Music

Overview

There were few things in City of Heroes that set the mood more than the short pieces of music that played as you moved about the city. Nearly every neighborhood in every zone had unique music that clearly identified where you were, even without seeing what was on the screen.

The styles of music used varied widely, and ranged from soft pop and techno to hard rock and full orchestra. The music used for the original release of the game through Issue 5 consisted of fairly generic synthesized instruments and percussion, which made it more difficult to maintain uniqueness without sounding amateurish.

With the release of City of Villains and Issue 6, the palette of instruments and percussion was completely overhauled which allowed for more realistic and lush arrangements. All zones added or revamped since then (such as Faultline and Rikti War Zone) made use of those updated sounds.

The new music for the Praetorian zones in Going Rogue, and that which was added after Issue 18, was written by award-winning composer Jason Graves. It had a high level of thematic unity, with both melodic and rhythmic motives providing a more coherent immersion while playing through that content. One potential drawback to this composition method, however, was that it could be difficult to discern differences between pieces because they did all sound very similar.

After the shutdown of City of Heroes, a member of the Titan Forums converted the .ogg music files into MP3 format and made an archive available for download.

A Note About Browsing This Page: Most browsers (Edge, Firefox, & Chrome) can play these .ogg audio files within the browser itself just by clicking on the file link. However, Apple's Safari web browser does not have a built-in player to listen to .ogg audio files. For ease of use, try using one of the other browsers mentioned above instead of Safari.

Neighborhood Listings

Hero Zones

This is a consolidated listing of each zone's neighborhoods and the music associated with them. Neighborhoods marked with an asterisk (*) were duplicated or modified from music elsewhere in the game. See the following section for details.

Zone	Neighborhood	Zone	Neighborhood	Zone	Neighborhood	Zone
Outbreak		Atlas Park (Pre-Issue 21)	(Unused)	Atlas Park		Echo: Galaxy City
Sewer Network		Kings Row		The Hollows	Four Seasons (No Music)	Perez Park
Steel Canyon	(Unused)	Skyway City	Aeria Plaza (No Music) Vista Plaza (No Music) The Gruff (No Music)	Boomtown		Echo: Faultline
Faultline		Independence Port		Talos Island		Striga Isle
Dark Astoria (Pre-Issue 22)	(Unused) (Unused)	Echo: Dark Astoria	St. Elegius (No Music) Moth Cemetery (No Music)	Terra Volta		Croatoa
Brickstown		Founders' Falls	Blackstone Hills (No Music)	Crey's Folly		Eden
Abandoned Sewer Network		Peregrine Island		Firebase Zulu	Tempest Sector (No Music) Point Tango (No Music)	Cascade Archipelago
The Chantry	(Unused) (Unused)	The Storm Palace

Villain Zones

Zone	Zone	Neighborhood	Zone	Neighborhood	Zone
Breakout	Mercy Island {Pre-Issue 21)		Mercy Island		Port Oakes
Cap au Diable	Bloody Bay		Sharkhead Isle		Siren's Call
Nerva Archipelago	St. Martial	Fortune's Wheel (No Music)	Warburg	The WEB (No Music)	Grandville
Recluse's Victory	Monster Island

Co-op / Shared Zones

Zone	Neighborhood	Zone	Neighborhood	Zone	Neighborhood	Zone	Neighborhood
Rikti War Zone		Pocket D		Ouroboros		Cimerora
Midnighter Club		Dark Astoria

Praetorian Zones

Zone	Zone	Neighborhood	Zone
Nova Praetoria	Imperial City	(unused)	Neutropolis
Underground Nova	Underground Imperial		Underground Neutropolis
First Ward	Night Ward

Reused Music

Although there was a large amount of unique music found throughout the game, there were several neighborhoods that used musical cues which had slight differences from, or were exact duplicates of, those used elsewhere. Listed below are examples of the neighborhoods that used identical or similar music. They are sorted by the earliest zone/neighborhood in which the music was used, or by the first zone that used the most complete version. If there are no notes after a secondary listing then it used the identical version as the primary one.

