you listened to the song, I didn’t need to tell you any of that because it really does inspire you to go wage battle with or against a horde of Vikings on a snow-covered landscape.

Now watch, “Starfield” won’t have an original soundtrack and this column will look ridiculous. Fortunately for us all, I’ll be too busy playing to care.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at @bayareadata.press on BlueSky or @BayAreaData on Twitter X, even though he rarely if ever uses it anymore.