The enduring appeal of Robocop for Game Boy’s sad, shimmering theme song
Rarely can a film’s video game adaptation say it improved upon the film from which it drew inspiration, but the 1989 Game Boy version of Robocop, Paul Verhoeven’s ultra-violent genre classic, has at least one thing on its source material: An unforgettable theme song. No shade to Basil Poledouris’ score, but the game’s opening notes—you can hear them above—evoke a luminous, yet mournful, atmosphere from moment one.
Despite the game barely making a dent in the zeitgeist, the song itself has oddly persevered. Its latest resurgence came a few nights ago when comedian Mike Drucker drunkenly took to Twitter to ignite a conversation about the best video game music. It wasn’t long before writer Joshua Topolsky recalled the theme, which he went on to write about for The Outline.