-- longer version

-- similar version

-- longer version

-- shorter, similar version

-- similar version

Abandoned Sewer Network / Atlas Park Sector

The Hollows / Grendel's Gulch

Abandoned Sewer Network / Boomtown Sector

-- unused longer version

Abandoned Sewer Network / Skyway City Sector

-- unused extended version

Abandoned Sewer Network / Steel Canyon Sector

Abandoned Sewer Network / Underworld

-- longer unused version

-- similar version 1, added intro

-- unused similar version 2, added intro

The Hollows / Eastgate Park

-- similar, shorter version

-- same as Talos Island version

-- extended version

-- similar version

-- extended version

-- similar extended version

-- omit rhythm, added animal sounds

-- similar to Dark Astoria version

Striga Isle / The Maw

Striga Isle / The Wolf's Throat

-- similar, longer version

-- similar extended version

The Hollows / Eastgate Heights

-- added animal sounds

-- longer, added background effects

-- longer, added bird sounds

-- same as Dark Astoria version

-- added atmosphere

Abandoned Sewer Network / Kings Row Sector -- same as Sewer Network version

-- longer version with intro

-- extended version

-- longer version

-- unused similar version

-- extended version

-- extended version with intro

-- added intro

-- similar, longer version

-- unused longer version

-- longer version

The Hollows / Cherry Hills

-- slower, shorter version

-- different intro

Warburg / Hero Base -- same as Bloody Bay version

Striga Isle / Port Noble

-- longer version

-- longer, added animal sounds

-- longer version

-- added intro effect

-- slightly longer version

-- extended version

-- longer version

-- muffled version of Hero Lobby 1

The Hollows / The Red River

-- omit bells, extended slower version

-- unused version, added intro

-- unused longer version

Monster Island / Cutlass Isles

-- longer version

-- extended version

-- unused longer version

Monster Island / Tempest Quay

-- shorter, unused version

Faultline / Overflow

Bloody Bay / Arachnos Base

Recluse's Victory / Sector 2

-- similar version

-- muffled version of Villain Lobby 1

Warburg / Warburg

Siren's Call / Buildville

-- unused version

Bloody Bay / Water Street -- unused version

-- shorter version

Faultline / Overbrook Dam

Bloody Bay / Water Street

Grandville / The Fab

-- unused longer version

-- unused similar version

Faultline / Aftershock

Faultline / Arachnos Dig Site

-- shorter version

Grandville / Spider City

Recluse's Victory / Sector 4

Echo: Dark Astoria / Barca Plaza

Echo: Dark Astoria / Dido's View

Echo: Dark Astoria / Raimi Arcade

Echo: Dark Astoria / Romero Heights

Echo: Dark Astoria / Toffet Terrace

Unused and Alternate Music

Some neighborhood music cues had alternate unused versions or were omitted completely from the game. The list below highlights some of these.

Atlas Park

-- unused

Steel Canyon

-- unused

Faultline (Pre-Issue 8)

-- removed in Issue 8

Faultline (Issue 8)

-- extended version

-- unused alternate version

-- unused New Age version

-- longer Oriental version looped in Mr. Yin's store

Dark Astoria (Pre-Issue 22)

-- unused loop

-- unused

The Chantry

-- unused

Bloody Bay

-- unused alternate version

Breakout

-- unused

Mercy Island

-- unused alternate version

Port Oakes

-- unused alternate version

-- unused

-- unused alternate version

Cap au Diable

-- unused alternate version

Sharkhead Isle

-- unused alternate version

St. Martial

-- unused longer version

-- unused

Imperial City

-- unused

Pocket D

-- used in missions

-- muffled version of above

Miscellaneous Unused Music

BoomBox Tracks

This list includes the different tracks that could be selected when using the BoomBox emote. Lo-Fi versions of the tracks were implemented in Issue 17 to more accuractely simulate the sound quality from a real boombox.

Altitude
Beat
Catch Me
Dance
ElectroVibe
Disco Freak
Dog Walk
Heavy Dude
Info Overload
Jumpy
Kick It
Looker
Meaty
Notorious
Move On
Peace
Quickie
Raver
Shuffle
Spaz
Technoid
Venus
Wah Wah
Wind It Up
Yellow

Mission Music

Going Rogue and Combat

These tracks were first introduced in Issue 18 and continued to be used through sunset. They typically were featured during boss fights in missions, or accompanied with tense storytelling moments. The zone name for each file does not imply that it was used exclusively for content in that area. For example, Who Will Die Episode 5 used Underground4_D during the fight after the cutscene.

Zone	General Combat	Other Mission Use
Nova Praetoria
Imperial City
Neutropolis
The Underground

Incarnate Trials

These looped tracks were introduced in Issue 20 for use as background music during Incarnate Trials. The "A" and "B" tracks were released first, while the "C" tracks were added with Issue 21.5.

"High" Loops
"Low" Loops

Mood Music

These tracks were used in missions, usually just inside the opening area to set the mood. The first wave of them were introduced in Issue 6, while more came in Issue 18. Many of the Issue 6 tracks were looped versions of other music previously used for city zones, but most of them were unused overall.

Issue 6	Issue 18	Issue 24

Cutscene Music

These tracks were used in the various cutscenes which played in missions, task forces, and trials later in the game. They were generally first started to be used in Issue 18, and continued up to the last Issue 24 beta.

Incarnate Trials

Death Incarnate (

) (

)

Signature Story Arcs

Sig Story Arc 05 (

) (

)

Sig Story Arc 06 (

) (

)

Task Forces

Morality Choices

Story Arcs

Clone Death (

) (

)

Protean (

) (

)

Rage Quit (

) (

)

Special Events

Easter Eggs and Obscure Music

This final list includes music cues which a player would typically have to go to a specific spot to be able to hear.

Faultline

-- Stand outside the restaurant door at (881, 31, -1830)^[Copy] in New Overbrook to hear this music.

-- Stand near the jukebox in the Cryptic Lounge to hear this music.

-- Stand outside the restaurant door at (1088, 31, -1537)^[Copy] in New Overbrook to hear this music.

Grandville

-- This was the speech that looped in the main entrance to Grandville.

-- This music could be heard coming from the restrooms in the Dev Prison room hidden in the tunnels of Grandville. It is an altered version of the old standard Moon River, with some PG-rated sound effects added.

-- This music could also be heard in the Dev Prison.