Main Menu

Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 07:28:25 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Video game music!

Started by bgmnts, May 25, 2022, 11:26:37 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

bgmnts

I'm sure this topic has been brought many a-time before but video game music is one of my favourite genres of music ever. Is it a genre? Fuck knows but I love it and no joking it makes me more nostalgic than actual music of my time.

Thanks to khinsider I have been able to download dozens of game soundtracks and lets do some favourite game soundtracks and composers innit? So, off the top of my head and in no order:

Composers:

Nobuo Uematsu,
Harry Gregson Williams
Graeme Norgate
Akira Yamaoka
Jesper Kyd
Koji Kondo
Mick Gordon

Best game soundtracks:

Super Mario 64
Ocarina of Time
Undertale
FF IX and VIII
Lost Odyssey
Killer Instinct
Street Fighter II
Resident Evil 2 and 3
Time Crisis
Silent Hill 1 and 2
Max Payne
Metal Gear, 2, Solid and Snake Eater
Mass Effect 2
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin

Obviously this list isnt exhaustive but you will notice that, with the exception of Undertale and perhaps Mass Effect 2, these are all very old games. I noticed that maybe with the rapid increase in graphical capability to create an atmosphere, that music might not be as important as it used to be. Skyrim has a very bombastic, sweeping orchestral sound that is quite nice but I am unsure if it'd be a favourite of mine. Bastion has good tunes as well.

Anyway, let me know your picks!

oggyraiding

I really like David Wise's soundtrack for Donkey Kong Country 2.

Also Jamie Christopherson really elevated Metal Gear Rising with his music.

bgmnts

Yes! Totally neglected Metal Gear Rising, that power/speed metal electro stuff is perfect. A good modern example of a game's soundtrack setting the tone

Shmups have the best soundtracks

Get this up your lug holes!


Pretty much all of Eschatos


Muchi Muchi Pork stage 1 always cheers me up :D


AngryGazelle

The Last of Us parts 1 and 2 have beautiful soundtracks.

Hotline Miami is another one I find really memorable.

Poobum


Entire soundtrack from the Black Mesa mod is brilliant. Album is on Bandcamp, one of faves probably ever.

oggyraiding


Ian Gillan provides vocals for Blue Dragon's boss theme. I didn't really like the game, but the music was good.

The Culture Bunker

The intro music to (the original) Final Fantasy VII is incredibly evocative for me - I'd barely played games except Champ Manager in some years, but I'd sprained my ankle at uni and a friend lent me their PS1 plus FF7 to keep me occupied over a weekend. Something about that music grabbed me right away to the point I sat and listened to the whole piece.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

My disdain for From Software and their one game is well documented (by me) but I can not and will not deny that the music is spectacular.

The music from the first levels of Super Marios 1-3 are my go to whistling tunes. Mario 2 is particularly good:
I can just imagine that playing at a Summer party, attended by Jeeves and Wooster.

More classics:

Dark Sexy Dangerous

#9
I love Uematsu's soundtracks for Final Fantasy I-IX, but I can only enjoy them in their original formats. For me, there's just something deeper and more profound about the 'low-grade' OSVs than the arrangements for live instruments, which border on the bland and syrupy-sweet at times.



I know this is my brain telling me the former is better because I grew up with the PS1 sound chip.

The Crumb

Okami had a brilliant soundtrack



Also SoTC, I particularly love the foreboding music before fights kick off

Mass Effect's galaxy map music is pretty perfect, still evokes the feeling of potential in having all those planets to explore.

Dark Sexy Dangerous

#11
EarthBound has an amazing soundtrack. Delightfully strange, dark, funny and bittersweet, like the game itself, and contains a huge range of musical quotations, samples, allusions and influences (Frank Zappa, The Beatles/John Lennon, Van Dyke Parks, The Beach Boys, Randy Newman, Sun Ra, Brian Eno, Can, Todd Rundgren and Esquivel!, among others). Worth checking out all the extended mixes you can find on YouTube.

Relaxing Earthbound/Mother 2 Music (Keiichi Suzuki & Hirokazu Tanaka)


EarthBound - Snowman (Keiichi Suzuki & Hirokazu Tanaka)


EarthBound - The Place (The Cave of the Past) (Keiichi Suzuki & Hirokazu Tanaka)


Probably the most relaxing boss music you'll ever hear:

EarthBound - Sanctuary Guardian (Keiichi Suzuki & Hirokazu Tanaka)


Which was a remix of one of the Mother 1 battle themes:


More rather lovely (eerie/ominous/relaxing) soundtracks. Tomb Raider - Main Theme (Nathan McCree)


Ridge Racer Type 4 - Lucid Rhythms (Tetsukazu Nakanishi)


Silent Hill 3 - Save Theme (Akira Yamaoka)


Ape Escape - Time Station (Soichi Terada)


Resident Evil - Save Room (Masami Ueda)


Poobum

Halo has a great soundtrack. The music in the back to back levels Gravemind and Uprising is such good musical storytelling; it evokes the melancholy of a thousands year old empire of shared culture and believe tearing itself apart. I loved the Covenant, such a brilliant antagonist.

