Real life is terribad right now. What better way to cope than shedding this reality in favour of becoming worryingly invested in the lives of fake videogame people, watching them cock up a grilled cheese as I ignore the fact I haven’t eaten anything for several hours?
Welcome to Critical Hit (formerly known as Soundtrack Sunday), where I celebrate and lament all things videogame music, audio design, and the ways our favourite games make our ears tingle.
If you couldn’t tell, I’m back on a life sim kick. I’ve been having a wicked time decorating houses in Paralives (we don’t talk about the state of my own home), but the hand of nostalgia has also yoinked me by the scruff in the direction of The Sims 2.
Much the same as anyone who grew up in the early 2000s and had access to a family computer, it’s the game that shaped my formative years. That extends to my music taste, too—I literally got into Paramore because the PlayStation 2 had a Simlish version of Pressure, and more recently The Last Dinner Party became a regular rotation in my Spotify playlists thanks to their appearance in The Sims 4: Life and Death trailer.
(Image credit: Electronic Arts)
The Sims and iconic music have always gone hand in hand. EA has somehow convinced a slew of well-respected and rather famous pop stars to nip into a recording studio and do a gobbledegook rendition of their biggest hits. But there is one iconic corner of The Sims discography that does not get even close to the love it deserves—the soundtrack for the Sims 2 expansion, Nightlife.
Nightlife (or as a former PC Gamer writer called it: Sims Slutting About) was the game’s second expansion and it was a banger. A bunch of new romance options, aspirations, community lots, and vampires(!!) made Nightlife the coolest thing out there to tween Mollie. But it’s also the expansion that sparked a love for house music, and that’s all thanks to the fact that EA enlisted some of the best DJs and electronic artists of the 2000s to put a nightclub spin on its best tracks.
To the dancefloor
The Sims 2: Nightlife remixes may be one of my absolute favourite videogame soundtracks to ever exist. DJs like Junkie XL, Adam Freeland, General Midi, Hyper, and Timo Maas and electronic band Lemon Jelly put their unique spins on tracks that were already defining The Sims 2 in its base game and its first expansion, University.
The result is an incredible blend of the playfulness and whimsy that Mark Mothersbaugh’s original score radiates, with all of the dance-worthy heavy bass, whomps, and synths that you’d hear in a real-life nightclub. It’s the sort of sound I had never heard before, and one I’ve never come close to hearing in the 20 years since this soundtrack was conceived.
My absolute favourite remix outta the bunch has to be General Midi’s rendition of Stop and Sim from the University expansion. Its original version is a light and quirky tune—lots of high plucked notes that make for a fresh and youthful track.
General Midi takes the song in the complete opposite direction with tons of low reverb and these deliciously dirty distorted synth sounds that remind me of a speaker being pushed to its absolute limit by heavy bass, the pulsating sound reverberating through the entire plastic casing.
(Image credit: Electronic Arts)
Then there’s the Lemon Jelly version of Sim Time Sim Place. Mothersbaugh’s original score is another light, plucky track that really leans into the game’s playful and bright vibe. Meanwhile Lemon Jelly’s Nick Franglen makes it downright weird (endearing) by kicking off the remix with this glorpy alien-ass synths before slowly building the track to a choir booming out deep “bah bahbahbah bahbahbah bahbahbah” over and over again. It’s something that isn’t even present in the original track, but I absolutely love whatever the hell Franglen was cooking when he made this track.
While I’d call Motherbaugh’s style a little weird (again, endearing), Franglen takes it to straight-up freakytown in the best possible way. It’s weird in a different font, but one that is so downright fitting for The Sims 2 and the Nightlife expansion.
There are a dozen other remixes and I would suggest you go and give them all a listen. The soundtrack is available on Spotify, where I am sure it will make its way into my Wrapped this year for how often I’ve been listening to it.
While I’ve never quite found the same high from other tracks as I have from The Sims 2: Nightlife remixes, I recently saw this excellent TikTok from Will Geraint Drake who compared it to modern works like Charlie XCX’s BRAT.
And you know what? I see it. For all of the iconic music The Sims has pumped out over the years, Nightlife’s remixes are most definitely at the top for me. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if their influence has trickled down into other iconic works over the years.
