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The Impact of Jungle Music in 90s Video Game Development

Jungle music was found in countless games from the early 90s. This article goes over what jungle is, where it comes from, and why it was the perfect match for PlayStation & Nintendo 64 games.

Popular names of the ragga jungle style are Serial Killaz, Rebel MC, General Levy, Benny Page, Shy FX, Top Cat, Sizzla, M-Beat, Krinjah, and Jacky Murda. Wanting to distance themselves from this environment and aiming to gain more mainstream space, producers began to tweak the formula further, removing the ragga and reggae influences from their tunes but keeping the same fast BPM breaks and heavy basslines. Fun fact: Tim Wright mentioned in an interview that he did not really enjoy electronic music culture before his work on Wipeout, and he was actually disappointed when the marketing team gave him a box of EDM albums to serve "as inspiration" for the new game's soundtrack.

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