Shovel Knight’s Soundtrack Is Perfectly Anthemic

The writing staff at Retrovolve loves their 8-bit soundtracks, and Shovel Knight delivers some absolutely killer jams with a pedigree.

Yacht Club Games’ Shovel Knight was a Kickstarter success back in 2013, having raised more than $300,000 to fund the indie game (they were originally asking for $75,000). While Shovel Knight is not yet a retro game (someday it will be!), its 8-bit visual style and soundtrack are a throwback to Capcom’s NES era (we’ve compared Shovel Knight to DuckTales and Mega Man).

And speaking of the soundtrack, Shovel Knight has a very special sound team: Jake “Virt” Kaufman and Manami “I wrote the Mega Man soundtracks” Matsumae (Matsumae only contributed two tracks to the soundtrack, but that’s still something to be excited about). The result is better listened to than described.

I’d like to point out something amazing about this soundtrack: it’s both anthemic and memorable. Try humming the theme from Call of Duty: Ghosts, for comparison. It exists, but I bet you can’t hum a single bar. But after listening to the Shovel Knight tune I posted above, even just once, it will undoubtedly be stuck in your head.

Music has been relegated to ambiance in most modern video games, but sound teams like these that make lasting impressions with catchy, inspiring tunes. By “inspiring,” I mean people are writing their own lyrics to the songs and making rock operas in stylistic tribute over 20 years later.

Kudos to you, Mastumae. Two decades out and you’re still the queen of chiptunes.