Games Soundtrack Appreciation / Discussion Thread

Dyni wrote:
Kloreep wrote:

Thanks for posting the Journey tracks, Dyni. Unfortunately not going to be playing it anytime soon (no PS3, no friends with one) but I like the music on its own merits. Do you know if the music's for sale any place?

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/jou... and on the Playstation store. $5 for the whole album, an absolute steal.

They were going to have a CD release. Do you happen to know if that ended up happening?

Blind_Evil wrote:
momgamer wrote:

If I had to pick a "To Zanarkand", I prefer the performance done by the New Japan Philharmonic for the DVD version of the "Tour de Japon" series (each location had a different orchestra). The strings section has a richness to it that's lacking in the Distant Worlds CD performance

Just wondering, what do you think of the vocal version on The Black Mages' second album?

There are times when I'm in the mood for it. The piano parts are really well performed, and sometimes it's time to get out the big boots and kick a little ass.

I have it in a playlist with stuff like The Rocking Grounds, Clash on the Big Bridge, Force Your Way, Blue Blast, Otherworld (Jecht's Theme), Assault of the Silver Dragons, and the full version of Dancing Mad.

But I also love this song (though I usually sing it to the Japanese tune with my daughter taking Lenne's part):

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Dyni wrote:
Kloreep wrote:

Thanks for posting the Journey tracks, Dyni. Unfortunately not going to be playing it anytime soon (no PS3, no friends with one) but I like the music on its own merits. Do you know if the music's for sale any place?

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/jou... and on the Playstation store. $5 for the whole album, an absolute steal.

They were going to have a CD release. Do you happen to know if that ended up happening?

I have no idea, tbh. I just know those are they ways you can get the soundtrack currently.

How the heck did we get this far without GladOS?!

Or this awesome video cover of the Turret Opera

Since I'm playing it at the moment I'll throw in:

I actually can't find my favorite tracks from this game anywhere. Maybe I should upload them myself.

Sorry for continually going to the SNES well, but that's where I come from. This is one of the most bizarre songs ever produced for it, from Secret of Mana. The composer's influence for the song is an Indonesian style of music focusing on different percussion instruments, gamelan.

Hahaha, portal.

MrAndrewJ wrote:

Leisure Suit Larry. Even the old chirps out of a cheap PC sound card sounded great.

You can grab pretty much the entire soundtrack for the series from Al's home page (in glorious MIDI!): http://www.allowe.com/Larry/musicdow...

Or just listen to the version of the main theme from LSL7:

mom gamer mentioned The Neverhood, but there's also the not-quite-sequel, SkullMonkeys:

Man, this thread just destroys my Mac -- browsing this many Youtube videos, even without playing them, grinds the machine to a near-halt. Weird.

You know, in listening to a lot of this stuff, you can really hear how programming and music go together so frequently. Musicians tend to be good programmers, and programmers tend to be good musicians.

Great stuff so far! As far as soundtracks go Tropico & Railroad Tycoon are some of the best IMO.

I love the Super Meat Boy soundtrack.

Most of the stuff from Full Throttle, especially the opening theme and the Fuel Tower Music

Some "one hit wonders" of games past, the Space Quest I theme:

and the Super Mario Bros 2 Overworld Theme.

Many moons past I listened to an unreasonable amount of Metroid Prime music. If I were to ever rank the tracks this would probably be in my Top 5.

I'm skimming here, but somebody please tell me Zombie On Your Lawn has been posted.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Super Smash Bros. Brawl - Dark World (easily the best remix of a Zelda theme ever, period):

Thank you. I kept forgetting this one for some reason. I never really noticed the dark world theme until I heard this version.

Malor wrote:

Man, this thread just destroys my Mac -- browsing this many Youtube videos, even without playing them, grinds the machine to a near-halt. Weird.

You know, in listening to a lot of this stuff, you can really hear how programming and music go together so frequently. Musicians tend to be good programmers, and programmers tend to be good musicians.

It's not weird - Youtube pre-caches a bunch of stuff, so when the page renders it goes through that first. Usually you don't notice since it's only one or two on a page at a time.

And that musical observation isn't so shocking, either. Programmers tend to come from the band, not the football team. I remember one time when I was working for a very large software company, we had a fancy Christmas breakfast party and a feature was one of the higher-ups brought in their very, very fancy digital piano to listen to during the meal. But that turned into a line all around the cafeteria to putz with the thing and try it out. It was a perfect storm of geeking - technology and music. Turns out there were some serious pianists on the team.

And for game soundtrack stuff, I'll add:

Brawl revived a number of great Nintendo themes in a really good way. In addition to Dark World, I really like the Star Fox theme, and the Fire Emblem theme (which they really put a lot of production value into).

I linked to the videos to make the page a bit easier to load.

I'm glad you guys already covered Grim Fandango, Myth, Torment, Halo, and Bioshock, since those are basically my top five.

Apologies if I missed it earlier in the thread, but here's my fave from Grim Fandango:

Jeremy Soule's Icewind Dale OST made a huge impression on me at the time, and I think it still holds up amazingly well for music composed for mainly sampled orchestra:

This one sounds pretty dated these days, but it's loaded with enough nostalgia that I don't care:

Same thing with this one. It hasn't aged all that well, but an absurd number of hours spent in ONS-Torlan have forever etched it on my brain:

Bill Brown's Undying OST was a real gem:

Jason Graves is an inspiration. Dude can write:

Steve Jablonsky is a great example of a Hollywood composer who does game music right, not just lending his name to a project so the publisher can have another PR bullet point. I love the slow burn of this cue from Gears 2:

@Podunk - Jason Graves is also an incredibly nice guy! Really liked meeting him last month.

Tanglebones wrote:

@Podunk - Jason Graves is also an incredibly nice guy! Really liked meeting him last month.

I've never met him personally, but he seems like an incredibly nice guy based on limited interactions on Facebook and the like.

Podunk wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

@Podunk - Jason Graves is also an incredibly nice guy! Really liked meeting him last month.

I've never met him personally, but he seems like an incredibly nice guy based on limited interactions on Facebook and the like.

I was geeking out over his scores while he was geeking out over George Crumb

@Podunk:

Props for linking some Icewind Dale. This track from ID2 is one of those that makes me stop and say, "whoa".

Blind_Evil wrote:

Sorry for continually going to the SNES well, but that's where I come from. This is one of the most bizarre songs ever produced for it, from Secret of Mana. The composer's influence for the song is an Indonesian style of music focusing on different percussion instruments, gamelan.

I too keep coming back to SNES. Truthfully, it just basically sums up to me the best of the best. And definitely nice find from Secret of Mana.

These two are my favorite from that title:

Fantastic.

kexx wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

Sorry for continually going to the SNES well, but that's where I come from. This is one of the most bizarre songs ever produced for it, from Secret of Mana. The composer's influence for the song is an Indonesian style of music focusing on different percussion instruments, gamelan.

I too keep coming back to SNES. Truthfully, it just basically sums up to me the best of the best. And definitely nice find from Secret of Mana.

These two are my favorite from that title:

Fantastic.

Great choices. The first kind of makes my skin crawl still. The really odd part about that soundtrack that is the composer never did such odd stuff again, to my knowledge.

I heard an interview, I think on Retronauts or 8-4play, with a Japanese gentleman that composed for some obscure but loved RPG back then, which shed some interesting light on the SNES' beloved sound process. He said that the SNES' sound chip allowed for one very rich sound at a time, so now when I listen to the songs I can usually pick out which component of a song they were focusing on versus the fuzzier stuff.

Good stuff from the past:

Command & Conquer 1 (Fight, Win, Prevail! and Mechanical Man), who knows how many hours I spent as a child on this game
Final Fantasy 7 - lots of tunes with different tempo
Transport Tycoon Deluxe - cool midi music
Warlords 3 - epic orchestra pieces which really takes you away into a fantasy world

These are all outstanding choices. You are all men and ladies of exquisite taste. I agree and applaud all of your choices.

However, I stand by my favorite:

And this:

Jaheira's Romance theme still gives me chills...

As does Viconia's...

But this track, that they play at the end of what IMO is still the most epic RPG of all time, still remains my favorite track ever.

Another one for old-school PC gamers - Warcraft 2:

ahrezmendi wrote:

Another one for old-school PC gamers - Warcraft 2:

oh my god, this one takes me back.

also just realized this would be PERFECT for background music to my civilization 5 sessions, when always inevitably invest heavily in my English Navy and take over the world.

And now for something completely different: A blonde giant in a frilly pink shirt fighting a septuagenarian in a power armor with a nonsensically epic song. (I don't know how old Henry is, but I love the word septuagenarian

And while the Glados songs are most famous pieces of music from the Portal series, my personal favorite hype-me-up-for-work track is the one that was introduced in, from what I can gather, Bit Trip Beat.

EDIT: In light of these Warcraft 2 tracks:
"Your Sound Card Works Perfectly!"

Well, HELLO THERE... (apologies if it was already linked to somewhere)

Love this thread. Some of my favorites like Morrowind and Frozen Synapse have already been put but here are some of my picks for favorite game tracks.

These two were my studying music back in high school. I had them on loop and could still listen for hours.

I dont like JRPGS anymore but Xenogears had the best sountrack of the genre and I still think does

I, for one, am shocked at the breadth of content available on YouTube for this thread. I'm trying to imagine how this conversation would work just 5 years ago... Oh no... I'm old!