Metropolis Street Racer was awesome, lets remember that the game was one of the first that let you drive around real cities and perform stunt like moves to earn points. But the music was truly something special.

MSR was also the first racer to have a radio stations and deejays talking before the music. Much of the soundtrack was satire for popular acts such as Barry White and Will Smith. The soundtrack was composed by Richard Jacques.

Think about how hard it must have been for him, not just making thematic orchestral music but making songs in wildly different genres.

The music straddled the line between satire and flattery. Apart from a couple of tracks you almost could not work out if the songs were written as homage or parody. And that is where the brilliance lay.

It was just fun to cruise about chill/laugh to the music. When PGR came out it eschewed a huge part of what made MSR so fun, they abandoned the original music as piss takes, the mellow and pleasent tones or the funny satire. It became straight up licenced music, annoying rappers of the time. The atmosphere was lost. It melded with the overall tone of the game and gaming at the time where they wanted to abandon fun lighthearted atmosphere for more realism. It was a personal sad day for me, the death of personality.

Gone was MSR, that game I loved so much and in its place was something harder, something darker, something less approachable. Something less gamey.

So here are some samples of the music from MSR - I salute you Mr Jaques.

So instead of annoying rappers, it had parodies of annoying rappers that were so accurate as satire, they were indistinguishable from the real thing?

In short: it had annoying rappers?

gamingeek said:

No, it had a broad spectrum of music, even a smooth jazz station too. It wasn't just rock and rap. The rap stuff was obvious parody. I liked it because it had even stuff like Shania Twain piss takes, indie music, clubbing tunes, jazz, everything basically. And it wasn't cutting satire or anything, more like good natured playfulness.

Like I said, annoying rappers.

But yeah, that parody was hilarious. Someone on the comments is saying it was Will Smith. lol.

My only problem with MSR was the real-time clock.  Everytime I raced in London it was the middle of the night.

I do remember the music, though not fondly. I thought it was cool that they included that amount of content.

I should say, I am going on memory here too. All I remember is a lot of country music.  Did the tracks unlock as you progressed?

gamingeek said:

So only us four played MSR?

I remember how much I anticipated this game, for months. Got it at launch and it was entirely impressive.  It did not have holding power for me though. It was proably because I was expecting a looser, more arcade experience.