Soundtracks is where we take a look back at the use of licensed music in games. Go here if you want to know more.

Welcome! If you thought the premise of this feature started off thin and has only got thinner since, get ready for the barrel to be scraped. By which I mean, in celebration of the likely near end of this series, we’re going out with a bang with a couple of specials.

This time, we’ve got a double-feature, covering the racing games Juiced and Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights, two of the sexiest/sexist-est racers of the mid-00s. (No, of course the two games being together in one piece isn’t just because I don’t know enough about the songs on either – weren’t you listening? This is a double-whammy, a super-extra-special feature!)
 

Juiced

To be fair, while the first game was the subject of a notoriously abhorrent TV ad, its content was comparatively inoffensive by 00s standards. And it was a fairly good racer, if you ignored the ludicrous and punishing auto-save feature that most sane gamers would use a workaround for.
 

Oakenfold – Ready Steady Go
(Perfecto/Maverick, 2002)

Did you know? Oakenfold was the stage name of Paul Oakenfold, who after years of being a superstar DJ decided to make a foray into releasing music under a new, mysterious pseudonym.

In my mind, his most high-profile single release from debut album Bunkka was Starry Eyed Surprise, which featured guest vocals from Shifty Shellshock of one-hit wonder Crazy Town. The song was fairly wank, while Shifty soon disappeared into the kind of future you might imagine for a briefly-famous 00s rock singer: musical irrelevance, personal problems, and reality show appearances.

Ready Steady Go is probably better known, though, because it’s been used in about a million other things, and sounds exactly like a song from 2002 that was subsequently used in lots of soundtracks (Soundtracks) would sound. You know the bit in The Bourne Identity when he drives the old Mini down some stairs? It’s from that. But it may as well have been in xXx, or the remake of The Italian Job with Mark Wahlberg. Or Ocean’s Twelve or something.

Oh, and vocal duties for this one are performed by Grange Hill’s Asher D.
 

Kasabian – Club Foot
(Paradise/RCA, 2004)

And speaking of songs that have been used on lots of soundtracks (Soundtracks) then this one takes some beating. You’ll almost certainly have heard this one if you’ve ever watched football, an advert for football, the 00s football-themed movie Goal!, or played the football games Pro Evolution Soccer 5 and FIFA 2013.

Oh yes, these lads love football alright. And Salvador Dali, as they once told Q magazine [citation needed]. You can like footy and art, know what I mean?

The 00s Oasis for people who still liked Oasis in the 00s, in the eyes of the music press Kasabian seemed to alternate between being feted and mocked, a bit like I just did there, for being basic and laddy.
 

Roni Size feat. Fallacy – The Streets
(V Recordings/Thrive, 2004)

1997 was the first and only time I watched the Mercury Music Prize, on account of the fact I finally knew what music was and had bought some of the albums that were nominated. Not New Forms by Roni Size & Reprazent, though, which won, astonishing Radiohead fans for years to come. What about OK Computer, mate? Unbelievable, mate. Best album of the last 25 years, mate.

I dabbled with dance music but never quite got into drum and bass, with the 140 minute running time of this double-CD effort likely putting me off. I did buy Earthling, David Bowie’s drum and bass inspired effort, and have a soft spot for Circles, a minor hit for Adam F (who – fact-fans – is the son of 70s glam rocker Alvin Stardust). But that’s the sum total of my experience.

This one sounds exactly like a song that should feature in a game like Juiced.
 

Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights

Hot Import Nights was a bit of a step backwards, both in terms of taste and gameplay, with inexplicably heavy use of sexy ladies on the menu screens, and slightly moribund on-track action.
 

Prodigy – Voodoo People (Pendulum Remix)
(XL, 2005)

Hang on, aren’t Pendulum drum and bass, too? [They would say not – Ed.] Ah. When they were popular they sounded like the kind of thing I might like, but then I bought the album Hold Your Colour and found it all a bit loud, which in turn made me feel like the kind of person who thought he should get into something to appear more ‘with it’ but then didn’t like that thing and realised he uses the phrase ‘with it’, meaning he’s definitely not ‘with it’.

While the 1994 original would arguably be a little bit of an old-school inclusion for a game like this, this extremely noisy remix (from the 2005 Prodigy best of, Their Law) makes it sound appropriately anti-social, and the kind of thing that a person who puts a great big exhaust on their car might like.

Possibly the best thing about Juiced 2, apart from my Guy Ritchie avatar.
 

Queens of the Stone Age – Go With the Flow
(Interscope, 2003)

In the review, I joked about Juiced 2 only having two recognisable songs in it, as if the game was supposed to use your MP3 collection but only picked up a couple of random songs. (I’m not sure I ever managed to use a ‘play your own music’ feature from a 90s/00s game successfully, and dumping a load of MP3s into a directory for Test Drive Unlimited led to the sound of the BBC’s Test Match Special cricket podcast accompanying me around the streets of Hawaii).

Anyway, those two songs are the ones we’re covering here. While Go With the Flow is definitely a choon, from the mega-successful QOTSA album Songs for the Deaf, it seems more of an old muscle car type song than one appropriate for the gaudy delights of this street racing title. The video even features the band playing on the back an old Chevy truck.

There are muscle cars in Hot Import Nights, but they handle in exactly the same way as the Hondas and Nissans, and you’re encouraged to paint them in bright colours and put stickers on them in order to impress the crowds of baying lunk-headed fans and sexy menu ladies.

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Right. Who says double features have to be twice as long as usual? Not me. Efficiency, I call it.

Next time: some kind of season/series finale.