8-bit, 6 tracks

Digital board games are a thing unto themselves. On the one hand, they are very convenient, as they eliminate annoying things like setting up and taking down the game and looking up rules. On the other hand, for many board gamers, it is precisely this tactile aspect that makes the game fun. And the risk of one of the less emotionally stable players ending the game prematurely by abruptly rearranging the underlying furniture construction is just as present in digital games by pressing the off button. In other words, you either hate them or you love them. Or you simply don't really care about them.

Personally, I've had relatively little contact with the genre. The exceptions are the digital version of The Settlers of Catan and the purely virtual Dr. Drago's Madcap Chase. In fact, nowadays I'm more familiar with the reverse situation, where a successful video game like Dorfromantik is turned into a board game. But we can ignore all that, because in this review I want to talk about the soundtrack to a game that was released before I was born on a console I never owned: the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES for short.

The game in question is called Pictionary, which has the apt subtitle “The Game of Video Quick Draw.” The concept is quite simple: we have to successfully navigate a board, but we can only roll the dice to move once we have correctly identified a drawn term. This is hidden at the beginning and is only gradually revealed by successfully completing a mini-game similar to Space Invaders or other simple game concepts. Not very revolutionary, but quite well implemented for its time.

What didn't fit the game at all, however, was Tim Follin's soundtrack. In the 90s, the British composer wrote some really interesting scores for less-than-stellar games such as Solstice, Silver Surfer and Plok! He also gave Pictionary a composition that is surprisingly good. The six tracks of the score fully exploit the capabilities of 8-bit chip music and squeak wonderfully retro from the speakers.

Co-reviewer Michael Eades, aka yewknee, writes on his blog the following:

As the phrase goes - there was no need for the NES Pictionary soundtrack to go this hard but it sure goes hard. Composer Tim Follin is, apparently, notorious for pushing the limits of the chiptune format and created some of the most memorable soundtracks of the era.

I particularly like the fast-paced and action-packed theme Pictionary, which sounds more like an action game such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and not at all like a board game. Minigame 1, on the other hand, with its opening melody, comes very close to infringing on the copyright of Queen's hit song Another One Bites the Dust . Overall, really enjoyable, even if I don't have a particular favorite. But definitely an entertaining recommendation for fans of the genre!