Take Monty Norman/John Barry's classic 1962 James Bond theme, but make it 1995, add a couple more years, and winterize it. Now you have "Severnaya Installation" composed by Graeme Norgate for Rare's 1997 release of GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64.
Like many scenarios in GoldenEye 007, the locations existed in the movie to some extent, but what transpired in the game built on the story from the movie, almost like a movie adaptation of the original novel. There are scenes in Severnaya, but we only see the immediate area outside the bunker and there was no specific music composed for those scenes aside from the dramatic and sad cue when Natalya climbs out after the first GoldenEye blast. But Eric Serra's score would not work for James Bond running around in the snow in a not-at-all-conspicuous furry-hooded parka.
So when Graeme Norgate composed the surface music for the Severnaya Installation stage, he did not have much to base the music on besides the overall feel of Eric Serra's score from the film, Monty Norman's, and the Siberian location of the stage. And the track does fit in well with the tone of the movie and the rest of the game. It's very James Bondy and also, a very cold feeling, hence why we are including it in our selection of wintery game scores.
The track starts off with a wind gust-like sound that carries through the entire song, which just exudes the feeling of overcast skies and being surrounded by hills of snow in a forest. The second instrumentation that comes in is a tinkly-xylophone-like instrument along with the characteristic Christmas jingle bells. The combination of these three elements throughout the entire song helps to maintain the feeling of that cold and snowy forest, to say nothing about the rest of the song bringing back a flood of memories of running over the snow taking out Siberian Special Forces guards and eventually trying to shoot all four of the locks off the vent grate to drop down into the bunker stage within 3:30 on Secret Agent Mode.
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