Mister Six

I love the theme tune to Monkey Island 2 (Amiga version) - it always struck me as oddly melancholic for such a silly game, something compounded by that cliffhanger ending.


The Yakuza series has great music throughout, but my faves so far are "An Outlaw's Lullaby", a mad jazz tune that's fantastic fun to fight to...


...and this sleazy number, "Try to Have Some Fun For Me!!", that accompanies the cabaret club minigame in 0.


Actually, because someone will inevitably bring it up, there's also this corker, "As You Like", which plays when you're dressing up your cabaret hostesses (I know...).


The Flashback menu screen music on the Amiga always seemed impossibly epic, although in retrospect it's just that one bit ascending for about a minute.


And of course, how can we forget the bizarrely chilled and catchy RoboCop theme on the Game Boy?


Or the best Tetris music ever, from the same machine:


Zetetic

#14
Highfleet's is very much in a specific line, but it's tied up so well with the world and the rest of the sound design:


(And yet I believe it mostly predates the game, rather than being composed for it. I even wonder if the music inspired much of the setting...)

(Edit: Quite suited to Vagrus, where the included music is quite nothingy IIRC, along with the album it was originally from.)

Mister Six

Quote from: Dark Sexy Dangerous on May 25, 2022, 03:16:12 PMSilent Hill 3 - Save Theme (Akira Yamaoka)


Good call. Most of the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack is similarly great eerie ambient stuff, but because I'm a basic bitch, my favourite is the guitar-led "Theme of Laura":


bgmnts

Yeah my two links were the title themes of both 1 and 2 for Silent Hill, but their general ambient music is pure horror, the former being pure industrial mulch and gore sounds, and the latter being trippy and psychologically fucked.

Mister Six

Oops, sorry @bgmnts! I missed that in there.

Pink Gregory

Dungeon of the Endless, a game I love but don't play enough

FTL

FF8, this is the tune that plays in Timber, intensely wrapped up in nostalgia but evocative to say the least, impressive for midi instruments as well

Zetetic

Paradise Killer's soundtrack is fairly integral to its atmosphere, and I love the silliness of both the title theme:


and, I guess, its B-side:


Any other examples where the lyrics are about the game? (I even wonder if the above are meant to. sort of, be from the perspective of Lady Love-Dies or maybe Lydia. They definitely feel like music that could be of the setting, not just the game - same as with Highfleet, I guess.)

(Edit: I suppose Dandelion's dogshit in the Witcher games.)

Poobum

God, being reminded how much I love FF8 and how I have no time to replay it again.

oggyraiding


Could never get into the game, but the opening for Wild Arms is lovely.

bgmnts

Quote from: Mister Six on May 25, 2022, 04:37:12 PMOops, sorry @bgmnts! I missed that in there.

Nah it's good to know other people rate it!

Clownbaby

I have always loved all of the music from Crash Bandicoot 1. They arsed it up with the N Sane trilogy, getting rid of the unexpectedly eerie sparseness and ditching key atmospheric sound effects. The music from the other 2 original Crash games never came close to the first one I think.

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL453FC8D567281DB6

I've had the Resident Evil 7 save room music creeping into my head a lot lately. Very nice.



Pink Gregory

Quote from: Poobum on May 25, 2022, 04:51:48 PMGod, being reminded how much I love FF8 and how I have no time to replay it again.

I've watched the Kim Justice video series (twice) more times than I've finished it (none)

beanheadmcginty

Fury of the Furries "Lagoon" on the Amiga (so soothing):

Hired Guns character select screen on the Amiga (so funky):

Tetris on the C64 (shits all over the later Nintendo version and somehow goes on for 25 minutes without repeating. How did that fit in 64K?):


oggyraiding


The Silver Surfer soundtrack is maybe one of the best on the NES.

Poobum

Love the music in Shovel Knight. Love Shovel Knight. Liked Spectre Knight but was too shit at the others, so gave up.

Propeller Knight Theme

Mole Knight Theme

Mister Six

Not a soundtrack, but it was apparently uploaded by CaB's own Madhair60, and in any case should never be forgotten: