Anthems in Video Games

Sounds of the World...

In a previous post we spoke about national anthems and football, and now it is time to talk about anthems in video games. The video game industry is huge and the amount of games available is tremendous. Although these two things are totally different, there are cases of anthems being sung during cutscenes or OST in some video games. In this post I will mention some of these cases that I personally remember and have played.

Source: Pixabay

It is interesting and it is always nice to hear familiar notes while playing a game and say “Wait a minute! I know this…”. So, let’s begin:

• PES & FIFA: These two are the most played football games in every platform. When you play with a national team, short versions of national anthems are played in the background before the start of the match. These versions are not always good and sometimes you can barely hear anything because the sound is too low in comparison to the sound of the crowd in the background.

• Call of Duty World at War: Released in 2008, this game allows us to fight in the Battle of Berlin as a Red Army Soldier and raise the Soviet flag over the Reichstag. In the final cutscene, the player, along with an injured Sergeant Reznov, remove the German flag from the pole and raise the Red banner while the USSR National Anthem sounds in the background

• Worms Armageddon: This was released in 1999 and it was one of my favourite games when I was a kid. In this game, the player can create teams of little worms that will fight until the last man standing using a high arsenal of weapons. In the end of every match, a little song or national anthem (depending of which one the player selected while creating the team) will play for a few seconds. One curious thing is that, as the game was created in 1999, if the player chooses the Russian anthem, it will play Glinka’s song instead of Alexandrov’s anthem.

• Wolfenstein 3D: One of the classic games of the 90s. The game featured a nice version of the Nazi Party official song, which also became an official anthem in the III Reich: The Horst Wessel Lied. The song plays in the opening screen of the game.

• SimCity 4: I must recognize that I play this game until this day. The game allows the player to build entire cities and towns with their own roads, services, neighbourhoods, parks and monuments. Every building, when selected, plays a sound or a melody. If the player selects a monument building which in real life is located on the United States (e.g.: The White House) the first notes of the US National Anthem will play on the background.

• Fallout 3: Released in 2008, this post-apocalyptic fiction game features a radio station that plays many US patriotic songs during the game. However, one of the main songs, which is on the OST but not on the radio, is the Star Spangled Banner, which can be heard if the player listens to the OST.

The list continues, but I have not got the opportunity to play most of those games. What other games do you remember?

Share them with us in the comments!