One of the catchiest background songs was from a Flash game called, “Magic Pen”.
Final Fantasy VI, hands down. No game before or since has made such effective use of leitmotif in its score.
Super Adventure Island for the SNES
The 1991 remake of the first Leisure Suit Larry game
…and too much Mario stuff to list but Beep Block Skyway from 3D World is a favorite of mine for that funky guitar and bass.
Bastion.
I would also nominate the music in the Monkey Island games, especially Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, which was the first game to feature iMUSE, a methodology for matching the action on the screen to music.
Pretty much anything Michael Land is gold.
Shit–I had his name in my original post, but somehow I edited it out before finalizing it. Yes, Michael Land is awesome.
The soundtrack from Guitaroo Man is fantastic.
Einhander had a good soundtrack.
More recently, I actually bought the Bloodbourne soundtrack, even though I know I’d never even think about trying a Souls-type game.
Civ IV had one of the best tracks ever composed for a video game: the Grammy award wining “Baba Yetu”.
The soundtrack from Bastion is amazing, though I’m also partial to the soundtracks from Braid, FTL: Faster Than Light, and Shovel Knight.
I was never a Sega fan, but it’s possible that Streets of Rage had the best soundtrack of any game prior to the CD era. The Genesis/Mega Drive had a lot of great soundtracks, though; something to do with having a more powerful sound chip than other cartridge systems (including the SNES).
That said, F-Zero had a phenomenal soundtrack and the Big Blue theme might be my favorite piece of video game music of all time. It got even better in the sequels, where they were able to use real guitars.
The Amiga had some amazing soundtracks too. Apidya springs to mind, particularly Sewers Blast 1. There’s a remix of it by Chris Huelsbeck, the original composer, using keyboards and a harpsichord that is still in my main MP3 playlist (just called “Apidya Level 3”).
Can’t forget Shadow of the Beast either. Considering what other games of the era looked and sounded like I could basically just sit in front of a computer running the intro for hours.
The same was true of Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge. It sounds awful now, but the Wagner piece Gremlin used leading into the guitar-rock structured MIDI theme song was amazing. As far as taking MIDI-composed music as far as it could go, Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 basically set the standard. I still haven’t figured out how they were able to do that without real instruments (though I don’t like the tune itself as much).
+1 for Metroid Prime and Twilight Princess. I still clearly the remember the first time I played Metroid Prime and got chills just listening to the intro. Damn, I need to order a copy of that game. I guess it wasn’t really a surprise, because the theme song from the previous Metroid game also gave me chills.
Yes! I’ve never forgotten the Magical Sound Shower theme.
I never fail to be astonished that there are actually people who like “Baba Yetu.”
It’s kind of uplifting in an Enya-ish way. I’d probably kill myself if it played throughout the game. Never got into Civ after II, for some reason.
Final Fantasy 7 or Metroid Prime.
There’s some awesome reimagining of the soundtracks to Japanese games that got an official release. I love this from a Jazzy version of the Chrono Trigger soundtrack:
Parasite Eve was pretty damn good too.Edit:
And this is the original of the Chrono Trigger tune:
I didn’t say anything negative about your favorite soundtrack. Why do you feel the need to put down my favorite soundtrack?
Because his soundtrack was good ;).
… so I did. Amazon has same-day shipping in Orlando now! Damn you all for making me waste rewards points.
I’m just playing through Star Control 2 (aka The Ur-Quan Masters) right now and realized that’s another game with a great soundtrack to it.