Favorite Score or Soundtrack in a game?

NieR and NieR Automata

not even close. listen to tracks from both every week


assorted tracks from other games (off top of head):

gerudo valley
BFG division
dire dire docks
priscilla's song
theme of laura
gwyn, lord of cinder
nameless song
MGS2 and 3 themes
to Zanarkand
hymn of the fayth
anti-soul mysteries lab
ultimecia's castle

Zelda games in general have fantastic scores, usually.

20+ years later, I still hum the beautiful score from Tom Raider 1 and all of the cues. Fantastic music, never had heard anything like it before.

I'm consider myself sort of a video game music buff, I have several thousand of my fav video game tracks as MP3's I listen to more than real music.

I've always been a huge fan of "video game music", by that I mean the old school MIDI style tracks, they are shorter and simpler, but they are way more 'catchy' than most modern video game music.

As modern games have turned more cinematic, frequently the music in them is less in your face, it's usually more subtle, with bigger moments having the more noticeable tracks. Very much in line with how movies score themselves. Sadly this means on average I find most modern games have less memorable soundtracks than older games.

However there are plenty of modern games that have amazingly awesome soundtracks.

I could take all the air of the room and post like 200 games with insanely awesome sound tracks but I'll have some restraint and limit it a smaller pool of 3'ish per system I and most others would consider to be amongst the very best for that platform (there are lots more besides the ones I list though)

I have bolded the ones I consider to be strong contenders for the greatest video game sound tracks of all time.

NES

Castlevania
Mega Man II
Battletoads

SNES

Super Metroid
Donkey Kong Country
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy 2/3 (actually 4/6)

N64

Super Mario 64
Zelda: Ocarina of Time

PS1

Final Fantasy 7
Castlevania Symphony of the Night

PS2

Shadow of the Colossus
Dragon Quest VIII

PC / Multi-platform

StarCraft
Diablo II
Hotline Miami
Undertale
Super Meat Boy (original soundtrack on Steam version)
Dark Souls
The Witcher 3

quote:

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Anything Rareware done by Grant Kirkhope

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Yep. You'll find the same developers, franchises, and composers coming up repeatedly because they just were the best of the best.

Koji Kondo (Nintendo)
Nobuo Uematsu (Square)
David Wise & Grant Kirkhope (Rare)

A mini hall of fame of video game composers.

Hyper Light Drifter
Space Quest 3 (composed by Supertramp drummer Bob Siebenberg)

List was suspect until dark souls was mentioned

Now I agree

quote:

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Grant Kirkhope really tied that game together and without his music it wouldn’t be looked at the same.

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I believe he was one of the first to come up with the idea of consistent level themes that played differently if you were in open space vs underwater vs a cave vs a boss fight. Really intuitive.

Being a man of culture, I hope you’re ready for a great rundown of soundtracks:


Persona 5
Fire Emblem Echoes
Mario Odyssey
Gravity Rush 2
Octopath Traveler
All Xenoblade games
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Secret of Mana
Chrono Cross
Ninja Gaiden Black
Cuphead
Metroid Prime 1
Pokémon: ORAS
Bayonetta 2
Metal Gear: Rising

quote:

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NieR Automata

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I bought the soundtrack for this game.

So damn good.

The Bayonetta series has an amazing soundtrack as well.