Who wrote SimCity's music?

The series begins almost without a composer. The DOS credits for the original SimCity (1989) list no music credit at all: Sound is credited to Steve Hales and Will Wright. The first full SimCity score belongs to Nintendo's version. For the SNES SimCity, the composer was Soyo Oka, who told Time Extension what she was aiming for: where Pilotwings was dynamic, SimCity was static, so she wanted music that would not annoy or stress players while they built their cities, something soothing that still left a positive impression. Her "Metropolis" theme began life in the unreleased NES version and was arranged for the SNES game.

SimCity 2000 is where the credits need care. The printed DOS music credit names three people: Brian Conrad, Sue Kasper and Justin McCormick. But the research notes for Sim-Melody, the Japanese arranged album of the score, record that the game was in fact composed by Sue Kasper alone, with Conrad, McCormick and Michael Perry serving as sound driver and support technicians, a finding the album's researchers confirmed by contacting Kasper herself. The game's own credit lines agree with the joke version of the same fact: "Sue Kasper gave up a promising career as a karaoke singer to create the music for SimCity 2000."

Which brings the record to Jerry Martin, and to a correction this page exists to make. Martin did not write the original SimCity 2000 score. His work on that game sits at its edges: he shares the Maxis/SimCity 2000 Intro Music credit, with Brian Conrad, on the CD Collection, and he is credited with Music and Sound on the 1996 PlayStation version. His centerpiece work starts when he joins Maxis in 1996 as Studio Audio Director and Lead Composer. On SimCity 3000 (1999) he is Sound and Music Director, one of six credited composers, and the composer of every track on the 1999 soundtrack CD except one, "Concrete Jungle," shared with Marc Russo.

On SimCity 4 (2003) Martin is Audio Director, on a composers list of ten credits: Martin, Marc Russo, Robert Kauker, Kent Jolly, The Humble Brothers, Kirk Casey, Anna Karney, Walt Szalva, Bob Marshall and Michael Z. Land. The soundtrack album, Music from SimCity 4, credits Music Direction to Martin and gives him seven of its thirteen tracks outright. He also holds the Music Design credit on the Rush Hour expansion. The series then changes hands completely: the 2013 SimCity has an orchestral score by Chris Tilton, which Video Game Music Online rated four of five, noting that the jazz and light rock of 3000 and 4 had largely been replaced, and that audio director Kent Jolly cited the minimalism of Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Terry Riley as an influence.