If there's one thing every culture across the world shares, it's music. From the beginning of time, people have been finding ways to make music, from the sound of their own voice to the simple rhythmic thumping of objects. Eventually, that gave us instruments, one of the best ways of making music!
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Games, of course, have plenty of music, but sometimes it can be fun to view that in a more meta layer. Some games let you make your own music with instruments, or they're a core detail of a character. They're a great visual piece, but they also lend some extra strength to a game's soundtrack too.
10 Guilty Gear - Marlene
Of the many fighting games that exist in the world, Guilty Gear is absolutely some of the more unique ones. Each game is astoundingly gorgeous, but there's also something powerful to the characters' names. Sol Badguy, Happy Chaos, That Man. Pretty self-explanatory, honestly.
Of those many stylish and mysterious characters is I-No. Just about nothing is known about her definitively, though she does travel through time with Marlene, her guitar! Marlene is a green foam colour, based heavily on the Starplayer TV guitar. She uses it in all of her attacks, which a guitar shouldn't be able to survive, but does anyway.
9 Beat Saber - The Beat Sabers
Music games are a tried and true genre of games. People love playing along to their favourite songs, be that trying to match the beat or dancing to the rhythm. There are even all the guitar and drum controllers to help with them. And then there's Beat Saber.
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In Beat Saber, the game is more of a battle. You use the titular Beat Sabers to slash away at musical blocks coming at you in every which direction. It's an exhilarating experience that'll make you feel euphoric, and you're doing it all with some pretty cool instruments.
8 Hi-Fi Rush - Chai's Guitar
Do you know what's an incredibly underrated genre of video games? Character-action games, where the music and the character are at the forefront of everything. What's a beloved genre? Anything musical. What do you get when you mix them together? Hi-Fi Rush.
Everything about Hi-Fi Rush feels like a sensory overload in the greatest way. It's beaming with colour and blasting with music, rebellious acts at the core of the game. In fact, Chai's trusty guitar itself is even cobbled together, the perfect symbol of the game. Plus, it sounds and fights pretty damn great.
7 Saints Row 4 - Dubstep Gun
The Saints Row series is an odd one, existing in this middle-ground of competing with Grand Theft Auto with a blend of satire and realism, before diving off the deep end of surrealism, and back to something slightly more grounded again. Delightfully inconsistent.
That inconsistency bred one of the more unusual weapons in gaming: the Dubstep Gun. It plays, as the name implies, dubstep music. The song itself is dependent on the gun's outfit, giving you a bit more freedom to remix your play. Some people would argue it's not really an instrument, but then do a lot of things in Saints Row 4 make sense?
6 Samba De Amigo - Maracas
Samba de Amigo was originally launched in 1999, though it is likely known more through guest appearances than the game itself. In fact, until the most recent game Party Central, there was only one game, with the most recent entry being a Wii port in 2008.
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The game features Amigo, a Brazilian Monkey with his maracas, with the game itself also being played with maraca controllers. It was a novel idea for the time, though Amigo the monkey and his maracas have persisted far longer. It's especially nice seeing as instruments like maracas are much rarer to see in games.
5 Warframe - Octavia's Mandachord
Warframe has had a pretty spectacular story, starting off as another free-to-play game to becoming one of the most widely played and well-supported games in the world. At the core of the game are the eponymous warframes. There's a bunch of lore as to what they exactly are, but we'll call them characters with their own abilities for ease and lack of spoilers.
Of the many warframes there are, Octavia is one of the most unique. Named after the musical term, they come equipped with a Mandachord that allows you to create custom tracks that synergise with their abilities. You can even buy different sound effects and share your tracks with other players. If anything, it's one of the most in-depth instruments in gaming.
4 Brutal Legend - Clementine
If there are two things that make perfect sense to combine, it's Jack Black and video games. He's already a beloved portrayal of Bowser in the Super Mario film. Then there's also Jack Black and music, which when you put it into a game gives you Brutal Legend. The perfect combo.
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Double Fine has a history of working with Jack Black, and Brutal Legend had him lending his likeness and voice to the main character, who is basically Jack Black. The game is a wonderful mash-up, from a world inspired by Heavy Metal artworks and RTS gameplay, with main character Eddie Riggs facing it all down with his beloved guitar, Clementine.
3 Devil May Cry 3 - Nevan
Everything about Devil May Cry is a little bit absurd. Beginning as the original Resident Evil 4, it became a whole genre unto itself, creating one of Capcom's most beloved series. Dante is the adored protagonist of Devil May Cry, though his weapons have just as loud a personality.
Devil May Cry 3 serves as a prequel to the Devil May Cry series, detailing his origins as a much more brash character. To channel this, one of the weapons he acquires is an electric guitar called Nevan. It's one of the more complex weapons in the game, but who can really argue when you're playing a sick solo in a chorus of ethereal bats?
2 Monster Hunter - Hunting Horn
Beginning back in 2004, Monster Hunter has only grown with each new entry, now being one of Capcom's most consistently best-selling series. As the name implies, Monster Hunter involves hunting down monsters and gives you plenty of weapons to do it with the greatest possible style and efficiency.
One of these many weapons is the Hunting Horn. Seen by many as a support weapon, the Hunting Horn is a force of its own, wreaking havoc on monsters' skulls while buffing the party in a blissful dance of broken parts. It's a tantalising tool that'll have you dooting tunes to your victory.
1 Ocarina Of Time - The Ocarina Of Time
To be completely honest, this entire list could have been filled with entries just from Zelda. The series has built itself around musical themes, with harps and accordions, glockenspiel and flutes and plenty more. Most iconic of all, of course, is the Ocarina.
Did you know it's almost impossible to search the internet for ocarinas without The Legend of Zelda popping up? That's how connected the two are, and a testament to how much it popularised the instrument in the western world. Of course, the Ocarina of Time itself is renowned in its own right, and started Zelda's love affair with musical motifs in earnest.
NEXT: Games Where You Can Play An Instrument
