Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today the zombies are coming—and bringing some funky, cute tunes with them—in the original Plants vs. Zombies.
2009’s Plants vs. Zombies (playlist / longplay / VGMdb) is an all-time classic tower defense and a game that I would put up with Tetris. Seriously. It’s very good. The sequels and spin-offs have been fine, but none of them capture the original’s simple mix of real-time strategy, cartoon visuals, and comedy. And throughout, all the music slaps. Every song in Plants vs. Zombies is great.
Let’s take a listen:
PopCap Games / AlbirdVampPrince (YouTube)
The main menu music, “Crazy Dave,” is seared into my brain. It starts out as this cute little tune with some haunting reverb and plucky piano notes, then suddenly the beat drops and the song goes from 10 to 100. Then toward the end of the song it gets even funkier as it wraps. And this is just the main menu track. The next track most players will hear is “Grasswalk.”
PopCap Games / AlbirdVampPrince (YouTube)
This is like perfect thinking music, which is great because you spend a lot of time in Plants vs. Zombies pondering where to put peashooters and sunflowers. (Put your sunflowers at the front of the stage, trust me.) This same song changes when tons of zombies come at you during the horde sections of levels. It gets some louder drums and has a bit more of a marching-off-to-war vibe.
The Plants vs. Zombies soundtrack was composed by Laura Shigihara, who has gone on to create some great music in other games including Super Meat Boy and World of Warcraft. She also provided the vocals for the Sunflower in the catchy closing song “Zombies On Your Lawn,” This fun track went viral (24m views as of today) before the game came out in 2009, and some folks thought it was an April Fool’s joke rather than a promo for an upcoming game. “Plants vs. Zombies” does sound pretty ridiculous.
PopCap Games / Plants vs. Zombies (YouTube)
I still randomly sing this song to myself, and if someone overhears I simply say it’s from Plants vs. Zombies and they often smile and nod. “Oh. I think I remember that song. Loved that game…”
That’s it for today’s Morning Music! Go plant some sunflowers and defend your brainz. Or just go hang out in the comments below and chat about whatever. See you tomorrow!