Since the beginning of gaming, sound has been instrumental in conveying elements of story, tension and key areas of interest. Everyone has a few songs that are utterly unforgettable and hold a lot of emotional connotations, whether from games or TV shows. They're also a great way to indicate something about to happen, like an incoming danger, or a discovery, or even just dawn.
The above video shows how the Super Mario song 'Starman' has evolved over the last 30 years.
Sound, like graphics, are two elements in games that seem to have developed at a steady pace alongside one another. Much like 8 bit theme tunes are coupled with 8 bit graphics, operatic scores are common elements in video games nowadays. Sound is something that I feel is hugely under appreciated in games, as people don't always realise or fully grasp the effort that goes into it sometimes. For instance, I feel that Call of Duty has terrible sound effects in comparison to it's bigger, louder brother, Battlefield. Within Call of duty everything sounds horrifically toned down and lacking impact, especially the sound effects behind explosions and gunfire. In a game that prides itself on immersive fighting in the middle of battle fields, you'd expect the sound effects to have a bit more umph. Which is definitely something you see achieved better in the Battlefield series, and they are undoubtedly dubbed high quality games because of it. Fancy graphics and UI aren't everything.
Admittedly, audio doesn't always have to rely on sounding realistic though, and indeed companies don't always try and strive for rich sound to sell a game. Take Flappy Bird for example. An extremely minimal game in every sense, but nonetheless addictive than common AAA titles. The graphics in Flappy Bird are extremely minimal, it's literally block colours with parallax scrolling, similar to early Mario (but we wont go into that). Similarly and more importantly the sound in the game is also simple. In fact the creator Dong Nguyen didn't even include music into the game, just the flapping of wings and the occasionally 'smack' when you hit something, and the game still manages to immerse you and is as well played as many reining titles. Just like Battlefield's realistic audio immerses you in the realistic warfare, Flappy Birds minimal audio does an equally, if not better job, at immersing you in its world, simply because it's easier to develop an immersive, stylised, well thought out world than try emulate real life, the most complex thing in existence.
I checked out Nile Rogers 'Good Times' and I had no idea Queen and Daft Punk had used it. It's one of those songs that I could recognise straight away, but I couldn't think of it's name or producer if put on the spot. However I don't think it's the most influential piece of music ever. Being sampled a lot doesn't make it influential, it just makes it accessible and reusable. Sound effects also have to be memorable. Everyone has certain sound indicators that resonate with them - the Zelda puzzle solving sound is very much ingrained in my memory to be associated with success.
It may be because of my love of music, but I feel music is just as important as every other aspect of a game when playing it. I remember feeling so shocked when my friends would say that they were listening to music while playing a game, multi player or single player. It's like playing the very sombre Dear Esther while blasting Cyprus Hill, incredibly jarring and immersion breaking. In an extreme case of sound over game play, I guess you could say simple games like Castle Crashers for Xbox arcade or even the fast pace Runner 2 are driven by the background music. In those types of games where music helps the pace of the game, it's hard to imagine what game play would be like without those fun and bouncy songs accompanying it. So to conclude, sound is a harnisable tool to help boost atmosphere or immersion in a game. However there is no black and white with it, some games manage just fine with little to no sounds, and some games are even games based on it, Beatmania, Guitar Hero, Audio Surf to name a few.
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